Lola Petticrew and Anthony Boyle have known each other for almost 20 years, ever since they were a couple of kids from West Belfast looking to break into acting. The first play they did together was a local production of “Romeo and Juliet,” the mere mention of which makes Petticrew’s stomach churn. “We were on a chessboard. Four people came to see it; two of them left,” Petticrew, who uses they/them pronouns, said with a laugh during a recent joint Zoom interview with Boyle. “I had Goth makeup on; Anto looked like Ziggy Stardust. That was a s—show.”
Their many subsequent TV and stage collaborations “incrementally got better,” as Boyle put it. (And they’ve each done well on their own: Petticrew costarred with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the 2023 indie “Tuesday” and Boyle appeared in “Masters of the Air” and “Manhunt.”) But none had the impact of “Say Nothing,” FX’s limited series about the Troubles in Northern Ireland that has earned both actors widespread acclaim and Petticrew a BAFTA TV nomination for lead actress.
Based on New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2018 nonfiction book of the same name, “Say Nothing” is a gripping look at the IRA’s battle to oust the British and form a united Ireland in the early 1970s. The friends play real-life IRA members: Petticrew is Dolours Price, who spent seven years in prison for organizing the 1973 bombing of the Old Bailey courthouse in London with her sister Marian (Hazel Doupe), and Boyle is Brendan Hughes, the Belfast brigade commanding officer known as “the Dark” who robbed banks and led key operations against British forces.

Did it concern you that a project about the Troubles was being made by an American company, one owned by Disney no less?
ANTHONY BOYLE Yeah, totally, man. [In American accent] Disney doing the Troubles. I was like, Oh, for f—’s sake, man. This is gonna be a shambles. And then I read the first two episodes, and it was just so well written and so well researched that I couldn’t believe that the writer [showrunner Josh Zetumer] was not from Belfast, let alone [came from] America. And then I spoke to Josh and Patrick and realized that they were coming from the right place. It was such a dirty, complex war that you can’t just answer it in a cookie-cutter way: This is who the bad guy is; this is the good guy. We need to ask questions and we don’t actually know what the answers are. That’s what Patrick done with the book really well. And Josh carried that on.
LOLA PETTICREW The thing that I really responded to was the fact that at the end of the book and at the end of the show, there were a lot of big questions that landed with me as somebody who still lives in Belfast whose life has been formed by intergenerational trauma. And when you see the Troubles, especially portrayed in the media, it’s usually through a very male lens, usually an older male lens as well. What I thought was really great about this was taking it from the view of these young women, the Price sisters.

Was it daunting to play people who have become near-mythic figures in the history of the Troubles? Anthony, you’ve talked about walking by a mural of Brendan Hughes on your way to school as a kid.
BOYLE Lola and I still live in Belfast and have family in Belfast, so yeah, it was a risky thing to do. I’ve played real people [including John Wilkes Booth in “Manhunt”], but it’s usually been Americans or English people from American or British history. And there’s a kind of separation there, whereas this was really no research whatsoever. I just sort of showed up and done it. Then you wrap and go, “Oh, wait. F—. People are gonna watch this. I hope people in Belfast like this.”
It sounds like they did.
BOYLE Yeah. Lola and I done a screening for our friends and family in a little cinema in Belfast. And it was class, man, with people just cheering and whooping and crying. It was a real hit there, and people saw so much of themselves and their experience in it. Both sides, Catholic and Protestant, took something from it, and that’s rare to do with a piece of art.
PETTICREW I have a bit more of a nervous disposition than Anthony. I definitely spent a lot of the shoot having massive panic attacks, going home and staying up, thinking about my community, the responsibility, how people would see it. I knew about Dolours growing up. I think that there’s an element of misogyny in her legacy, in the way that we know a lot more about the male figures than we do, for instance, the Price sisters. A lot of people from West Belfast can name the ten men who died in the [prison] hunger strike in 1981, but without the Price sisters, those men never would have been able to be made martyrs.

Dolours and Marian went on hunger strike while they were in Brixton Prison and were force-fed by the medical staff. Those scenes, in Episode 5, are brutal and must have been physically demanding.
PETTICREW Physically, it was super intense. Mentally, it was super intense. It was a really oppressive environment. We were in an actual prison and it was just Hazel and me. But we had an amazing intimacy team, an amazing stunt team and an incredible crew who became like cheerleaders for us. I was particularly proud of that episode. Dolours shouts at the beginning of the episode, “My sister’s 19 years old!” and you’re really struck by how young these big players were and what they went through — call it what it is: torture — at that age, what they were subjugated to.

Anthony, your Brendan Hughes is always buzzing like a spark plug. We never see him at rest. Did it feel like a very physical role? It comes off as a very visceral part of who he was.
BOYLE I mean, when you see these interviews with him, he’s talking about in the morning, you shoot a few people, then you rob a bank, then you would do this and you would do that — just a constant life on the go. And I just thought he’s got a lot of adrenaline running through his veins at all times. A director said to me once, I’d done a scene, and the director went, “Damn, you all full of piss and vinegar.” And that’s a little bit of it. I felt very instinctive about it. A lot of his scenes are very high-octane — him doing action things. So it felt right to play him like that. Even in the quieter moments he still has that glint in the eye and the heart’s going twice as fast as everybody else’s.
You’ve been friends for so long, and there’s a wonderful ease between the two of you onscreen, especially in some of the lighter moments, like when Brendan says admiringly about Dolours, “The balls on that wee girl.”
BOYLE [Laughs] I just made that stuff up on the day because I was looking at Lola, and I’d go, “The f—’ balls on that wee girl.” They’re doing a scene, and I just start [playfully] calling them a “bitch” or something. It felt real, like how we speak to each other, and the writers and directors allowed that elasticity. It’s always great to work with Lola. They’re the perfect scene partner.
PETTICREW Can you please include this in the interview? Because I don’t think you’ll ever say anything that nice to me again, so I’ll take it. [Laughs]
BOYLE But put “You wee bitch” at the end as well. [Laughs]

Do you have a favorite scene that you did together?
PETTICREW I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but I loved this scene where the Dark robs the bank, because watching Anto come in with that energy — I think that was maybe the first thing we shot together, and I just remember feeling such a massive sense of pride. Then you were improvising and you got the word “specky” into the show, which is very particular Belfast line for somebody who wears glasses. And I remember, like, being on the floor, crouched down and trying not to laugh. Of course you managed to get that in. It’s perfect. But I remember you coming in, all piss and vinegar, and me just —
BOYLE That’s the title of the article, “Piss and Vinegar.”
PETTICREW …and I just remember thinking, That’s my friend and he’s so talented and I’m getting to do this with him. And that’s sick.
It is quite an entrance. And you’ve got that stocking over your face.
BOYLE Yeah, it was a lot of fun to do that. I’ve always wanted to rob a bank. And then, yeah, it was funny, man. Josh, the the writer, was letting us just be free form with things, and and one of the guys who was giving me the money in the bag had glasses. And I was like, “Give me the money, you f—- specky bastard.” Josh was like, [in American accent] “What? What is that? What is specky? Is that…? Because he’s speaking so much? Is he a speaky bastard?” I was like, “No. Glasses, man.” [In American accent] “Spectacles? Genius! It’s in the picture.” He f—-‘ put it in. [Laughs]
Thanks to this interview, I’ve learned some Belfast jargon. I am a wee specky bitch. I don’t know if I’m so wee anymore.
PETTICREW Can the title be “You Wee Specky Bitch” after first it was “Piss and Vinegar”?
No, that’s my byline: By the Wee Specky Bitch.
BOYLE [Laughing] That’s so good. “The Wee Specky Bitch.” That’s cracked me up, man.
PETTICREW [Laughing] Amazing.
A version of this story first ran in the Limited Series/TV Movies issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the Race Begins issue here.
