Actress Eileen Walsh told David Hennessy about the forthcoming world premiere of The Psychic, from acclaimed Ghost Stories writer/ directors Dis which is about to come to York Theatre Royal.
Cork actress Eileen Walsh is starring in the world premiere of The Psychic which is about to come to York Theatre Royal.
The Psychic is a new play written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. Following the success of their Ghost Stories which has been Olivier Award nominated and been adapted into a film, this new play sees Dyson and Nyman return with a new twisted thriller.
The story centres around popular TV psychic Sheila Gold (Walsh) who loses a high-profile court case and is branded a charlatan.
It costs her not only her reputation, but a fortune in legal fees.
When a wealthy couple ask Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child, Sheila senses an opportunity. What follows makes her question everything she’s ever believed.
Eileen is best known for her roles in Magdalene Sisters, Eden, Small Things Like These, Catastrophe, and Small Town, Big Story but it is on the stage she started with one of her very first roles playing Runt in the original stage version of Disco Pigs opposite Cillian Murphy.
Joining Eileen in the cast are Frances Barber, Megan Placito, Dave Hearn, Jaz Singh Deol, Nikhita Lesler and Charlie Blanshard.
Eileen Walsh took time out of rehearsals to chat to The Irish World.
How are rehearsals going so far?
“Amazing because both Jeremy and Andy, who wrote and are directing the show, had us up on the floor by day two which is really unusual.
“Normally you spend a lot of the time around the table and then you’re nervous about your first day on the floor but Andy and Jeremy knew what they were looking for from day one.
“It’s been some of the fastest paced work I’ve done.”
What was your initial reaction first reading the script?
“I never read or watch anything that’s remotely scary.
“My heart can’t take it.
“I get scared very easily.
“I’m scared of the dark. It’s not great for being an actor but that’s grand.
“And then when I read the script, I could hear my inner voice going upper register because I was slightly scared.
“That’s when I then had a zoom with the lads.
“I loved the way they spoke about it.
“They had such a passion for all this kind of stuff that I just thought, ‘This is super exciting’.
“It might be the stuff that makes me anxious but so do fairground rides.
“It’s all to do with the same kind of thriller, adrenaline feeling so actually getting to see how the whole thing works from behind is like getting into the magic of it.
“It’s amazing.”
So if things like this scare you, was it Andy and Jeremy that convinced you?
“Yeah, the script is brilliant and the twists and turns it takes is amazing.
“It’s real ‘edge of your seat’ stuff but then when I spoke with the boys, with Andy and Jeremy, their enthusiasm for it was what made me go, ‘Okay, I’m in, two feet. Let’s go’.”
Tell us about your character Sheila..
“She is a psychic and she’s hugely successful.
“She is the type of woman who has multi-theatre tours all over Britain and has earned an awful lot of money from it.
“She’s now in a small bit of recovery because she’s just been taken to court and people are saying what she does is fake.
“She is trying to claim back some money, trying to get her good name back and then it goes sideways for her.”
It must be an interesting character to play. I’m sure a lot of people would say she is a con and a fraud..
“But then a lot of people don’t.
“It’s amazing how many people have a belief and, like anybody with faith, that’s a blind belief.
“We’re trusting in a higher power and that’s all people are doing is trusting that there is signs out there, you just have to be open to them.
“She’s earned money off the back of that.
“But people are desperately looking for signs and will believe in the good nature of people and want to connect to those that have passed.”
In her own mind, she is not a con or fraud..
“Absolutely.
“I think if we are providing comfort and faith and connection to people, then that’s her way of thinking, ‘Right, I am doing good. I am helping people in the way they want to be helped’.
“And I think it’s only after the fact that you suddenly go, ‘I don’t know, is it a little bit chancy now?’
“It all rests in that middle area and it’s at a point where Sheila’s unsure, ‘Did I cause that or was that beyond my means?’
“So she’s on risky ground herself.”
As you say she is in a difficult situation when she meets a bereaved family and sees an opportunity..
“Yeah, that’s right.
“She is looking to help them while helping herself because they’re very wealthy.
“Then the woman who I have learned from and started off my business with, comes back into contact with her as well.
“Sheila has learned the rules and then taken it to a higher stage with television fame and stage fame and money and whatever, and then her original guru comes back and is in touch with her.
“The play goes so fast and it is lightning turns and changes.
“It’s kind of fascinating.
“Once we put all the layers of music and lights and costume and it just brings that magic box into focus so it will be absolutely incredible.
“But the twists and turns are amazing and that’s what will keep people, I think, coming back, where they kind of go, ‘I think I need to see it again and see how that was done’.”
With Andy and Jeremy, you are in good hands as they are the kings of this kind of twisted thriller, aren’t they?
“Yeah, they really are and they’re so clever.
“Also their humour is very good.
“They’re very quick and they adore seeing the story from an audience point of view so they’re not kind of weighted down with any kind of long form expectations.
“They’re like, ‘Right, what do people want?’
“We want a good night out. We want to come in. We want to be shocked. We want to be surprised.
“And they are hitting those points brilliantly.
“They’re very clever storytellers.”
I can’t help but be reminded of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer. Would Sheila be something like the character Frank Hardy in that piece?
“Absolutely.
“Frank is like a snake oil salesman and is hiding a very sad past.
“It’s the want to hide and suppress and create new and run from it.
“That’s exactly what Sheila’s doing, similar to Conor McPherson’s The Weir as well.
“Then you’ve got these stories coming in that are kind of leaving you a little bit shaken so you don’t know what the truth is.
“Yeah, I think it is.
“I think we’re all in search of something that will make sense of the world for us particularly when we’re grieving and then you’ve got people who will blood suck off that and make use of that grieving, and there’s a little bit of retribution involved then as well.”
In that story Frank’s gift was also his curse, is it also like that for Sheila?
“Yeah, I think so.
“I think it’s thinking that you know everything, thinking that ‘I’ve got this down, I’ve got this nailed’ and then the greater scheme of things actually goes, ‘Or maybe not…’
“Because there’s always that tiny 1% chance of, ‘What if I’m not in control of it?’
“The world is bigger than you’re ready for sometimes.”
Out of interest in real life do you give any credence to psychics or anything like that? What is your own take on it all?
“My own take would be that I can see why people would be drawn to it.
“The boys did a reading on me and even though I knew what I was walking into, there were moments within the reading that they said things that I didn’t give them, that they couldn’t have known about my father that really left me feeling quite emotional.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, that’s so powerful’ and that’s so scary in its emotional weight and so it doesn’t matter whether you believe or not: If somebody can give you a little bit of information, that makes you feel like you’re open to questioning it.
“Originally I would have said, ‘I don’t believe’.
“But actually I can see why people do believe.”
You have recently moved back to Ireland after being in London a long time..
“A very long time.
“We lived in the UK for close to 30 years and 20 of those were in London, so we’re back now.
“We’re back in Dublin living by the sea.
“It’s all very nice.
“We’ve just moved in after taking a year to do up the house.
“My husband has become the plumber, electrician, plasterer.
“He’s done everything.
“But it’s lovely, and it’s also very nice to be back and working over here (UK) again.”
Did you always know you would go home at some stage?
“No, I loved London and I miss London but it made sense.
“Our girls were both interested in moving and my husband is Scottish so he was interested in moving out of London almost immediately so to be by the sea for him, because he’s a country boy through and through, really is lovely.
“It’s very nice to be back there.”
And of course you can work more and more in Ireland with so much filming going on. Even just recently we have seen you in Small Town, Big Story, Say Nothing and Small Things Like These all filmed there..
“Oh, there’s loads going on.
“And it doesn’t matter where we live as creatives, our work always takes us away so you might as well have a happy family.
“It’s lovely to feel home and to feel rooted but work, we’ll always be little traveling band of circus performers so I’ll go where the work is.”
You have done a lot of screen but also a lot of theatre. Isn’t it onstage that you started with things like Disco Pigs?
“Yeah, I was 17 and I did a show with Rough Magic.
“They did a show called Danti-Dan by Gina Moxley and that came to the Hampstead in London.
“Enda (Walsh) saw that and approached me with Disco Pigs.
“I was very lucky because that was after I did my first year in Trinity studying acting and then my first summer off, I went off and did Disco Pigs so I got a very lucky break at a great time.
“It was quite a seminal role and seminal for all our friendships and everything to continue with that.
“It was like being on an extended holiday.
“We did Disco Pigs for two years so it was just the craic for two years.
“You don’t know it at the time.
“It’s only experience and maturity where you go, ‘God, those scripts and those moments, that tight team, they don’t come along that often’.
“The magic of ticking every box is a very rare thing so we all kind of garnered a lot of amazing relationships from it and we’ve all continued to work together.”
You didn’t always know you wanted to act, is that right? Was it only later in your teens that you started to explore it?
“Yeah, my sister Catherine is also an actor and she went to Trinity before me and then she came back home and she was the one who kind of threw me into Saturday morning workshops going, ‘That’s where you need to be. You’re very good’.
“So it was because of her really. She kind of led the way and kind of helped form what I wanted to do.
“Being from Ireland at that stage, you didn’t know that acting was an actual career that you could choose to do.
“It was really kind of going out on a limb stuff and so when I started at 17, I kind of fell into it from there on in
“But I knew I was good at it, not in an egotistical way.
“It was like some people are good at science and some people are just good at pretending.
“I’m good at pretending.”
Speaking of Disco Pigs, what was it like to be reunited with Cillian Murphy your co- star from way back then on Small Things Like These?
“Well we have remained friends all this time so when he sent me the script of Small Things, that really made sense that it would be a gorgeous thing to do together.
“It was a beautiful experience all round.
“And Enda, who wrote Disco Pigs, did the adaptation of it so it was a lovely bringing back together of very close family actually.”
Small Things Like These saw you return to the subject of Ireland’s shameful history after starring in The Magdalene Sisters all those years ago..
“Yeah, I had heard about The Magdalene Sisters and I remember going into auditions around that time asking, ‘Thanks for seeing me for this and everything, but are you casting The Magdalene Sisters, the Peter Mullan film?’
“And then I did a day or two on a Mike Figgis film called Miss Julie that Peter Mullan was playing and Peter mentioned to me, ‘I saw you in Disco Pigs’.
“And he said, ‘I’ve got this new film that I want to do and I’d love you’.
“I remember being really hungry for that role and I eventually got in the room in Dublin in an open call and got to improvise the character I played, Crispina.
“That was a hugely special time.
“And very sad.
“Irish history is so horrendous in its treatment of women and vulnerable people so of course, it’s a story that’s worth going back and revisiting and seeing it from different sides.
“Magdalenes was inside the convent and obviously Small Things was from outside the convent so it’s like the pressure on the community as well as the pressure on the young women involved.”
Was a difference between both projects that when The Magdalene Sisters was released, I remember being it an international revelation that it happened and now we know all too well even if we have just scratched the surface in some ways?
“I think Magdalenes was definitely one of the first things to come out to kind of knock that story into the consciousness.
“I know my parents, in particular, who were quite present within the church and our local community, suffered a bit of a backlash with older people feeling like, ‘Oh, that story doesn’t need to come out’.
“So my parents were very brave and very committed to the honesty of it and really went down and faced mass and still remain very proud of both me and the film.
“There’s still so much more to find out but we have eventually turned a corner, I think, in looking to admit our faults and admit our history and really respect those women and those babies.”
The Psychic opens at York Theatre Royal on 6 May 2026, with previews from 29 April 2026, and runs until 23 May 2026.
For more information and to book, click here.