You might not know the name but you’ll definitely recognise the face.

Having graduated from the National Theatre School of Ireland with flying colours, Toni O’Rourke has gone on to appear in such lauded productions as What Richard Did, Noble, Cardboard Gangsters, Calm With Horses and God’s Creatures, which means she’s beans to spill on both Barry Keoghan and Paul Mescal.

Supporting actor duties well and truly completed, O’Rourke has bagged her first lead role alongside Colin Morgan in new RTÉ thriller, The Boy That Never Was.

It follows a thirty-something couple as they try to cope with the loss of their young son who’s killed – or is he? – when the apartment building they’re staying in collapses during an earthquake.

The opening scenes and flashbacks were shot in the Moroccan cities of Essaourira and Casablanca mere days after a real ‘quake had killed 3,000 people in the Marrakesh-Safi region.

“A lot of the local crew had been personally effected, so as actors we felt a duty of care towards them,” Toni recalls. “Every time we wrapped a scene – especially the earthquake ones which are incredibly realistic – we’d check up on them.”

O’Rourke admits to having her mind blown by Casablanca’s medinas.

“That first seven or eight week leg in Morocco was incredible,” she enthuses. “I felt really privileged to have a culture shock because the world has become so homogenised. The call to prayer in the morning, the smell of the spices, Arabic being loudly spoken… it was sensory overload.”

The Boy That Never Was

Toni describes her character Robin as “tenacious, loyal, intelligent and incredibly creative. In addition to her own grief and anger, she’s watching her husband unravel and wondering whether their marriage will survive.”

The chemistry between O’Rourke and her screen husband Colin Morgan, who you might recall from Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast movie, is palpable.

“That’s good to hear because Colin had been working up to the wire on another project, and we only met two days before our shoot started,” she says. “You do worry in those situations about there being chemistry but we clicked straight away. This is my first time in a lead role – I’ve done a lot of film and TV is much faster – and Colin made it easy for me.

“There was such a passion for the project throughout the cast and crew, which really comes across in the finished show.”

Indeed it does. The Boy That Never Was also features a delicious turn from Simon Callow.

“Delicious is the word!” Toni nods. “I can’t believe I’ve gained Simon Callow in my life. I’ll do that man an injustice by trying to describe him. He’s such a wordsmith and his lexicon is just something I want to drink in. Whether acting, writing or directing, he strives for perfection and achieves it every time. I’m planning, with Simon’s permission, to frame his emails and put them around my bathroom because they’re masterpieces. He brought stray dogs to set and is just magnificent!”

The Boy That Never Was

As for Toni, it’s a bravura performance from the Dubliner who grew up in a film-obsessed household where they’d watch something together as a family and then critique it.

“I absolutely adored Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge,” she enthuses. “I watched this fever dream of a film again and again and again. It was so bright and colourful; fantastical but in the moment real. It was another universe yet so rooted in authenticity. My obsession before that was Trainspotting and Ewan McGregor in particular. Music was another huge influence – Martin Scorsese’s film about The Band, The Last Waltz, is something I watch night and day. Robbie Robertson, who only passed recently, is phenomenal. As are Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks and the rest of Fleetwood Mac and Bob Marley. My mum famously went to Jamaica when she was pregnant with me, so I’m convinced that’s where I got my passion for Bob from.”

Toni’s more recent musical loves include Talos, AKA Corkonian Eoin French who tragically died last month from cancer. Which at this stage can fuck right off with itself.

“Eoin’s just an incredible person,” reflects O’Rourke who was a pal of his. “I met him in 2019 and fell in love with his music. If you haven’t heard Far Out Dust and his other albums, check them out because they’re impossibly beautiful.”

I’ll second that. Having been part of the same Dublin acting gang as Sarah Greene, Niamh Algar, Clare Dunne, Charlie Murphy and Ruth Bradley – see elsewhere in this issue for our chat with the latter – Toni is now a fully paid up member of the London Murphia .

“What brought me to London four years ago was work,” she reflects. “What’s kept me there is community. I’m in the middle of a big move but have been living in Stratford in East London where I’ve kept running into Irish people. I met Grian Chatten from Fontaines D.C. when he was out with Simone Rocha who’s a really good friend of mine. I’m wearing her shoes right now! I walked last year in her London Fashion Week show – it was myself, Samantha Morton, Patrick Gibson, Olwen Fouéré and Aisling Franciosi. It’s its own discipline, which is both terrifying and exhilarating when you get to the end of the show without having fallen over!

“I’ve been a huge fan of Simone’s for years. The way she weaves between masculine and feminine is so incredible. She’s also gone into menswear – Grian’s worn a good few of her pieces. Another pal of mine, Simone Kirby, walked for her in 2019. I remember seeing it and thinking, ‘What is this world? How can I be part of both the fashion and filmmaking universes?’ I just started saying to people, ‘One of my dreams is to walk for Simone Rocha.’ She saw a film I did called God’s Creatures, afterwards sent me a letter and, well, that particular dream has now come true!”

The aforementioned Simone Kirby plays Móglaí Bap’s mother in the Kneecap movie, which Toni hasn’t seen yet but is dying to.

“I was sent the Kneecap script, absolutely loved it but, even though I’m pretty good at Irish had to keep asking my brother, ‘What does this mean?’” she reveals. “So, yeah, I had to reluctantly pass on it. Actually, say that I’m a fluent Gaeilgeoir but just didn’t have time to be in it!”

She’s got it! This country has always punched above its weight in terms of the acting talent we produce, but it’s got to the point now where no major international film or TV show is complete without at least one Irish cast member.

“The roof has been blown off in the past couple of years,” Toni notes. “For me starting out, I felt like there were limitations. I didn’t look at Brad Pitt or George Clooney and think, ‘Oh, we’re doing the same thing.’ They were so far removed from what I was doing. Fast forward twenty years and who knows where you might end up? Something that was massive for me – and I’m sure lots of others – was Saoirse Ronan getting her Oscar nominations. It would have been even better if she’d wone but here was this person at the Academy Awards who’d started out like me in The Clinic. Success doesn’t have to be macro… but it can be macro! The possibilities are endless.”

Toni was just thirteen when she bagged her single episode role in The Clinic, the noughties RTÉ medical drama that in addition to her and Saoirse Ronan also showcased the nascent talents of Amy Huberman, Dominic Mafham, Chris O’Dowd, Siobhán Cullen, Liam Cunningham, Emmett J. Scanlan, Victoria Smurfit and Aidan Turner.

“I was thirteen playing thirteen which was rare – you’d normally cast a sixteen-year old as someone that age,” O’Rourke recalls. “I’ve never played anyone younger than I am, which is unusual. The subject matter was quite heavy – my character was trying to get the morning-after pill following what she said was non-consensual sex – so I was briefed beforehand by the adults in the room, nodded my head a lot but didn’t have a clue what they were going on about.

“I loved this world, though, where the director and my fellow cast members spoke to me as a co-worker. I was respected and treated as an equal, which was a great first acting job experience to have had. When it came out six months or a year later, I remember going, ‘Oh, I can do better than that.’ The next time I was on set was with Lenny Abrahamson and Jack Reynor for

What Richard Did and, yeah, I did do better!”

Alex Murphy, AKA Conor from The Young Offenders, told me how brilliant a mentor Lenny has been since they worked together on Conversations With Friends.

“Lenny’s magnificent and has given me invaluable advice as well,” Toni resumes. “He creates such a safe space for his actors, which as a sixteen-year old shooting What Richard Did was absolutely what I needed. I’ll never forget the read-through out in the old John Player Blue factory. I’m sure it was only about a dozen but it felt like a hundred actors sitting in this massive room with Jack’s bellowing voice as Richard and other future friends like Paddy Gibson and Sam Kiely. It was such a formative experience.”

As was playing Lisa in Calm With Horses, which in my mind remains Barry Keoghan’s finest cinematic outing.

Asked whether she could tell that his career was about to go supernova, Toni pauses for a moment and then says, “There’s definitely a lottery element to achieving that level of stardom. We love to say, ‘They have the ‘X’ factor’ because it neatly explains why it’s happened to that actor and not somebody else. More often, though, it’s about the right job coming along at the right time. Which isn’t to say that Barry and Niamh Algar, who’s also in Calm With Horses, aren’t incredibly talented actors who deserve every bit of success that’s come their way.”

O’Rourke also got to keep Hollywood A-List company two years ago in God’s Creatures.

Shane Crowley, Aisling Franciosi, Anna Rose Holmer, Saela Davis, Emily Watson, Fodhla Cronin-O'Reilly, Toni O'Rourke and Paul Mescal at God's Creatures premiere at Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin. 23rd February 2023. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

“Oh my god, Emily Watson!” she gasps. “I just couldn’t believe her grace and ease and generosity, both on and off set. Paul Mescal’s one of my best friends so working with him was another dream come true. He’s made that step up to Hollywood superstar look easy, which of course it isn’t.

“God’s Creatures is the most mouthwatering script I’ve ever read. I so wanted the part, got it and was then terrified in case I couldn’t do it justice!”

Which she did do – with knobs on!

In addition to The Boy That Never Was, you’ll be able to see Toni this autumn in Kathleen Is Here, the feature-length follow-up to a previous short about the titular teenager whose childhood is blighted by her mother’s addiction issues.

“It just premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh and got a brilliant reaction,” she concludes. “We shot the short in 2020 as a sort of proof of concept. It’s written and directed by Eva Birthistle who’s got another season of Bad Sisters coming up – she’s

Ursula in it and amazing to work with.

“The cast also includes Hazel Coupe, Peter Coonan, Clare Dunne and this incredible young girl, Molly McCann, so it’s another film I feel blessed to have been in.”

• The Boy That Never Was premieres on September 1 on RTÉ One with Kathleen Is Here going on general release in Ireland on October 7