Paul Reid Soldiers on.

Friday, January 22nd, 2016 at 6:11 pm | Alumni Interviews, News & Events

Paul Reid graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting Full-time Professional Actor Training Programme in 2004.  Since then he’s been busy on stage and screen and is currently appearing in RTE’s Rebellion as a soldier returned from Gallipoli, with his heart set on marrying his beloved, played by fellow GSA graduate Charlie Murphy.  Paul is also currently to be found on the Abbey stage in You Never Can Tell, which runs until the 6th of February.

Has starring in Rebellion made you more interested in the history surrounding the events of the Easter Rising in 1916?

I love history, but I wasn’t clued in on some facts surrounding the British side of things. Obviously we’re all brought up with the stories of the Irish heroes, so I didn’t know anything about that end. I just knew the British as the bad guys. So I did learn a lot about the Irish fighting in the British army in the various wars, in Gallipoli and Turkey and coming back to be made to fight against your fellow country men, which was very difficult. Now some didn’t have a problem with it, some did. But like anything it’s not all clear cut.

You’re also appearing in an alternative take on the rebellion later this year – a TG4 series called Wrecking the Rising?

I’ve a blink and you miss it role in that, but it’s going to be great craic. It’s so funny, one of the best scripts I’ve read in a long time in terms of craic. It turns everything on it’s head – a story about three reenactors who travel back in time to 1916 and risk messing the whole thing up.  I play an Australian punk.  I walked on set that morning expecting to play an American tourist and they spiked my hair, gave me tattoos and said “oh yeah, and you’re Australian”.

So a big change from the soldier’s uniform in Rebellion – that looks fairly uncomfortable.

I actually got very used to it, but the most uncomfortable thing was that I actually had to wear a scar on the left hand side of my neck which isn’t very noticeable on screen. It was meant to be from coming back from Gallipoli. There’s a lot that wouldn’t have made the final cut, but my character was meant to have been very scarred – both physically and mentally – so I had to go around with this scar on my neck the whole time which was uncomfortable.

Rebellion has approximately 600,000 viewers per episode.  Do you find you’re being recognised a lot more frequently in the street?

Well I still have the ‘tache, so that’s the only thing I get recognised for. People look at you and go “why does he have a ‘tache? Oh, he must be an actor – oh yeah he must be on that show.” I should have grown it years ago – every job I go for now they’re like “I love the ‘tache.” Yeah so, there are a lot of viewers, but I would have been recognised more when I was in Raw.  I think it’s because Raw was so modern that people were able to relate to it a lot more, so they were more likely to come up to me and go “Hey you’re that man from the restaurant up the road that doesn’t really exist…you working tonight?” A lot of the time they’d be joking, but sometimes they weren’t…which was scary.

You’ve been in You Never Can Tell in the Abbey since the beginning of December, how are you coping with the long run?

George Bernard Shaw is notoriously hard to read let alone act, so it’s been challenging. That’s why I took it – because it’s a major challenge. It’s tough, it’s a long old run but we were lucky enough to have a Christmas break of five days. So we’ve two weeks left, I can’t believe it’s nearly over because I’ve pretty much lived in the Abbey. The energy of this particular show and the style and the sheer amount of lines has been tough, but you go out on stage every night and there’s a brand new audience who have never seen it before, so that keeps it fresh.

The Gaiety School turns 30 this year – having already reached that milestone, what advice from experience would you give your Alma Mater as it enters it’s thirties?

Well – and I often think back to this moment –  the day I turned 30, I woke up buckled from a big party the night before and I was heading off to London to do a show in the Donmar.  I woke up that morning and literally felt the weight of the world go off my shoulders. I just thought; I’ve made it this far, I have friends, I’m good to people and I’m lucky to be in the position that I’m in. Albeit at that moment it was the foetal position.