Agnes O’Casey – The Private Self

Georgina Oller: Everyone suddenly seems obsessed with you this year – appearing in Star City, Legacy of Spies, Black Doves, and coming straight off a major West End run. Has life actually changed day to day yet, or are you still able to disappear into normality?

Agnes O’Casey: This has definitely been the best year of my career and up there for best year of my life! All I’ve ever wanted to do is get to work on great scripts with great people and I have been beyond blessed with that. Day to day I can totally disappear so I’m currently experiencing the perfect balance.

GO: You grew up around theatre, but acting can also be a difficult profession. Was there ever a moment when you nearly walked away from it? And is there a grounding point or ritual that helps keep you steady through the uncertainty of the work? 

AO’C: There have been times I thought it wasn’t going to happen for me – it took me three years to get into drama school and then I was a covid grad – but I never considered quitting. No matter how bleak it got this is the only thing I can do so there was never a question in my mind. My grounding point and rituals are I cook, read and have lots of baths.

GO: Your performances often feel emotionally restrained in a very compelling way. Do you see restraint as a particularly powerful quality in women on screen?

GO: There’s something undeniably seductive – almost fetishistic – about spy stories: the tailoring, coded language, danger, discipline, and the way they trade in secrecy as much as suspense. What do you think we’re truly drawn to when we romanticise espionage in this way?

AO’C: Fetishistic is right I think we are all drawn to the secrecy and the illicit danger of spy stories. We all try so hard to be good, upstanding honest people and there is maybe some catharsis in watching people who have been given the permission to break as many rules as they see fit. We all put forward different faces to different people so I think there is something recognisable in watching a spy move through the world. It’s both a fantasy and a reality.

GO: Spy stories are obsessed with duality: the public versus the private, performance versus truth. Many of the women you’ve played recently seem to exist between identities. Does acting require a similar negotiation of self, and is that a tension you recognise within the profession itself?

AO’C: It’s funny that negotiation with the public verses the private when it comes to work. Because at the end of the day, on a film set, you are at your job and yet your job requires you to do some incredibly vulnerable things. Sometimes you have to say to yourself “okay, this is horrifically embarrassing but you gotta grow up cause this is your job”. Also the great thing is it’s not you, you are protected by your character. Different parts of yourself will sometimes sneak through but that’s never a conscious decision from me. The way I think about acting is that it is an imagined truth – that sounds horrifically pompous. I guess what I’m trying to say is – it’s not real and that’s comforting.

AO’C: The thing is, I love my job, and unfortunately I guess the potential for losing your anonymity comes with that. I love being anonymous. I got into this industry because acting is the biggest joy in the world to me. So I guess that has to come above any other fears. I wish one didn’t lead to the other but I’m very lucky I get to do this job and it can’t be completely perfect!

GO: I find there’s something quite intimate about returning to a character after time away from them. When you stepped back into the world of Black Doves, was Dani waiting for you, or had your understanding of her changed?

AO’C: I think that she was still there! Dani just constantly amuses me I love how petulant and pathetic she can be. It definitely the most playful I’ve felt on set cause there is something so freeing in just playing a total shit. I love that I’m saying this after waxing lyrical about not judging your characters.

GO: After spending so much time inhabiting imaginary worlds and high-stakes productions, what feels most real when you step away from them? What is your most ordinary pleasure, and what makes you laugh?

AO’C: Nothing brings you back down to earth like trying to find a lime bike in a heatwave. My ordinary pleasures.. I love running a bath knowing I’ll be in bed soon. I love my new herbal tea set up. I’ve got a fox family outside my kitchen window at the moment which is really doing a lot for me in the morning – a bit of London nature! What makes me laugh is my mates. I am very lucky to have some hilarious pals who can get me through basically any situation.