Speaking as both a star and executive producer, this show is a pulpy mystery, a family drama and an absurdist comedy. Was that a tough tonal equilibrium to strike?
One of the things I loved about the first draft that came in was the quirky nature. But then, I also wanted to make sure what I really focused on was grounding it, so that it felt real. Although there is a lightness, it’s an emotionally rich drama . . . There’s a fine balance, but I felt like if we kept everything as real as possible, then you could go as wild as you wanted with dream and fantasy [sequences]. And, somehow, it worked.
Outlandish as the show can be, Irish Blood is really about that grounded, universal thing of seeing our parents in a different light after we grow up . . .
I think that you are spot-on. I play a woman who is hardened. She sleeps with men without even paying attention. She’s not close to anyone but her mom. And that is because her dad, when she was 10 years old — they had the best relationship in the world — he abruptly abandons her. It just shakes her to her core — and when he left her, she thought he beat her mom up.
So, she hates him . . . but she’s so confused. Then, when she gets this mysterious communication from him after 30 years of no word, she jumps on a plane, goes to Ireland and it’s like that same little girl is trying to find her daddy. Even though she’s so tough now and she doesn’t need anybody, the little girl in her is just desperate for her daddy. And while she’s trying to find her dad, she’s also trying to find herself, because she has completely been shut down. She’s a powerful and successful attorney, but she doesn’t have a ton of joy in her life . . .
How exactly has Fiona changed by the end of this surreal Irish odyssey?
I think she’s softened. When you find her in L.A., she’s buttoned-up and has makeup on and does her job and is sort of a tough cookie. And then when she gets [to Ireland], she doesn’t have time for makeup. She’s functioning on survival mode. She starts to meet family members, this whole world has opened up to her . . . and she starts to feel family. Even though she’s been so close to her mom [back in America] — she starts to feel a sense of belonging in a way that I don’t know if she did before. She starts to become more human . . .
You had so much success so early on in your career. Looking back, what was it like finding yourself as an actor when you were in such an intense Hollywood spotlight from the get-go?
A lot of it was hard — and a lot of it was all just bizarre and fascinating. The first few years before I started booking stuff, I got told “No” all the time. What was good about that was I got better and better as an actor . . .
But I didn’t have any intentions of being in film or movies — I was just a theatre nerd. I think I found my people in artists because they were just so much more juicy and raw. When I was a little girl and I was in acting class — I was 12 and they were, like, 16 or 15 or 18 — and I remember they would cry about their family and they were processing real stuff. That’s what I was attracted to. I loved that group of people. Then, when I got asked to come to L.A. with that group, I didn’t even know what I was doing — I just knew if it’s more of what I’m doing in these classes, then “Yeah!” That was the journey. It doesn’t matter what happens, it was just doing this thing that I loved.
Irish Blood, streaming on Acorn TV
MEMORABLE ROLES:
Among the true defining faces of the 1990s, Alicia Silverstone starred in not one, but three music videos for Aerosmith before she was cast as the lead in iconic, indelible, Jane Austen-inspired rom-com Clueless. Since then, particularly in the past decade, this San Francisco native has reinvented herself via gritty thrillers like The Lodge and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
CURRENT GIG:
With all six episodes now streaming via Acorn, Irish Blood casts Silverstone as a jaded L.A. divorce lawyer who gets a message from her estranged dad and flies to Ireland to suss out why he abandoned her as a child — only to stumble across one very quirky criminal conspiracy.