Lauren O’Leary told David Hennessy about her debut short film Crybaby.
Actor turned novice film maker Lauren O’Leary was born in New York and grew up in Bray, Clare and Limerick before training at the Royal Welsh College of Drama.
Until recently she was based in London but moved back to Ireland to start making films.
Her debut, the short film Crybaby, will be shown at the London Breeze Film Festival this month.
In her film Lauren’s character ‘Hannah’, a struggling actress, is home for the Christmas holidays.
‘Hannah’ and her mother ‘Niamh’, played by Fair City’s Celia Murphy, going to the supermarket to get supplies for their Christmas dinner.
Along the way ‘Hannah’ meets various people who want to know how her career is going and old friends with whom she hasn’t kept in touch.
Lauren spoke to The Irish World.
Where did the idea for Crybaby come from?
“I’ve always been really interested in writing from the wound – what’s the thing we wouldn’t want people to know about us? Or what are we most ashamed of?’
“That’s where we get the most interesting work.
“I had been working on an idea about a struggling artist because I relate to the idea of a struggling artist.
“Initially, the character was a dancer and then I just got honest with myself and asked myself ‘Well, what am I afraid of? Why don’t I make this about an actor?’
“You can relate it to anyone from a small town who wants to do something that’s slightly outside the norm to what everyone else is doing – becoming an artist, an actor, a dancer, a makeup artist – then coming home and that pressure to have these definable markers of success in common standards.
“For her it’s a Netflix series.
“The more specific you make a story, the larger an audience it speaks to, so I decided I didn’t want to hide my own experience or what I feel. I want to be really honest about it and try and be brave with it.
“That’s where it came from.”
Crybaby is your debut short film…
“Yes, it’s my debut short film as director, writer and actor so I’m really proud of what I made because it speaks to the artist’s struggle.
“It speaks to how I felt at the time I made it and the mother/ daughter relationship and the relationship with friends.
“This is the perfect debut film for me to express who I am, what I’m about, how I write and how I direct.
“They always say write what you know – but do it in new and exciting ways.
“As I said at the beginning, the more specific you are about something – and if you know something very well, you can be really specific – the more it is universal and can speak to a lot of people.”
Q: Are you looking forward to showing the film at London Breeze Film Festival?
“I can’t wait, we’re in the Selfridges Cinema so mixing two of my favourite things, filmmaking and shopping. Who couldn’t love that?
“But also, the banner we’re under is the International Women of Film so I’m really excited to see the other films that are on there.
“We’re also in the screening that’s kicking off the whole festival so I’m really proud. I feel really honoured and excited to go.
Let’s talk about your cast…
“Celia Murphy is an icon. Every time I watch this film, she makes me cry. She’s so funny.
“And then we have Janet Moran, Damien Kearney, Shauna Harris, Niamh Branigan, who is also our lovely producer.
“Everyone’s great but Niamh was great on the casting side for finding people that I hadn’t seen before or hadn’t considered and bringing them in.
“We were so lucky to get Carol Tormey, the Director of Photography (DOP), who’s amazing and is doing so many great things at the moment.
“I don’t know if there is a film that she’s not director of photography on in Ireland just because she’s so amazing.
“What was also great was almost all the heads of department are women, and we have a variety of ages. We also have a lot of mams on the team, in the cast and crew, so that was really important as well because it’s a story about a mother and daughter.”
The relationship between ‘Hannah’ and her mother ‘Niamh’ is key to the whole thing…
“Yeah, there’s so much love there.
“We open with them at each other in a way only a mother and daughter could be and that’s just where the comedy starts and then by the end there’s this really heartwarming moment between them.
“It’s Hannah’s horror because she’s so afraid and ‘Niamh’ just needs to get ‘Hannah’ inside to do the shop – and that is a journey across multiple landmines across this car park.
“By the end all the defences come down, and ‘Hannah’ just tells the truth and ‘Niamh’ sees her and offers to protect her, and ‘Hannah’ overcomes that fear – that’s the journey right there.
“There’s so much encapsulated within such a short time, many people can relate to that mother-daughter experience.”
When people here go home for Christmas, they get all those questions of, ‘How is it going in London?’
“Yeah, it’s very difficult and it’s not other people’s fault. A lot of people are very well meaning.
“It’s just when they’re not in my industry, they won’t know where this theatre is if you’re in a play somewhere, then that can feel quite difficult, but they might not know that they’re walking on, what is for so many actors, an emotional landmine.”
Most people are well meaning but there are those who let you they are not impressed…
“Janet Moran is brilliant. Janet’s character is faux well-meaning but really trying to twist the knife and let her know they’ve been keeping tabs on her, and they haven’t seen her in anything.
“She does it so well. It just makes me scream.
“Obviously in Ireland we have this phrase ‘notions’ and when you put your head above the parapet, you can feel a bit exposed.
“Obviously the arts and acting are so common and popular in Ireland now, but when I was in secondary school even saying I wanted to be an actor meant the teachers were worried for me. They would try and sway me away from it.”
Hannah runs into her former friend ‘Laoise’ (Niamh Branigan), but it doesn’t turn out as bad as she feared…
“Yeah, it’s a great experience for ‘Hannah’ because as afraid of it as she is, when she is honest, she’s met with compassion and empathy.
“The idea of other people’s expectations falls away.
“When you’re just honest with them, they’re still that person who loved you ten years ago.
“It’s quite beautiful really, but it’s also funny.
“Niamh does that mild disdain so well, ‘Hannah’ essentially ghosted her.
“I had to move around a lot as a kid for my dad’s work and I got quite used to not seeing friends anymore and just having to let that relationship go.
“It’s so rare that we get to have those honest conversations about friendship.
“That’s a really great moment and quite poignant.”
You’re now back in Dublin but you were in London for a number of years…
“I trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff which was amazing.
“After that, I went to New York for the better part of a year and did a play there. I came back and did theatre in London.
“I started writing during Covid, so this came out of that time.
“I was working as a jobbing actor in London until two years ago when I decided to come back and make more things.
“In London I got into the hamster wheel of only going to auditions and working whereas I realised I wanted to make things and Ireland seemed to have a really great community in which to make stuff.
“Obviously people do that in London all the time but there’s something about the Irish community where I thought I could go there and make it happen – and I did and I’m so happy with it.
“It’s a very Irish story so I wanted to be there.
“I’m so Irish in my core. I love everything about being Irish.
“I was (in London) writing scripts set in Dublin and I realised, ‘I don’t really know what it’s like to be in Dublin now’.
“I needed to go back and be in Ireland again. I’m really happy I made that move.
“I was born in New York. That’s why I went to New York when I graduated because I had a passport and thought, ‘Well I better use this thing before I get really busy’.
“I went and got to do a play there called Little Gem by the wonderful Elaine Murphy, directed by the fantastic Marc Atkinson Borrull and it starred Brenda Meany and Marsha Mason. They were just legends to work with.
“There’s nothing for the soul like doing a play in New York, living the dream. That was a great experience.”
Crybaby will be shown as part of the International Women of Film programme at Cinema at Selfridges 11am on Wednesday 21 October. London Breeze Film Festival runs 21-25 October. For tickets and more information, click here.
