“You look them in the eyes and try to tell them the truth”
By Dylan Tighe
Fair City is a popular Irish soap opera that follows the lives of the residents of Carrigstown, a fictional suburb of Dublin. Over its long-running history, Fair City has become a significant part of Irish television, keeping viewers hooked with its mix of emotional storylines and unexpected twists. At the heart of these iconic shows are the actors who bring these stories to life.
Actor Peter Gaynor talks about his acting career, sharing insights into the craft of acting that has shaped his journey and his role as Tyler Munroe on the hit soap.
My character’s name is Tyler Munroe. He moved into Carrigstown about three years ago and presented himself as a therapist. Through the course of events we find out that it’s possible that he might not be a therapist, and might just be a bit of a fantasist. The degree to which he’s genuinely mentally unstable or not is debatable, but he’s certainly verging on sociopathy.
I leave home about 7am, and by 8am I’m on set. You work through the day, with a break for lunch, until 6.30pm. If you’re doing outside broadcasting, you may be recording until 9.30pm, because they might want night-time scenes.
On an average day there are nine scenes recorded. If your story is dominant, you might be in seven or eight. So although the day starts at 8am on set, on those days I’d have to get up at maybe 5am, to work on lines before getting in. There’s a high rate of turnaround, so the next day you’re doing something else. It becomes an enjoyable challenge to see how fast you can get into a highly concentrated state of work.
You do the day’s record, and there’s usually about a month before it hits television. I don’t know whether this is giving inside secrets out or not, but oftentimes it would be November and you’re dancing around a Christmas tree!
There’s no reason why soap opera should be treated any differently in terms of how you work on it. It’s just at a different rate per minute. You still have to be as engaged, and do it truthfully and honestly. And you have to think fast. It would be a mistake ever to look down on it. It’s the same process – you look them in the eyes and try to tell them the truth.
Fair City employs more actors at any given time than probably anything else. That’s a great benefit for the community, I think.
In the early days, I started doing amateur stuff. I always read a lot, and my Dad used to show us karate movies. He must have gone through all the Bruce Lee films, and I remember he brought back Raging Bull. I remember watching that and thinking, “There’s something else going on here”. It was like a living book.
Then I started hunting out other movies that had a similar depth to them. Just the notion that you could do that for a living! So, I joined an amateur company in Drogheda. We would have conversations about what play to do next, and I’d say, “We should do Streetcar – I’d be a great Stanley.” I was like, 13, and absolutely convinced. I did a bunch of plays with them.
I applied to Trinity after I did my Leaving Cert. But back then, it was very expensive – I got accepted, but I couldn’t afford to go. So I went to Coláiste Dhúlaigh for a year. And then when they made primary-degree education free, I applied to Trinity again. I got accepted and I went at the age of 22 and studied at Trinity College from ’97 to 2000. I’ve worked in the industry pretty consistently since then.
One of the joys of the job is to get to see things you wouldn’t normally see. I went to New York a few years back when Ruth Negga was doing Hamlet. That was extraordinary – to be on the stage looking out and seeing all these famous faces in the audience. The play was sold out before we even got there – we were there for months. There was never a seat to be had.
Myself and Ruth would hang out with the photographer Nan Goldin, and I remember meeting people who’d worked with Godard. New York is New York. Those things are a privilege.
When I was starting off the biggest actor name in the town would have been Donal McCann. He did it his own way. He was almost mythic, even while he was still alive.
Early on, I’d see these big productions with big performances and big people in them, about existential things, deep things, and you go, “That’s what I want to do. I want to do something that makes me feel connected to something bigger than myself.” That was always the thing that attracted me to working in the theatre – the connection to something beyond the banal and the mundane of day-to-day life.
One of the joys of what we do as actors is that it’s intergenerational. You work with people of all ages, which I think gives you a wider perspective. There’s no judgement – in fact, you spend time with people who are older to learn from them.
The first job I had out of college was a film called The Abduction Club. Within a week of leaving, I was in Wicklow, at night-time, on the side of a mountain, on a horse, with a highwayman mask on, and a sword and a gun. You’re kind of going, “Is this my life now?” Then, four months later, you’re on the dole. I guess it wasn’t my life just yet!
Over the years I’ve done quite a bit of film and TV. I played the court painter Hans Holbein in The Tudors for a few seasons, which was fun to do. The same people went on to do Vikings, so I did that as well in the first season.
I always walk out to RTÉ and back. It’s always a pleasure to walk from the centre of the city out into Dublin 4. It’s nice to come up that road into RTÉ every morning. The campus in Montrose is a beautiful place to be.
Fair City is broadcast on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
