Cillian Murphy: Ireland in the ’80s was ‘like the f–king dark ages compared to now’

Cillian Murphy is currently promoting Tim Mielants’s Small Things Like These. Cillian produced it, and he asked Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity to step in as producers as well (they agreed). The film is adapted from a book of the same name, a fictional story based on the real horrors of Ireland in the 1980s – the Magdalene Laundries and the “fallen women,” the pregnant girls and women who were kidnapped and abused by the Catholic Church. Cillian recently spoke to the Irish Times and it got very personal about how horrible Ireland was forty years ago:

Cillian on the horrors of Ireland in the 1980s: “Let’s put it into perspective. It’s 1984 going into 1985. In 1984 you had the Kerry babies. In 1985 you had the moving statues. No abortion. No divorce. I think you were just able to get condoms, maybe by prescription. But it’s like the f**king dark ages compared to now. The film deliberately is trying to blur the lines. When you look at it, it could be the 1950s in many ways….you hear Come on Eileen and you think, ‘We’re in the 1980s.’ But a lot had remained the same since the 1950s. I have talked to my parents about it. We were young, obviously. I was 11 or something. We were kids, but it was a totally different time. I think when people call this a historical drama it seems bizarre. But it really does feel like another country.”

How women were viewed back then: “My mum told me this amazing expression. She said that, when she was growing up, there was this expression, ‘Lipstick on the lips, dust on the shelf.’” Good Lord. Meaning, presumably, that the sort of woman who would wear make-up wouldn’t clean the house? “So think about that. If that was something people would say, that shows you how women were viewed. That sort of stuff, it’s just mind-blowing.”

Why Cillian moved his family back to Ireland after living in London for years: “People ask me that question a lot, and I’m sure it’s the same for you. We came back for reasons that were about the kids and being near their grandparents. About having a quieter life. We weren’t motivated by politics or what’s happening socially in Ireland. We left pre-Brexit, actually. It was good timing. It worked out. It feels like an Irish story. You move away and you learn about yourself. You find yourself in London or New York. You do what you want to do and then you come home. It seems to be just a very common Irish narrative.” But it wasn’t always that common. “Oh, yeah. In the world of this movie all the young people are leaving, and they ain’t coming back.”

[From The Irish Times]

Some of what Murphy speaks about is incredibly recent – abortion wasn’t legalized in Ireland until 2018. Divorce wasn’t allowed/legalized until 1995. It was 1985 before regular people could buy condoms without a prescription. I had never heard of the Kerry Babies, but I looked it up and it’s a horrific story. All of it has happened within Cillian’s lifetime and he’s not that old.

Anyway, this interview got a lot of attention when the Irish Pro Life Campaign made a big statement slamming Cillian for… supporting abortion and reproductive choice. It’s just as crazy as the anti-choice sh-t we get here in America – you would think that the Irish anti-choice campaigns would actually sit back and say “you know what, given the Church’s catastrophic history in Ireland, we should just shut our mouths.”

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.