‘Say Nothing’ Stars Break Down Their Compelling and Complicated Portrayals of IRA Member Dolours Price

[This story contains mild spoilers from Say Nothing.]

In FX’s explosive limited series Say Nothing, which is based on the acclaimed bestseller by Patrick Radden Keefe, actors Lola Petticrew and Maxine Peake both tackle one compelling character in Dolours Price. An infamous member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, Dolours and her sister Marion Price made international headlines in 1973 for their roles in bombing London’s Old Bailey courthouse — and later, while imprisoned, for a 208-day hunger strike during which British guards force fed them to prevent their deaths. 

Petticrew, a 28-year-old West Belfast native, and Peake, a 50-year-old veteran actor who grew up in Manchester, England, deliver compelling performances as Dolours at different stages of her life. Petticrew plays the young radical full of fire, determination and passion in the 1970s, whose violent actions justified a greater goal; Peake, on the other hand, plays the older woman forced to question her role in the conflict amid the ongoing peace talks during the 1990s. 

The pair spoke with The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom about their respective takes on Dolours Price and wrestling with her motivations — and how they both hope Say Nothing will spark conversations about healing for those still wrestling with the legacy of the Troubles.

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You both play Dolours Price at different points in her life — Lola as the young, radical optimist, Maxine as the older woman full of regret. Were you able to connect with one another before production started? How much did you discuss playing the same character?

LOLA PETTICREW We did connect, and we did get to have a couple of little chats. But for me, and maybe for Maxine, I felt like it would have done us a disservice to try to completely match each other.

MAXINE PEAKE For me it had to be an actual progression from what Lola was doing. I had a slightly different job [than Lola]. Lola originated, created Dolours. I did see some footage [of Lola as Dolous]  just so I could get a sense, because I didn’t want to create two completely different characters. I felt what the challenge was was to move her on in years. I am not the same person I was when I was 18. I was led by Lola, really, and the amazing work that Lola was doing. And then I tried to  slip in and continue that.

What about your individual roles were you the most excited about? 

PETTICREW She’s an incredibly complicated, layered person, and she’s not the typical hero of a show by any means, and so it felt really nice as an actor to get to play someone like that, flaws and all. This show doesn’t take a moral high ground; it doesn’t tell you who’s a hero and who’s a villain. It really allows you to live and breathe in a gray area. And I think that’s really true for all of humanity: Most of us live in a gray area. Sometimes we see things really black or white, but in terms of drama and a TV show, that’s really where the most interesting things happen.

Maxine, you have a tough role: to play Dolours as she nears the end of her life when she’s grappling with what she participated in as the political climate in Northern Ireland changed. It’s a fascinating element of her character. 

PEAKE Like Lola says, [Dolours is] so complex and so layered and so conflicted, [and I had] to navigate an earlier existence. Somebody once said to me, which was really interesting, is that when people joined the IRA, the sort of foot soldiers weren’t expecting to have a long life. It was very in the moment — they weren’t thinking about the future. To feel so betrayed and so angry, coming to terms with some of the things that she’s committed … Like Lola said so eloquently, this isn’t about heroes and villains. It’s a whodunnit in many ways, you could say. But to be able to play a female character that is so flawed and so complicated — it’s a dream, and it’s very rare.

Lola, you grew up in Belfast, and I know you’re too young to have experienced what we see in the series. But as someone who is from Northern Ireland, how familiar were you with the Price sisters and their legacy? And what were some of the emotions you were feeling as you embarked on this projecT? 

PETTICREW I was aware of the sisters and aware of the history. What a lot of people forget when they talk about the Troubles — and I find even the term “the Troubles” hard to say, because I think of it as a war — is that it’s such recent history. It’s so still embedded in all of us. When I read the book, what made me really passionate about doing this project was that a lot of the questions that landed at the end were questions that I have as a young adult who grew up in West Belfast, who still lives in Belfast and wants to continue living there and is really hopeful for our future there. 

I’m a ceasefire baby, and we were promised the world — all of these big promises were made to the ceasefire babies, and I feel like the bargain wasn’t kept up. We didn’t get what we were promised. They called it a peace process, but it felt like a band aid on a gaping wound. Lyra McKee was a journalist whose [work was so focused on]  intergenerational trauma. More people were dying by suicide, among the ceasefire babies, than people died during the war. There’s still so much hurt and so much pain. I wasn’t alive during the war, in terms of boots on the ground, but certainly that conflict still lives in me, and the pain and the trauma of that still very much lives in me, absolutely. The second that this project came through in an email, I felt it was something that would be beneficial for me to bring to the table. Anthony Boyd, who plays Brandon Hughes, and I have been friends since we were kids, and we had a lot of discussions about it throughout the process, and we just felt like it was important for voices like ours to be in the room. It felt like a no-brainer.

How much did you shoot in Ireland, and did the production help you process that history at all — especially with your fellow Irish castmates? 

PETTICREW We shot the majority of it in London, but we shot for two weeks in Belfast, and it was really lovely, actually, to bring it home. In terms of it being therapeutic, I couldn’t really think about it in that way. I feel like I couldn’t bring all of my feelings in the aftermath of what this project is to the table; my job was really to play what was on the page and not, in a sense, let myself get in the way. I think maybe the therapy will come now, when it goes out into the world. I’m excited for people in the U.K. to watch it, people whose government was not just instrumental but really at fault for a lot of the things that happened. And I’m really excited for people from home to see it, my family and friends. I have always thought from the very beginning that it could be part of some very healing conversations. 

Maxine, you’re a British actor, so I’m curious if that brought a different perspective to playing Dolours. 

PEAKE There was a nervousness. I was brought up with the knowledge of what was going on in Belfast from. I’m 50 and from Manchester, so [I remember] when the bomb went off in Manchester City Centre [in June 1996] and the impact of it. I think that the English often romanticize it, for good and for bad. We had a brilliant documentary that just came out on the BBC, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, and there was lots I just learned about something I thought I knew about. I realized that I was just scratching the surface. 

I have to choose my words perfectly, but what my government has done for many, many years … I feel ashamed about it. There’s a collective guilt in many ways. And like Lola said, it is about the legacy. You see on the news, when they go, “Oh, that’s all sorted out now, is it?” Is it? Of course, it’s not. 

There were obviously women in the IRA, but Dolours — and Marian Price (played by Hazel Doupe) — both charted their own path in a fascinating way. They essentially created new roles for themselves. Lola, how did you tap into the passion and charisma she had in her youth, even when she was questioning the end goal? 

PETTICREW There’s a quote — I think it’s Martin McGuinness [a former IRA member and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2017], and I’m completely paraphrasing here, but he talks about the fact that he didn’t want to be a soldier. He didn’t want to go out to war, the war came to him and  landed on his doorstep. And I feel like very much that is the territory that Dolours is in. 

I’ve done a few interviews now, and some people have questioned whether or not [what Dolours did] was an act of feminism. And I don’t think it was an act of feminism by any means. Dolours was just a person in a situation who felt like they had no other choice. For people who joined the IRA or became more politically involved, the question of a united Ireland wasn’t even really at the forefront of their mind. It was about civil rights. People were treated as second-class citizens. They were occupied people. She felt like she had exhausted every other means to be able to have basic civil rights, to be able to have a future. I don’t think it was a grand revolutionary act, or she was trying to prove something, as much as it was tactical — that [she felt] this is what they needed to do in order to win a war against an occupying force. 

I agree with Lola, I don’t think Dolours was motivated because of a feminist ideal. But in other films about the conflict, the stories are usually centered on men — I’m thinking of Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Jim Sheridan’s The Boxer. This was the first time I saw women at the forefront of the conflict. I am curious if you think, particularly when they were in prison and on hunger strike, if they were treated differently because they were women.

PETTICREW One-hundred percent. Dolours and Marian Price aren’t as well known as a lot of the other revolutionaries’ names, and I think that that has a lot to do with the fact that they were women. When the 10 men died in hunger strike in ’81, everybody memorized their names. But those men wouldn’t have been allowed to be made martyrs had it not have been for what the Price sisters went through. 

Maxine, compared to Lola’s performance, you play Dolours much differently, much more reserved. I don’t know if she really regret her actions, but she certainly felt betrayed by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, whom she alleges was her commanding officer in the IRA (allegations Adams has denied). He eventually embraced politics over violence, which forced her to question if it was all worth it. How did you dive into that element of the character?

PEAKE [In my research] what I found was she would constantly write to Gerry Adams. She wrote these handwritten letters  trying to get some attention from him, some sort of connection with him. I mean, I can’t imagine what it was like to put your life on the line, your family’s lives on the line, to be involved in what she was involved in, and then to be swept out of that part of history, to be ignored by Gerry, you know. It was how she was reconciling herself with it. Did she ever reconcile herself? I don’t think she ever did, but she tried to move on with her life. She got married to [actor] Stephen Rea. She had children. But you just felt there was this sort of cancer there. In many ways, it was just eating, eating away. I didn’t want to play her as sort of cruel, because there’s always a sense of dignity about her, and a sense she still had that sort of mischievous fire inside of her. But life  extinguished a lot of that blaze.

Lola, you mentioned previously that you hope this show will create some conversations about what happened in Northern Ireland. But are you at all nervous about how it will be received back home? 

PETTICREW I think it would be weird if I wasn’t nervous. This is my community and my people, and from the very beginning I just wanted to get it right more than anything else. And I truly believe that the show can open up some really healing conversations. But I also think that healing is hard and it’s messy; it’s not linear, and it’s not always very pretty. We need something that we could really stand behind. And I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done, that it was made with respect and with love, admiration and total care for the people of Belfast and the people of Northern Ireland. The future that I’m incredibly hopeful for was always at the forefront of my mind when I was making this. All that I really want to come from this is that people can watch it and they take what they take from it. As an actor, my job isn’t to tell an audience what to do with it. They’ll take from it what they want. And all I can hope for is that a bit of good comes from it, right?

PEAKE It is about educating people. In England, I think people didn’t want to educate themselves about [the conflict]. It was about people’s jobs. It was about livelihoods. A lot of people just said, “Oh, this is just about religion.” It’s really about how society functions and how we treat different people within society. Unfortunately, we continue to make those mistakes.

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Say Nothing is now streaming all episodes on Hulu.