Posted in: AMC, streaming, TV | Tagged: Aidan Gillen, charlie cox, ciarán hinds, Clare Dunne, interview, james bond, Kin

Kin Star Clare Dunne Discusses Irish Crime Drama, Bond Radio Role

Clare Dunne emerged as an up-and-coming acting powerhouse putting out an impressive near-decade of work doing her share of eclectic work across multiple platforms including film, TV, radio, and the stage. She's managed to work on the James Bond franchise, Shakespeare, and even her first theatrical tentpole franchise in 2019's Spider-Man Far from Home. Her first major TV role is as Amanda Kinsella in the Irish crime drama Kin for RTÉ One and AMC+ in the US. I spoke with the actress about how she landed the role, working with co-stars Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), and Ciarán Hinds (Tinker Tailor Solder Spy), and breaking down her character.

Kin charts the lives of the Kinsellas, a small but tight-knit Dublin crime family embroiled in a war against a powerful drug kingpin, Eamon Cunningham (Hinds). Cox and Gillen play Michael and Frank Kinsella, who lead their family while Dunne's Amanda is caught in the middle. "I would say Amanda's somebody that's going from innocence to corruption or light to dark," she said. "That has been an interesting challenge for me because I think as a story writer, I'm always trying to go for the more hopeful angle on things. Actually and what helped me get into it was really the question that this series is asking, which is 'How far would you go for your next of kin?' Because I think the question of dark and light, right and wrong, bad or good, certainly is a bit of a gray area. If you start thinking about people you love being hurt by somebody else, it definitely shapes your moral fiber. So I loved the fact that it wasn't necessarily about deciding whether Amanda was bad or good. It was just about that question and then going on the journey of the steps in that question on answering that question."

Given the dark nature of the series, humor helps bring much-needed levity on the set. "[My co-stars are] all really not like their characters and very kind," Dunne said. "They're very giving people. Aiden is so funny. I am always saying this, but he's actually so funny. As dry as anything just makes me laugh all time. Ciarán is like Santa Claus in disguise and so he's not like his characters at all. I loved working with them all, especially Charlie and Emmett [J Scanlan], because we felt very bonded in the characters and then on set as well because we had to do so much intense stuff together. It meant that off-camera, we became like such jokers and we're playing pool, games, and having a crack. 'Having a crack' means having fun, banter and just slagging each other. That was really important actually because the material can be heavy at times so it was important to just have fun on sites and I really enjoyed that."

To preserve Amanda's innocence and outsider status, Dunne said that series co-creator Peter McKenna (with Ciaran Donnelly) didn't look too much into the backstory, but did admit to some research. "She only works her way in and he wants that to feel authentic," Dunne said. "So I didn't get too deeply into how the family crime stuff works, but I did really research the money laundering and just like what it's like to be a young mother because she's so young having her kids and generally just why she chose to be part of our family. I kind of built her history a bit and I'm pulling that off for the shoot. I learned as I went to be honest because you can only do each scene at a time. What I did was I basically wrote out her timeline in her story, and then I would try and pitch it where it's supposed to be because it was just so confusing [laughs] sometimes."

One of Dunne's earliest projects was a 2014 BBC radio play of the Ian Fleming 1963 James Bond adventure On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which was adapted to film in 1969 starring George Lazenby in his lone outing as 007. She played Violet. "That was just a random job that I got in BBC Radio, but it was really cool because I was just I was around a lot of people that do radio acting all the time and I'd never really done it," she said. There were a few years there I just got a few radio roles, but it was good. It was kind of crazy [laughs]. It's just a different art form, isn't it? The good thing about it is that you don't have to run your lines off and you get to work with some incredible people sometimes. So that was cool because I met [Absolutely Fabulous'] Joanna Lumley on that one. She's awesome. I don't know what to tell you. It was just crazy. It was just so fun and it's very little pressure because you don't have to learn everything off and you're not being seen. So it's kind of it's a nice gig to get." Kin season one is available on Blu-ray and DVD on May 10th.

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