Jessie Buckley, actor

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:45My cast away this week is the actor and singer Jessie Buckley. She first came to public attention singing on a BBC talent show when she was just 17. She didn't win, but its title proved prophetic. She went from I'd do anything to being a performer who really can, widely regarded as one of the most versatile actors of her generation. In addition to her Olivier Award and a place on the Mercury Prize shortlist, she recently won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her starring role in Hamnet. Her critically acclaimed performance as Shakespeare's wife Agnes has also secured her an Oscar nomination, her second.

1:23Growing up in County Kerry, creativity was her family's first language. Her father wrote poetry and her mother was a singer and harpist. Watching her ability to move people to tears made Jessie want to get up on stage too, though she never dreamed it would take her quite this far. She says, I've had amazing moments in my life and all of them I've gone into quite innocently and ignorantly. I can't believe how lucky I've been. Jessie Buckley, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Oh, thank you so much. That was, I'm so honoured to be on this. Well, we're delighted to have you. And it's just a short list of what you've been working on.

2:01I mean, so much to talk about. But I think we should start with Hamnet. And huge congratulations on the Oscar nomination. How did you find out? Oh, I had just packed up my car to go back home up to Norfolk with my husband and my baby. And she was a bit ratty because I hadn't given her a bottle yet. and the announcement came on and I was, you know, cheering in one hand and holding a bottle in the other and then I had to do like a live interview for US News and I think the first sound that came out was her kind of howling for her bottle. Everyone's a critic. I think they thought I was howling for joy but I was like, no, she doesn't care.

2:47She just wants her bottle and the beautiful thing, there's people back home who I think my uncle sent me one clip and there was like some guy in the bar, in my family's bar going, Jesus, I wouldn't put a bet on her at all. I don't have a clue about her at all, but your best of luck. They just take you for what you are. Like they don't, you know, and I love that. I love that about it. Yeah, it's been wonderful to watch it all happening. And, you know, the film obviously is really connected with people. When you were making it, you actually chose to stay in quite a remote Shepherd's hut that put you up in a hotel.

3:22with all mod cons, but you were like, I can't do this. Why did you do that? And, you know, what did it do for you creatively to be in nature like that? Well, I grew up in nature, you know, I grew up in Killarney in County Kerry and we're surrounded by mountains and lakes. And I understand what nature can give you. You know, there is a freedom by being in nature. And I've been so lucky to travel with my work and experience so many things. but I find hotel rooms very lonely. And I was in a hotel on a roundabout. It was like a humongous hotel. Like there was 10 floors and four different restaurants and archery and swimming pools.

4:06And I was like on the 10th floor and I just couldn't be there. And I remember I found this shepherd's hut in the middle of nowhere. And I just said to production, I'm sorry, I really have to go to this shepherd's hut. and my lovely driver was driving me up like after rehearsals in the pitch black and he was like, are you sure you're going to be okay up here? And I was like, I'm going to be so fine up here and sometimes you just need simple things. Jessie, music came first in your story as we will hear today and of course you're sharing your discs with us. You are a singer, songwriter, you play the piano, the harp, the clarinet and the saxophone.

4:45Is music still a big part of your day-to-day life? I think my saxophone skills are very... Yeah, you winced when I mentioned the sax. She winced like a lady who hasn't picked up a sax in a while. Very, very low. And I can probably still play my grade eight piano pieces. But there's a lot of joy and a lot of emotion and a lot of freedom in the music that I inhabited from my parents growing up in Ireland. And I'm so grateful for that. Well, we can't wait to dive in. So I think we should just get started. Tell us about your first choice today. Jessie Buckley, what's it going to be? The Gloaming, they're called.

5:23And this song is called Soura Soura. And sour in Gaelic means summer. And when we were young, we had a caravan by the sea. And there's seven of us in our family. I'm the eldest of five. And we'd all, every summer, bottled down to this place called Ballonskelligs on the coast. And the water was always freezing. My dad would go on canoe and he'd like catch mackerel. and then he'd come back and like chop the head off the mackerel and put it into the like oven that was falling apart. And it was also an incredible place because up the coast there was this artist village called Kilreelig, which this woman, Noelle Campbell Sharp, had renovated this old famine village on the edge of the cliff.

6:06And I think it was the first time I like was experiencing artists. You know, there were like these kind of exotic creatures that would disappear into these old hots. And my mom, who's a harpist, sometimes got allowed to take one of these famine houses for a week and work on her music. And anyway, there is this hill that leads up to that famine village, this artist's retreat. And as you crest the hill, you come over into this other bay called Finians Bay, which looks out on the Skellig Rocks, which is this amazing, like monumental ornament in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where monks used to live.

6:45and we used to play this song when we used to crest over this mountain and so this just brings me right back to my childhood and the simplicity and the beauty and the like expression that was like just pouring out of the mountain and all these little huts and my mum and the fish and love. Sour, sour, buying in the morning

7:38Soura, Soura by The Gloaming So, Jessie Buckley, as you mentioned, you were born in Killarney, County Kerry, in 1989, and you're the eldest of five. Your family was apparently nicknamed the Von Trapps by your neighbours. Tell me more about that. My dad used to run a guest house and we were all part of like serving and the entertainment for the tourists that would come in and out. OK, I'm going to just stop you at entertainment for the tourists, which involves what? What did you have to do? I mean, Irish dancing, obviously, even though I was to my to my hands were I was the worst Irish dancer in the world.

8:14Because you've got to keep still up top, right? Yeah. I mean, I just was like, I've got so much in me. Let it out. And we didn't like, you know, there was no, I put shows on all that. Mom and dad would go for a walk and we'd take all the cushions off and my poor brother be like wrapped in some sheet. And until I got bored of him playing that, I then take the sheet and I'd be that character. But it was just so full of expression and money didn't matter. You know, if you were living and you were experiencing and you were curious, that was all that was counted as being rich for your soul. So that's what mattered.

8:54And tell me more about your parents then. So your mum, Marina, trained as an opera singer and was a professional harpist. What kind of person is she? How would you describe her? My mum is a pretty extraordinary woman. I'm getting emotional now. There's a confidence about her, even though she has this very delicate kind of available self. and she's recently changed her life and gone back to university and retrained as a music psychotherapist and works with neonatal babies in palliative care and people in palliative care. And my parents are no longer together and she lives in Dublin and she's writing her own story right now and at 60 years of age, I'm so proud of her.

9:45I think she's extraordinary. And that idea of emotional availability is interesting because that's a quality that actors talk about a lot. It's something they're always trying to achieve. So your mum, by the sounds of it, has always had that and you always saw that in her. What I saw in her when she sang in church was this need to tell a story through song and she'd sing like it was going to cost her life. You know, she needed this vessel to express something that she probably wasn't able to share just walking around in life because I'd see this very magical, strange kind of unspoken conversation happen between her and the congregation where like, just from telling this story through song, these old men and women and aunts and other, you know, wives would come up and they'd just have tears in their eyes and I'd be like, what's happened?

10:41That's when I thought, I want to do that. I want to have that conversation with people. Did you get to go to the theatre when you were little? Do you remember seeing any plays, your first play? Oh yeah, yeah. The first play they ever took me to was in my local town hall in the Oris Podrick and it was Jesus Christ Superstar. And I was so transported by watching this production that I genuinely thought a man had been crucified in front of my eyes at the end of the show. I was traumatised, Lauren. I was like on the floor sobbing and my mum, probably out of embarrassment, my dad had to like ask, could they bring me backstage to meet Mike Murphy, who had played Jesus.

11:27To show you that he was okay. And that was like the first kind of peek behind the curtain, you know, the magic of theatre. Like I was shaking this man who'd resurrected in front of my eyes, hands. Like I was like, oh, this is so... The bug bit you. Bit me. But also it was so real. That experience was so total. It had happened in some shape or form. Jessie, I think we should go to the music. I can't wait to hear your second disc today. What's it going to be? This is very special because this is my mum singing. Sorry. Oh, Holy Night in church. I love this piece of music so much because it really reminds me of coming home for Christmas and us being together as a family and I really really miss this moment and so if I'm on that desert island I think I'll have to play this at least hourly to make me feel like my family are around me.

13:05Oh, holy night. your mum, Jessie Buckley, Marina Cassidy singing in her local church in Killarney. So, Jessie, tell me a little bit more about your dad, Tim. He ran a guest house when he was growing up. He's now a bar manager in County Kerry, but also a poet. What type of poetry does he write? I mean, I don't even know what kind of type it is. I think it's just from the, like, epicentre of his soul, you know. He's kind of shy in many ways, my dad, but wild and feral and he'd be the kind of man who'd like we'd go surfing or boogie boarding in that place in Finions Bay that I was talking about and you know if there was a strong current he'd be like well swim harder like you have to learn the most extraordinary dad would you know well if it was 5am and there was a swimming lesson he'd be up and he'd drive me you know half an hour to the next town to be part of a swim team and as like an amazing cook.

14:08Like he was the cook, always was, we were laughing on our family group chat the other day because he would always find exotic things like star fruit and bring it into the guest house and we'd be just completely beguiled by the star fruit or spices. You know, he was just always kind of like a real artist, a real, true creative. Intrinsically creative, yeah. In his heart, you know. and his poetry it's his biggest expression and anytime we see each other sometimes you don't have the space to say the things that you want to say to each other but after we have parted he'll often send a poem which contains everything that was unsaid or what lives between us and I guess dad's words I think probably prefaced what I experienced when I met Shakespeare because words, those words had like bottom, where they were bottomless.

15:08And what about you? Do you remember the first time you got on stage and performed? I remember I did a production in my local amateur dramatics. I can't remember what it was, but I remember my appendix nearly burst on stage and I was like, I am not leaving. I'm not leaving until I finish this show and went home and then ended up going to hospital and getting my appendix out. It was like drinking water. You know, I just think the more I did it, the more I realised this is essential to me. Jessie, I think we should have some more music now. This is your third track today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you to your desert island?

15:46Oh, I mean, I feel like Nina Simone is elemental, uncompromising, fierce, emotional. And this piece, it's her singing Who Knows Where the Time Goes by Sandy Denny. And I did a film called Wild Rose. And after I did the film, I didn't want to really do normal publicity. So I kept the band going from the film and we went on a little tour. You played a country singer, a young single mom who's also a Glaswegian country singer. Ex-convict. She's many layers. It's a great film. Mother who... And actually, one of the places we did a gig was in Mount Joy Prison in Dublin. And I've had a long connection with this charity called the Matt Talbot in Dublin, who helps people with addiction and also people coming out of the judicial system to reintegrate them into society.

16:40And I did a gig for male lifers in this church in Mount Joy Prison. And I remember singing this song and all these faces like looking up. and it was, you know, just a moment of humanity where whatever we've done in our life, you know, we all have stories and it's a kind of great equaliser that you're never alone, you know. And I just hold this song very, very dearly and I love this version. Across the morning sky All the birds are leaving

17:28How can they know Then it's time to know

17:43Nina Simone with Who Knows Where The Time Goes. So, Jessie Buckley, when you were 11, you went off to board at Convent School in Tipperary. What do you remember about that? That's young to leave home, especially such a loving home that you obviously adored. Firstly, it was an incredible music school. And I was kind of there for that because there is opportunity to be part of orchestras and piano and there was brilliant teachers there. But there is also something about being there that I think if I hadn't gone, I probably wouldn't have had the confidence and independence to move to London when I was 17, you know.

18:24And I have very happy memories of the nuns. They were incredible, like interesting people, really supportive. of, I had an incredible teacher there called Mary Butler, who really, really encouraged me in doing theatre. And we used to do these amazing shows. Once you got to third year, you could do, be part of the shows. Oh, what kind of parts were you playing? Well, I played all the male parts. I lived for it. And then there was a period of time where I really wasn't very well and I got very depressed and just got very lost in myself and it kind of showed itself in many ways. I, you know, wasn't kind to my body.

19:11I got very anxious. I wasn't able to be in school. I was volcanic as a child and as a teenager. I had so much feeling in me. I didn't know what to do with it. And I think also my education was just a slice of you. If we can have just a slice of you, that'll be enough. And don't be too much, you know. and I just felt on fire. I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean be small? Like these are not small feelings I've got going on. I found learning in school, I just couldn't learn linearly, you know. And I remember feeling so protective of singing and of my music and my creativity and I'd wake up at 5am in the morning and I'd like steal the key to the music room and go into the music room and I wanted to just be on my own let it all out you said that you know when you were depressed you you weren't kind to yourself you weren't kind to your body I mean if you are able to talk about it what were you going through and how did you get better did you did you have to go home to heal and recover um well I had an eating disorder and it took time and it took a lot of help and also it was depression so I would like I mean I just probably I didn't I didn't know how to be alive the way I wanted to be and it was it was difficult and but I do not for a second regret it and I think I've been able to transform it and and and recognize our vulnerabilities as humans in the world you know you can't walk through life not being affected, but you can transform that into something that allows you to be more human and alive in the way that you want to be.

21:08And I'm very grateful for everybody who helped me along the way with that and for the people who held space for that. So many people, like the nuns were incredible. My family were incredible. I mean, I think it's very difficult for a family to go through that. You know, I think it's you never want to see your daughter in that place. Therapists. I've been in therapy since I was 17. I still go every week and moving to London. You know, when I moved to London, I still wasn't out of the woods. And I think there was moments where I was like, if I don't get better here, this music, this being part of theatre, I'm not going to be able to do this anymore.

21:51and I probably won't survive. And that was like the thing that turned it in my head was like, I don't want to sacrifice that. This is bigger than that. And it won. We'll find out the next steps that you took in a moment, Jessie, but I think we should have some more music. This is your fourth choice today. Who's next and why? Oh, with utter pride and with absolute gratitude to this woman. this Sinead O 'Connor and she's so interesting around all of this because when I was young growing up like I really remember the rhetoric being told of her to be very careful of her you know she's dangerous and then a few years ago I did a production of Cabaret and I just got curious about her and I was like just I just needed her and I just listened to everything I read her books I watched the incredible Catherine Ferguson documentary.

22:51And then like clear as day, I could just see the revolutionary that she was, who always acted from her heart to protect the most vulnerable parts of what it is to be alive. And I really do believe that the legacy that she has left is immortal. And I had the real privilege of singing this song, Troy, on Culture Night on RTE. And it was a tribute to Sinead O 'Connor after she passed away and I've never felt more like determined to sing it for Sinead. I need this song and this island to like howl at the moon and say thank you. I remember it Dublin in a rainstorm Sitting in the long grass in summer Keeping warm I'll remember it Every restless night We were so young then We thought that everything we could possibly do was right Troy, Sinead O 'Connor.

24:06Jessie Buckley, by the time you were 17, you'd left Ireland to audition at the Guildford School of Acting. How did it go? Oh, terribly. So they didn't let me in the door. They were like, no, not ready. And it was a great lesson. You have to kind of roll with the punches. And sometimes you're just not ready, really, for that moment. So that door closed, but another one opened pretty swiftly afterwards, didn't it? What happened next? Yeah, well, that same weekend that I was over to audition to get into Guildford, there was an open audition for a BBC reality show called I Do Anything with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron McIntosh and Barry Humphreys and John Barham and Denise Van Outen.

24:51And I remember I joined the queue outside the county town hall on the South Bank. So they were looking for a Nancy to star in the West End production of Oliver. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and I ended up becoming second. So you got in line. I mean, have you watched any of it back? Not for a while. I love that little girl, though. Yeah. I love her. I felt very affectionate because I did go and watch it back before this. And I mean, you were such a baby. I was so little and it meant so much. And, you know, I was so raw and you're doing it so publicly as well. That was the word, though, isn't it?

25:32Because that was the thing I felt watching it was like, you know, you can feel you wanting it and the critiques, which were harsh and the times were different. People would probably wouldn't talk to such a young girl in that way now on TV. kind of like, oh, you know, we've got to get you looking womanly. And, you know, you were there with six-inch heels on saying that you were going to start to learn to walk like a lady. I know. All of that, you know, that is... I don't like that part of it. And I think, like, that was also a young woman who's trying to discover her body and herself, like we all do, you know, as growing up.

26:10And I wish that hadn't happened. and I think I was putting a brave face on because really what I wanted to do was sing and really I wanted to act and I wanted to be part of this industry and all of a sudden you had to be a certain kind of person and I just wasn't. You know, I never will be. That's just not me. And inside I'm on fire and raw and I'm like, shit, how do you do that? like bringing in the kind of water cooler onto myself but um i'm so proud of that girl i think she did great and i don't regret any of it i i had it was what brought me to london and i think for the people who maybe didn't have the sensitivity or or to recognize what was bigger than objectifying that young girl.

27:09Maybe you can now, and I hope that doesn't ever happen to another young girl at that age. And I think women are beautiful, all shapes and sizes, and that's what I love about what I do. You know, the people that have continued to blow my mind have been absolutely, totally themselves and have never conformed to the idea of what it is to be successful or to be a woman in the world. But to be fair, Andrew Lloyd Webber says at the end, you know, that you are, you have everything you need. And that you shouldn't be interfered with by, you know, the opinions of people like him. I cannot thank Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cameron McIntosh or Barry Humphries enough.

27:50You know, I think they cut through that crap and got to the essence of what it is that I was trying to say. And they've been consistently supportive through my life. I mean, Cameron McIntosh, after I came out of that show, he was the one who introduced me to Shakespeare. He was very kindly offered to send me to Radha to do a four week Shakespeare course, which really changed my life. That was a turning point. That was a ginormous turning point. That was really the moment I recognised myself as an actress. Jessie Buckley, let's have some more music. Number five, what's next? Oh, well, I would watch Judi Dench sing Send in the Clowns on repeat for hours and hours.

28:35And it was like at a BBC proms concert and she was just sitting on a stool. There's a spotlight and it's like imperfect. It's human. and when I first met my agent Lindy King who I've been with since I was 17 and she'd seen me on I Do Anything and she was like a proper agent. I remember I'd come from my meeting to see her. I'd come from my caravan in South West Kerry and Ballonskelligs and at the time everyone wore fake tan in Ireland so I like lathered myself. I don't know you had a fake tan face. Oh, I looked nuclear. I was like lathered in this fake tan. I had white hoop earrings on, polka dot like red and white, like Betty Boop dress, a white cardigan that was turning more yellow as the journey went on from the caravan to London and cork heels, little white, like cork.

29:33To finish the look. Perfect. Perfect. And I went into her office and she'd seen me on the show. She was like, I really don't do musicals. if it's musicals you want to do I don't know if I'm your person and there's other people I could introduce you to and I remember she had this little mushroom stool in her office at the time and I looked up at her and I said I want to be Judi Dench and she was like okay then and that was it so thank you Judi Isn't it rich?

30:07Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground You in me dare Send in the clowns

30:30Send in the clowns from Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music performed by Dame Judi Dench with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abel. Jessie Buckley, we were talking about your reality TV adventure, I'd Do Anything. I mean, you came second, but you did get offered the part of the understudy and you turned it down, interestingly. I did. Tell me about that. Why? Where did you get the gumption to do that? Absolute gumption, the audacity. I don't know where I got it. I just kind of felt in my bones, no, I don't think this is for me. and I really didn't know how the business worked.

31:08And so I thought you go tell them yourself. And at the time... So your agent would traditionally ring. Usually that would be how it would work. And I found out where Cameron McIntosh, you know, where his offices were. And I was living in Hammersmith at the time in like a flat share. So I walked from Hammersmith to Fitzrovia and like knocked on the door and said, is Cameron in here? I remember he was probably like, why is this girl in my office? And no, really sweetly. And I was innocently, I was like, thank you so much, but I won't be taking the part of Nancy understudy. I've got other things I think I should probably do.