Michelle Fairley: ‘The idea that youth and beauty are the only thing a woman has to give is very condescending’

It’s hard to think of a watch more grisly than Gangs of London. Delving deep into the underbelly of crime in the capital, the first series followed the gang bosses of a loose confederation as they double-crossed, murdered and maimed their way around the city. There’s no sign of an easier ride in the second series – the first episode holds a macabre death count of 16; that’s about one every five minutes – achieved through creatively tortuous methods like swallowing razors and meat forks in the eye followed by mallets on the head. Cheery watching, then.

It’s largely a man’s game, we were shown in the previous series. Yet big things are now afoot for Marian Wallace, played by Michelle Fairley. After a run of unfortunate events for her family – the London Irish contingent of this confederation and its de facto leader – she’s not in the mood to play housewife any more. While her husband, gang leader Finn Wallace (played by Colm Meaney), had forbidden her to get involved in the family business, relegating her to the sidelines of looking on with aggrieved eyes instead, his death means that Marian is now raring to seek vengeance on many fronts. And all while the disunified gangs encounter the threat of the ruthless Koba (Waleed Zuaiter).

“Marian knew the business, but she had to accept being shut out of it even though she helped create it. In that sexist, male world, she wasn’t given acknowledgment,” explains Fairley. “I always felt that was like a castration. The fact that she wasn’t able to use that side of her brain made her so resentful.

“She’s a strategist, Marian. She sees an opportunity and she’ll go for it. Now she’s making opportunities, but in the past she was waiting for an in.

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“Marian is in the position of having everything she could possibly want, but the one thing that really nourishes her is action. Feeling that she’s actually initiating stuff, and she’s out there mixing, controlling.”

The move from supporting cast to a central character with agency is a welcome shift – especially in a male-dominated series, never mind in a world where opportunities for older actresses are too often limited to that of the mother or wife.

“The idea that youth and beauty are the only thing that a woman has to give is very condescending,” Fairley remarks. “What about life experience? What about intelligence? Your desires and sense of giving does not stop once you go over a certain age. You don’t just rid yourself of emotions and feelings and drives. These things stay with you until the day you die. There’s also a great value in getting older, in terms of experience, understanding of human nature, and layers that you can bring to roles.

Just without the bloodthirsty criminal vibes, there’s a smidgen of Marian in Fairley here today. We meet in a hotel in London, with a poised Fairley dressed in an ivory blouse and black trousers, similar to the outfit her character wears in her first scene of the new series. As well as those cheekbones that could cut glass, there are similar flashes of steeliness, presumably a reflection of Fairley’s aversion to being interviewed. But there’s also a softness that dominates, and separates her from her character and previous ones like high-powered business owner Ava Hessington in Suits, or the baddie in 24: Live Another Day.

Rather, that gentleness harks back to her defining role as Catelyn Stark in Game of Thrones. Although one should be wary of saying the “G” word – she slumps on the sofa when I bring the series up. “Do we have to talk about that? Let’s not,” she sighs. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

Her weariness is understandable. The epic fantasy may have made household names out of the little-known cast, but Game of Thrones proves a difficult shadow to step out of.

It’s all the more irksome given she has 33 years’ worth of TV, film and theatre acting to her name.

Game of Thrones showrunner David Benioff picked Fairley for the part after being dazzled by her performance in Othello in the West End. At that point, she had already a solid profile in TV and film, having starred alongside Nicole Kidman in The Others and Julie Walters in A Short Stay in Switzerland. “A varied career is what any actor wants,” Fairley says. “One job hopefully leads to another, and a different challenge all the time.”

Life as an actor wasn’t on the cards for a young Fairley. The daughter of a pub owner and nurse, she grew up in the coastal village of Ballycastle in Co Antrim, which to her evokes “freedom and safety”.

“I know people wouldn’t associate the north of Ireland in the 1970s with safety but Ballycastle was very safe. Until there were a couple of bombs,” she says.

With no actors in her family, there was no obvious reason to follow the path of acting – her school didn’t even offer drama so that she could cite it as her first taste of the spotlight. But she remembers the profound effect that black-and-white movies of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and the like had on her, and later, Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home. “I remember how upsetting that was, because it felt so real to me even though it was a drama,” she recalls.

While still at school, she took a surreptitious trip to London to nose around drama schools. “It made me realise that’s what I wanted to do, but I didn’t really have a route or a plan, because there weren’t any drama schools in Ireland at the time,” she says. “I just knew I wanted to do it. I don’t know why. I had no entitlement to it or any proof that I would be in any way decent.”

Eventually she moved to Belfast to join the amateur group Fringe Benefits, where she shared a flat with friends including Conleth Hill, who would years later become her Game of Thrones co-star. With that experience, she moved to study in Manchester, before settling in London, where she’s stayed and worked for over 30 years.

London life suits her, she says, though she’s recently been questioning her balance in life, provoked by the sad death of both her parents in relatively quick succession, and the pandemic straight after. The events meant that she spent the first lockdown back in Ballycastle, at what was her parents’ place.

“There was so much uncertainty and fear at the time, but it did make me re-evaluate my life and refocus,” she recalls. “I asked, what do I want from life? What is life about? Is it about constantly chasing job after job after job, or is it about actually feeling like you’re contributing to the world?

“That came with change of pace. I grew up by the sea and I’ve lived over 30 years in London, which I absolutely love, but to suddenly just have stillness and quietness… It was the longest period I’d spent in Ireland since my 20s, and I loved it. I really loved it. So I realised I need both. I can’t just castrate London, I love the vibrancy and I am a city person anyway. But I also love quietness and I love the ocean.”

The time also made her embrace her introverted tendencies. “I am somebody who is very good at being on their own, walking, always talking to myself. And I actually need that. It’s almost like I have to have that in order to be sociable.”

Finding a new balance hasn’t been at the expense of work just yet. Fairley has a rally of projects airing soon, from the Bridgerton spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, to The Trap, directed by another Game of Thrones alumnus, Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister).

But her return to Ireland has shifted her career ambitions going forward.

“Now, possibly is a time where I think, ‘maybe I’ll put it out into the universe that I’d like a job back in Ireland for a bit’,” Fairley says. “I’d be fortunate if that was what I could choose to do.”

Gangs of London S2 will be available on Sky Atlantic and the Now streaming service from Thursday, October 20th