Lola Petticrew Is Unforgettable in ‘Say Nothing’

Over the course of nine episodes of “Say Nothing,” Lola Petticrew is put through the wringer.

The actor portrays the real-life figure Dolours Price, an Irish Republican Army leader who goes from peaceful protester to bank robber to jailed terrorist to, eventually, a woman with many regrets and ghosts. All the while she’s a loving protector to her sister, Marian (Hazel Doupe), and a young person exploring a rapidly changing world around her.

It’s the kind of role any actor, especially a relative newbie, would relish. But Petticrew also felt the responsibility to get this story — one they’d been told versions of since they were a child growing up in West Belfast — right.

“When the email came in about this show on which Dolours Price would be the lead, I immediately was like, ‘I have to do this,'” Petticrew, who uses they/them pronouns, explained. “Then I read the scripts, and I couldn’t believe that somebody from West Belfast hadn’t written them, because I just felt like they really captured the spirit of West Belfast so well. I read [the book] over two or three days in a coffee shop and I think I had to leave three times because I was crying so hard. That really floored me.”

Viewers will likely have a similar reaction: The stellar show is adapted by Joshua Zetumer from Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestselling 2018 non-fiction book of the same name. “Say Nothing” tells the story of the Troubles through following the young leaders of the movement, and also through the unsolved 1972 disappearance of Jean McConville, a single mother of 10. It’s a complex tale that is deeply personal to many.

“I knew I had a lot of valuable things to bring to the table, being from there,” Petticrew explained. “West Belfast, even culturally, is so different to a lot of other parts of Belfast. It’s really its own thing. I remember speaking to Anthony before we had said that we were going to do it, and we always felt like, ‘It’s so important for people with our voices and our experiences growing up there to be in the room, and it’s better to be shouting in the room.’ Then we were in a room that we didn’t even need to shout in, because everybody’s ears were so open.”

Hazel Doupe and Lola Petticrew in ‘Say Nothing’Courtesy of Rob Youngson / FX

Petticrew is referring to their co-star Anthony Boyle, who portrays IRA leader Brendan Hughes and whom they have been friends with since they were 11, doing “terrible pantomimes” and theater together as teenagers. Petticrew even recorded their first “Say Nothing” self-tape audition at Boyle’s parents’ house. “I think halfway through a take that I thought was going to be pretty good, his dad, like, walked into the room and ruined the take because he had brought me a soup or something,” Petticrew said.

Quick cut to several months later, and Boyle and Petticrew are “on set of this massive Disney production, looking at each other like, ‘Can’t believe we bagged our way into this!,'” the performer said with a laugh.

The lightness together was important because the show gets heavy. One episode finds the Price sisters on a hunger strike in prison —”let’s call it what it is: physical torture,” they note — which filmed in an actual prison for three weeks, “an incredibly oppressive atmosphere.” The cast utilized an intimacy coordinator and lots of breathing exercises, but also plenty of gallows humor.

“People from Ireland are quite witty, and a people that love a laugh,” Petticrew said. “I think that’s what’s great about this show. Even though it’s really tough subject matter, that spirit of people from Ireland and West Belfast really shines through. There’s an ability to find humor even in the darkest moments.”

For American audiences, this may be the first program they watch about the Troubles (not everyone binged “Derry Girls“!). And even people like Petticrew, deeply familiar with the conflict, still found surprises in the scripts. “Not a lot is really known about Dolours as a person, in terms of the lore, for want of a better word, that you hear about growing up,” they said. “[Dolours and her sister] are sort of lesser-known characters, and that probably has a lot to do with them being women.”

That opened up plenty for Petticrew to put their own spin on, including collaborating with Maxine Peake, who portrays an older Dolours on the show. “Getting an audience to be onboard with someone like Dolours felt like it might be daunting, and it felt like something that doesn’t happen often and might not happen again,” Petticrew said of the pressure.

‘Say Nothing’

Creator Zetumer knew he had the right person for the complicated part when he first watched their audition. “Lola was someone who [director] Michael Lennox was championing from the start,” Zetumer told IndieWire. “He had worked with them doing anti-drug PSAs when Lola was a teenager that were incredibly charming. Lola, being from Belfast, has the story in their bones.”

For one of their auditions, everyone was giving notes, and “Lola was able to deliver such finely tuned calibrations in handling the thoughts,” Zetumer said. “It was like watching a concert violinist: It was like saying play a B-flat, and the violinist would play a B-flat. That they have such control over their instrument in this way [it] floored everyone. So there was no question.”

Petticrew, best known previously for their role as Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ dying daughter in 2023’s “Tuesday,” is mid-way through shooting their next series, also about the Troubles, co-starring Gillian Anderson. They’re hopeful both projects have the potential to jump-start good things for people who have been through so much.

“What I really believed in from the beginning was that [‘Say Nothing’] would have the ability to start healing conversations,” they said. “I think that those conversations will probably be really hard and really messy, but healing isn’t linear, or always pretty.”

In the meantime, Petticrew is enjoying Ireland’s continued perch in Hollywood.

“We’re a nation of storytellers; it’s something that is just innately in us,” Petticrew said. “There’s a lot more shows being made and people are a lot more open, I think, to hearing different voices and different accents. Same thing with people [being] a lot more open to watching things with subtitles. For a long time, I felt like we were bombarded with simply American and English accents and I feel like that’s changing. There’s a real appetite for shows and stories from a broad range of cultures.”

“Say Nothing” is now streaming on Hulu.