Beloved of everyone from Meryl Streep to Steven Spielberg – the latter is apparently poaching Eve Hewson, AKA Becka, for his upcoming UFO movie – Bad Sisters is testament to how many talented actors, writers, directors, producers and other crew this tiny island of ours keeps conveyor-belting out.

It’s also a brilliant advert for Dublin Tourism with the Forty Foot, the Bull Wall, the Poolbeg Chimneys and loads more Northside landmarks now almost as ubiquitous as the Eiffel Tower and the Giza Pyramids.

Two years after the odious John Paul met his grisly demise – we didn’t know Grace had it in her! – the Garvey girls are back in Season 2 of Bad Sisters, which can be seen every Wednesday on Apple TV+ – yep, they’re doing the old fashioned episode a week thing – and climaxes in the mother of all Christmas Day cliffhangers.

“You’ll be on the edge of your sofa – and will probably fall off it because there are so many shocks!” promises Eva Birthistle who plays Ursula in the multiple IFTA and BAFTA award-winning show. “Sharon’s scripts are always brilliant but, my god, she’s outdone herself on this new series.”

Talking as we were a moment ago about cliffs, Ursula and her siblings can be found dangling off a literal one in the series opener.

“That was outrageous,” Eva laughs. “We were on wires hanging from the side of a cliff. It was a big effort to get us into these harnesses and locked on. There were all these health and safety briefings beforehand and then, when we walked on set, the heavens opened and we had the heaviest rain ever.

“It wasn’t done in a studio against a greenscreen – it was an actual cliff in Co. Wicklow at three o’clock in the morning. Thankfully, there was a trailer with a bed that we were able to nap in together between scenes. Otherwise there’d have been ‘Actors Die Of Exposure’ stories in all the papers!”

Being strapped to a rockface aside, how is Ursula as we catch up with her again at the start of Bad Sisters Season 2?

“Not great,” Eva admits. “The two years have taken quite a toll on her but she’s not verbalising that. In Ursula fashion, she’s trying to patch things up and keep all the plates spinning at work. She’s broken up with Donal, so there’s a major life change in that respect. She’s not really coping and having to self-medicate to get through. It doesn’t take much for it all to unravel.”

Bad Sisters Season 2

Grace, on the other hand, is happy out having got remarried to Ian who’s as lovely as John Paul was loathsome.

“You’re thinking, ‘This marital bliss can’t last’ – and it doesn’t!” Eva laughs.

Not content with already having five formidable female leads, Horgan has introduced another – Roger Muldoon’s force of nature sister, Angelica – played by Fiona Shaw who looks suspiciously like Aunt Petunia from Harry Potter.

“We were blown away when we heard Fiona was joining the cast”, Eva resumes. “She makes Angelica such a gorgeous, tasty character that you just want more and more of it.

“Fiona is massively playful and gets so much enjoyment out of it, which is wonderful to watch. There was a scene on the beach where she’s letting rip and it was so impressive that we all forgot to respond and say our lines!”

Asked whether she’s a Harry Potter fan, Eva shoots back, “I’ve two young kids, so yes! Normally they’re totally disinterested in what I do, but this time it was, ‘Mum, wow!’”

As much as she loves this acting malarkey, Eva and three of her Bad Sisters castmates looked a picture of abject misery when they were snapped trying – and failing – to get warm after a Season 1 swim at the Forty Foot.

“I love Sandycove but was in genuine pain from the cold,” she winces. “I really didn’t like it at the time but now, two years on, I’m a convert and have a cold plunge pool – we’re talking around 4.5° – in my garden in London. Most mornings I get in and shock myself into reality. I only wished I’d felt that way when we were filming at the Forty Foot!”

There was one Garvey girl, though, who couldn’t wait to break the ice.

“While the rest of us were fannying about going, ‘I don’t want to get wet’, Eve (Hewson) jumped straight in off the rocks. But then again she’s from down the road in Killiney and is used to it!”

Bad Sisters isn’t the first time that Eva has rubbed shoulder pads with Sharon Horgan.

“I read for Catastrophe once hoping to get in it and shot a pilot for a show, The Circuit, that Sharon had written,” she says. “We really thought it’d be picked up because it’s bloody hilarious, but it wasn’t which was one of the most disappointing things that has happened to me in my acting career.

“So, it’s been third time lucky with Bad Sisters, which I immediately said ‘Yes!’ to even though there was initially nothing to read. She was still writing the first episode when she approached me, but you’d be a bit of a fool to turn down Sharon, I think.”

Eva Birthistle. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Despite previously starring alongside the A-List likes of Saoirse Ronan, Cillian Murphy, Jim Broadbent, Ruth Negga, Sarah Lancashire, Andrew Scott and Mia Farrow, Eva admits to being in awe of Ms. Horgan.

“Meeting her, I was totally intimidated by how utterly brilliant she is,” she confides. “Sharon’s so talented and strong and impressive that I thought, ‘How does she do all those things and be a mother – and a ride!?’ It’s only after we’d spent some time together that I realised she’s also a complete sweetheart who you can sit and have great chats with. She’s really affectionate and very, very funny.

“What’s also amazing about Sharon is how on Bad Sisters she moves so seamlessly between being an actor, the writer, the producer and the showrunner. She does it with such grace, never loses her cool and loves people pitching in with ideas. She’s just massively impressive.”

With so many killer lines it must be hard keeping a straight face whilst filming. Who’s the worst Bad Sisters corpser?

“Sharon is actually,” Eva reveals. “Other people being funny cracks her up. Especially the scenes where we’re all sat around the table in her house. They’re long days, you’re tired and a bit demented and the corpsing gets ridiculous. Talk about wasted takes!”

In addition to Bad Sisters, Eva has also written and directed Kathleen Is Here, the follow up to 2020’s Kathleen Was Here short, which continues the story of the titular teenager who’s put into foster care after her mother dies.

Kathleen is played with supreme nuance by Hazel Doupe, who’s also currently to be seem in Disney+’s Troubles-era drama Say Nothing, with fellow Dublin thesps Clare Dunne and Peter Coonan co-starring.

“Following the London and Galway premieres, we got to show Kathleen Is Here to a Dublin audience last night which felt particularly special because we filmed in Balbriggan and most of the cast and crew are from here, as is the production company, Treasure Entertainment,” Eva enthuses. “It was in the Lighthouse, which is a cinema I’ve always loved and wanted to do something special in.”

Asked when Kathleen first came into her head, Eva says, “About twelve years ago, although the story has morphed a lot since. After various drafts, it went into proper production with Screen Ireland in 2018. Kathleen is lots of people, influences, stories and experiences all rolled up into one. I was looking at relationships between mother and daughter and that need for connection and grief as well.

“During the writing experience, I discovered a 15-year-old American girl on YouTube who was in foster care and putting out these video diaries. I was very struck by how open and candid she was. At around the same time the Kardashians were becoming incredibly big – I remember being on a bus and seeing a massive poster of them – and I started to think about their and Kathleen’s worlds crossing over. What’s it like for someone in care – or coming out of care – to be confronted by these people portraying their ‘perfect lives’ on social media? I also met up with this wonderful group in Derry, Heal, who offer a safe holistic space for young adults who, like Kathleen, are having a challenging time coming out of the foster care system. Talking to them is what really brought the story together.”

Would Eva like to be part of Kathleen’s generation or is she glad she didn’t have to contend with Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram et al growing up?

“It wasn’t, thank god, part of my teenage years, but I’m scared on behalf of my daughter who’s seven and my son who’s nearly eleven,” she admits. “In London at the moment, there’s a smartphone-free schools movement that’s becoming really popular with communities. There’s been full recognition of the dangers of social media and how they can affect young people, so let’s now deal with them.”

Amen to that! Eva has been fortunate enough during her almost thirty year career – like many an Irish thesp she made her professional acting debut in Glenroe – to work with such legendary directors as Ken Loach and Peter Greenaway. I imagine that you can’t be in their orbit and not take something from it?

“You absolutely do,” she nods. “You picked two directors with completely different ways of working but both fascinating. With Ken, I’ll never forget the family feeling he created on set when we did Ae Fond Kiss in 2004. It was one of total respect, kindness, love and people getting on. Everybody in the cast and crew was listened to.

“The way Ken makes films,” Eva continues, “is that you’re only given bits of the script as you go along. The crew knows what’s going to happen to your character, you don’t. He wants the spontaneity and surprise that you get in everyday life, but that only works if you trust somebody and I trusted him totally.

“A few years later I did Nightwatching with Peter Greenaway, which was huge amounts of fun and hard work. He’s an artist with a vision that’s very prescriptive and all about the detail. Different again – but also brilliant to work with – is the Bad Sisters director, Dearbhla Walsh, who no matter what the Irish weather threw at us was always so positive and encouraging.”

Eva got to star alongside the aforementioned Cillian Murphy and Andrew Scott on the 2018 independent Irish film, The Delinquent Season. Could she tell prior to their respective conquerings of Hollywood that they were destined for superstardom?

Eva Birthistle with Cillian Murphy in The Delinquent Season

“Cillian and Andrew are particularly superb and unique actors who have that certain something which makes them compelling to watch,” she ventures. “In saying that, I know lots of other incredible actors who haven’t had that big break or bit of good luck. Being such an incredibly competitive business, it’s really hard to get to that level of success.

“Success, of course, being subjective. There are lots of supremely talented actors who aren’t household names doing work they love whom I’d regard as being extremely successful.”

Cillian Murphy was back in Dublin himself this month for the premiere of Small Things Like These, the latest Claire Keegan novel to get a cinematic makeover. Eva is a big fan of her fellow Wicklow native.

“I can understand people desperately wanting to adapt Claire because her writing is so good. I haven’t seen Small Things Like These yet, but I love An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl. I think it’s shifted the landscape in terms of it being half in Irish and getting an Oscar nomination. This country has a history of producing great films but this has elevated us even further.

“Screen Ireland deserves a lot of praise for its various initiatives and the grants it gives out,” Eva continues. “Part of the funding I got for Kathleen Is Here was from them. They’ve encouraged more female writers and directors to submit their work, which is definitely making a difference. What was once considered parochial is now reaching an international audience – and rightly so!”

• New episodes of Bad Sisters can be seen every Wednesday on Apple TV+.