‘Making people
laugh is the
greatest love
of my life’
Actress and comedian Aisling Bea talks to Sophie Goddard
about love, loss and why she’s definitely not the new Fleabag
Aisling Bea is, in her words, ‘living a circus life’.The
writer/actor/comedian is currently in Rome filming Netflix
rom-comLove. Wedding. Repeat, starring Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn,
Eleanor Tomlinson, Jack Farthing and Freida Pinto (Bea plays
Rebecca, a friend of Eleanor Tomlinson’s character). Apparently, six
weeks filming away from home is a doddle. ‘This year has been nuts,’
she explains. ‘I have a house in London – that’s “home” – but a year
ago I was in LA. Then I moved back to London, then New York in
September. Then I came back in January and now I’m in Rome.’
Most of us would be flagging by this point, but Bea, 35, is impressively
chirpy. ‘It definitely feels normal now – when I was 18, I moved to
Dublin for four years, then to London. I suppose I haven’t been near
the house I was brought up in for 17 years. It’s sort of in my bones.’
Within seconds of talking to Bea, you realise why she’s so good
at what she does – storytelling is in her blood (quite literally.
Her grandfather was novelist and poet Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin
and her great-aunt was playwright Siobhán Ní Shúilleabháin).
‘Making people laugh is the greatest love of my life, and it
has been my favourite thing to do since I was a kid,’ she tells me. ‘My
cousin showed me a video of me hosting “the cousins talent show”.
I swear to God I was nine, stood on a chair in this hotel function
room, with 40 aunties, cousins and uncles. My granddad used to love
it when we’d get up and sing – it’s not too far off my persona now.’
Brought up in Ireland’s Kildare by her mother, a teacher and
former jockey, with younger sister Sinéad, Bea’s father Brian,
a vet, took his own life when Bea was three years old. Bea (real
name Aisling Cliodhnadh O’Sullivan) changed her surname to
Bea in memory of him and wrote an article about the experience ofloss in 2017. I say how touching I found it.
‘It is very odd when someone talks about
it because it is a piece of writing, and I am
a writer,’ she says, thoughtfully. ‘On one
hand I’m like, “Thank you very much, that
is a lovely thing to say about a piece of
work”, but on the other it’s like, “I still feel
like I am getting my head around it”.’
Bea’s latest project involves working
with some familiar faces. ‘I’ve known Sam
[Claflin] from when we did our first
audition for drama school together [Claflin
and Bea trained at the London Academy of
Music and Dramatic Art]. Jack Farthing was
the year below us,’ she says. The others
have become firm friends, too. ‘Eleanor
Tomlinson, she’s one my best friends here,
we’re like two little peas in a pod. We went
to an aerial yoga class this Saturday and
it was genuinely one of the worst things
I have ever done in my life, like, “This is
hell, when will this end?” Eleanor has never
done yoga before and the first version she
gets is hanging from the air. It made me
start laughing uncontrollably while we
were upside down.’
One of the biggest misconceptions
about Bea is that she was a comedian first,