She shot to fame as the frank and feisty Erin in one of TV’s most-beloved shows. Now Saoirse-Monica Jackson is building on the global success of Derry Girls with a leading role in a new series on Netflix. The Decameron offers a very different but no less lively sense of dramedy.
Set during the height of the Black Plague in 14th-century Florence, the series centres on a group of nobles and their servants, invited to sit out the pestilence with a wine-drenched holiday in a lavish Italian villa. But what promises to be a fun romp in the hills of Tuscany descends into a scramble for survival. The series is inspired by the 14th short-story collection of the same name.
“I think it’s a really special show - I feel like it exists in its own tone. The writer Kathleen Jordan and the entire team have made such an ambitious venture into genre,” says Jackson of the series, in which she plays Misia, handmaiden to Zosia Mamet’s demanding Pampinea. “She’s a really fun, very multi-dimensional character - it’s like she nearly Benjamin Buttons backwards through the show.
She starts like a jaded and put-upon, massively oppressed woman. It’s a nice venture of freedom that we go on with her. “She is obviously lower class, given that she’s a handmaiden, and I just loved the depiction of that character within the script.
Kathleen Jordan had said to me that quite often on television, we see working-class people, or people that are in roles of servitude, being portrayed as this sort of snarky servant in the background, rolling their eyes at the idiotic posher people. “That’s so satisfying and liberating sometimes to watch as an audience. It’s often not a true depiction, even today, of how class systems work.
People that are massively oppressed believe a lot of their self worth and self esteem, and what they view as their own self power, is wrapped up within these other people. So that for me was extremely interesting.” Jackson, who is from Derry, brings her own accent to the series - part of a notable, growing trend among Irish actors in international projects.
In recent months, we’ve seen Jessie Buckley employ her Killarney accent to hilarious effect in Wicked Little Letters, Liam Cunningham using his Dublin accent in 3 Body Problem, and Mairéad Tyers going full Cork in the new series of Extraordinary. “Irish actors always seem to be really good at doing accents because I think when you start out in this industry, you know you need to block that down,” says Jackson. “Certainly when I started off, I didn’t really expect to work in an Irish accent.
Definitely not a Derry accent because it’s so specific, and it’s such a strong accent. “But I really feel like Derry Girls probably had a big part to play in that. It’s not the southern Irish accent that the Americans and the English are so used to hearing, it’s a very specific North-accent dialect.
“It’s just been amazing to see the success of all these Irish films and actors at the moment,” she adds. “It’s great and it makes a lot of sense - Irish people are fantastic storytellers. I think I always get asked to do my own accent when it’s comedy because I think a lot of the time people think it’s funnier in an Irish accent, which I can sort of get.
We’re great at landing a joke!” The Decameron was shot at Rome’s legendary Cinecitta Studios - home to thousands of famous projects including Ben-Hur, Roman Holiday and Gangs of New York - and the historic nearby town of Viterbo. “It’s certainly enriching to have the architecture of the time,” says Jackson. “But I really feel like what feeds into it is the talent and the craftsmanship of the Italians.
Artistry like that - walking onto these amazing sets and they’re of such a large scale and they’re all hand painted.” Before getting a part in the show that changed everything, Jackson was making a living juggling part-time jobs with smaller TV roles and theatre work. She remembers many people who advised her along the way - including British actress Sian Thomas, who she starred with in a 2017 production of The Ferryman.
“She was honestly so kind to me and so patient. She was a fascinating woman - she’s got such a fantastic personality. And she just gave me some amazing advice early on.
She really taught me, when you’re ever lost with a character or you ever feel misplaced in a job, remember the two most important things. The first most important thing is the writer - none of that can happen without the writer. And then second to that is the actor, and always ask 'why?'” she says, of working on a stage or screen production.
“That was such great advice to get at such a young age, and to actually see someone action on that, and how do you navigate those big scary questions, because sometimes it can be scary to ask: ‘why am I doing this?’” Derry Girls, of course, changed her life, and she is proud to have been part of the comedy from Lisa McGee, set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. As someone who grew up in Derry (her family divided their time between the city and the Co Donegal coastline) what does she feel is the most important impact of the series? “I feel like what’s so beautiful about Derry Girls is that we left it as we were teenagers. There’s something so infinite about that possibility of who all these young people are going to become.
There’s such hope as well in that last series where we left off politically from the political landscape. “But I think the biggest thing that amazed me and was quite profound was, even though we were depicting these Catholic schoolgirls, it really felt like we were everybody’s girls and Derry Girls was everybody’s show, and it represented both sides of the fence. I think that was really remarkable.
“I think also, that leaves a legacy in the land of (TV) commissioning, she says, recalling a point made by Paul Mallon, who played Dennis in the series. “He said when you think about it, from a commercial point of view, if you were to go into a commissioning office, there are no what they would have thought less-profitable words than the words ‘Derry’ and ‘girls’ put together. “So I think the legacy is giving unrepresented regional places a voice and letting them be done authentically.
I remember Lisa spoke a lot about the fact that she was able to make the show that she set out to make. Sometimes, you don’t get that creative agency. And I think that Derry Girls is proof that if you let somebody with an original version, follow it the whole way through, it will land.
It will be authentic and it will be accessible to people and they will love it.”.
