My Sailor, My Love, the Klaus Härö movie that was filmed on Achill Island, Currane and neighbouring parts of Mayo, was featured on RTÉ Radio 1’s Arena programme on 2nd March. The film’s two main actors, James Cosmo and Bríd Brennan, spoke at length about the movie and filming in Achill.
Bríd recalled how she stayed in Achill Sound 40 years ago while filming the RTÉ/BBC ‘The Ballroom of Romance’ in nearby Ballycroy. She said, “on the last night, when the bus was coming to bring us to the station the next day, I genuinely thought ‘I’m not getting on that bus. I’m staying here. I’ll find something to do, I’ll get a job in a shop, but I’m going to stay here’. I always wanted to go back, so I was absolutely thrilled when Klaus said he was going to film in Achill.” She continues, “I noticed one of the tourist boards on the beach in Keel said about Paul Henry, who lived there for twelve years, that he had arrived with a return ticket and when he got there for the first time he tore up the return ticket. And I thought, well its a thing obviously, you get to Achill and you think, ‘I’m not leaving here’.”
It was James Cosmo’s first time visiting Achill and he described it as ‘extraordinary’, and ‘so peaceful’. He said that after two days he could “feel everything in myself slowing down and becoming more considered”. He went on to praise the ‘extraordinary’ people of Achill too, recalling a scene towards the end of the filming of a big dance and “all these wonderful faces of our friends that are in the movie, it was a delight”. Many of the extras in the movie also worked on the Martin McDonagh film ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, which co-incidentally was filmed on Achill at the same time as ‘My Sailor, My Love’. Cosmo reveals that Brendan (Gleeson), one of the stars of The Banshees, called round for a cup of tea with him!
The segment on Achill starts at 11.50 mins, and the movie My Sailor, My Love goes on general release in Ireland on Friday 10th March.
