Saoirse-Monica Jackson is a (Derry) girl’s girl
“Zao-sia…Sor-see…Zo-ica?”
I’m sitting opposite Saoirse-Monica Jackson, who is running through prospective celebrity couple names that incorporate herself and co-star Zosia Mamet. The pair met while filming the new Netflix series The Decameron: a soapy, dark comedy based on 14th century short stories about Italian nobles and servants attempting to escape the Black Death plague in a countryside villa. Mamet plays Pampinea, the pouty, conceited incoming lady of the villa, while Jackson plays her plebeian, co-dependant servant Misia. On the Rome set, their initial chemistry, improvising as scene partners, evolved into an electrifying friendship.
“Zosia is a really special person,” Jackson tells me over our bowls of porridge in a North London cafe below the studio where she’s shooting her Cosmopolitan cover. Jackson is high energy, warm and quick witted, introducing herself to everyone on set before we settle to chat. She’s been up since 4am to get from her Liverpool home to set, but she greets me with a familiar hug. Her overstuffed tote bag threatens to spill: “I’ve so many extra sets of knickers in here, just in case. It’s twisted what I’ll shove in here. You don’t wanna see this side of me.” Camaraderie and charm comes easily to her – I can affirm, having met her just the week prior by chance at Glastonbury. We find solidarity in what’s left of our voices from screaming to Shania Twain and too many hours spent in Glasto’s clubbing area, NYC Downlow, the weekend before.
But back again, to Zosia. “She’s in her own register,” Jackson continues. “A beautiful, fantastic artist. I was so nervous meeting her – I have this weird thing with Americans. I put them on this pedestal, like they’re born stars and we’re crafty people playing with sticks. Working with her has been one of the most tenacious, joyous experiences. She cracked me open. I had her back, too. I hope this journey with Zosia is a classic actor partnership where we revisit it, like Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn.”
Saoirse, in Irish, means freedom; Zosia, in Hebrew, means wisdom – traits and states of being that their characters in The Decameron reach for. While Jackson’s first encounter with Mamet was watching her as Shoshanna in Girls, the world was introduced to Jackson as the bolshy, face-contorting schoolgirl Erin Quinn in Derry Girls in 2018. The Channel 4 show by Lisa McGee traced the angsty lives of a group of teenagers through Catholic school and Northern Ireland's Troubles. It was a hit – Derry Girls’ three seasons were picked up by Netflix internationally to cultivate a global following. It was mentioned in British parliament, and a mural of the ensemble cast was painted on Derry City’s walls. The show struck a chord because it offered nuanced stories of young women dealing with the arc of adolescence – ones who happen to be caught in the figurative crossfire, wearing scrunchies and blue eyeshadow – that transcend time and place.
“My favourite coming of age stories were on Channel 4, like Skins and The Inbetweeners,” Jackson says. “It was pure naivety that I believed in Derry Girls’ success, but it was proven true – so is it youthful ignorance or foresight?” she says with a haughty grin. “Naw, I was still a smart arse. It was a blessing. Derry Girls is a rarity – I’ve come to learn!”
Becoming Saoirse, and Erin Quinn
Jackson grew up between Derry and Greencastle, Donegal where her parents ran an inn. She was always surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles. “You had to be funny to get noticed,” she says. “I always knew I wanted to be an actress.” Her parents worked various jobs, imbuing her with her work ethic and a vision. She describes her mother as “dynamite”. “Coming out of the back end of the Troubles, they wanted to see their children have opportunities, make them believe that they could do anything. I think that came down to the fact that peace was realised in their generation… god am I crying already?” It’s powerful stuff – but also a bit of Glastonbury emotional reset, we decide.
After finding a love for acting from a supportive high school teacher, Jackson left home for drama school in Manchester at 18 – she got in through clearing and arrived two weeks after her classmates, “classic me”. But her career seemed to take an upward turn when she decided to leave a year early for a role in Sky TV mystery series The Five. She impressed them so much her part was made bigger. “Of course, I was from Derry and I had to really work on my English accent – pronouncing ‘girl’, as ‘gurl’, and not ‘geeerl’.” Everyone was so patient. I didn’t know what a wide shot or steady cam was.” On the last day of filming, director Mark Tonderai called her into his office. “I was literally shaking,” she says, shaking her spoon theatrically. “I thought I was getting fired, cut out or recast.” Instead, he put her on a train to London to meet with his own agent. “My career has been people spotting me, believing and backing me. When you’re not from a showbiz background this industry can feel impossible.” Age 22, she toured with a production of Of Mice and Men as Curley’s Wife, a 15 year age gap with her closest cast member. But money ran out and she was back in Manchester doing market research and sales jobs for meal kits and vape pens. “I was hopping on that train to London for auditions like a blue-arsed fly,” she says. She had just been sacked from one door-to-door sales job, and picked up a job on a construction site, when she got the email for her first Derry Girls audition and the part of Erin Quinn.
Derry Girls was a tectonic shift for the young actor, who was 23 when she first donned the Our Lady Immaculate College uniform. “I’d barely any set experience and I was suddenly leading a show,” she says. “I was in my early 20s, growing as a person. It taught me a lot as an actor and a human being.” She was thrown into the deep end, but it gave her and all five of the leading cast, most newbies themselves, astute skills. “Derry Girls was a machine. Each episode felt like an hour long feature, there’s so much thought and power. Now I can be on an action movie set looking around me like” – she taps her wrist with her face austere – “Guys, come on! We’re behind!”
The show ran for three seasons over four years, winning multiple BAFTAs and an International Emmy along the way. And while Jackson loved her character, insecurities began to creep in as the show’s audience grew. “I was really encouraged with the physical comedy,” she says. Jackson’s many faces articulated the wayward, twisty storylines of the show. “I’d be told, ‘you never get to see young women do this kind of performance’. It’s often older men – Jim Carey, Rowan Atkinson. It felt natural to the part, it made the rest of the madness work as the central leading character. But when it came out, I saw these responses to my facial expressions and I got internalised panic.
“I had this inner dialogue that feared being typecast… and those parts don’t even really exist, as I was repeatedly told,” she continues. Jackson put “unnecessary pressure” on herself – her next part, she swore, had to be “straight drama, serious stuff.” That didn’t happen. “My career remains chequered and I’ve grown to love that. I’m able to see the privilege of being able to show such stretch. I’m able to do work like Erin, and it’s work that I think is courageous, more ambitious, and cool.”
From 90s Derry to 14th century Florence
The Decameron, set in 1348 Firenze, is Lord of the Flies meets Love Island. The haves and the have-nots are as equally horny and happy to shut the villa doors on the apocalypse raging outside, but the orgy of fine wine and fucking dissipates into a wacky quest for survival, and a sly, taut tale of power dynamics and class systems.
She auditioned before the scripts were even finished. “Misia really feels like art,” Jackson says. She’s living on her nerves. She’s troubled. Her responses are sometimes really heroic. It’s a privilege as an actor to ride two saddles.” Jackson can do both gut-punch comic delivery and the slow, painful emotional arc of a young woman excavating her own desires. She’s in lockstep on the show with both established and emerging peers, from Bridgerton and Sex Education.
Until The Decameron, most of her work kept her at home or close by. “The Italians are quite similar to the Irish,” she says. “They’re very direct, compassionate, stubborn. On set one day, the rest of the girls looked like Disney princesses, all the hair and makeup girls were saying (she puts on a decadent Italian accent), ‘Oh bella, Jess, so beautiful! So gorgeous, Zosia, like the sun! Saoirse… so funny!'.”
When Jackson has felt lost, she looks to her peers like Jaime-Lee O’Donnell (Michelle on Derry Girls), who has always been “a lighthouse”. “She's always had a stronger hold of who she is,” Jackson says. That’s felt all the more pertinent as she’s turned 30 – the “doing years”.
“I was so gung ho in my 20s, and that meant never compromising a good time. I thought it was conducive to me growing as a person and as an artist, to enjoy life. But the hardest bit of your 20s is learning to, and maintaining, standing up for yourself. You have a hold on your – in my case very messy – plan. At 30, I still get those questioning thoughts. Am I presenting the best of myself, am I being the nicest version of myself? It’s hard, but I have a lot more focus and trust in myself.”
Like her characters, Jackson has learned her own power in relationships. “Let me try to formulate this without pissing anyone off,” she starts. “Sometimes it’s easy to surround yourself with people who love to give that craic back to ye. Before you realise, you’re the butt of the joke. They're dimming your light because they’ve got no balls to show up for themselves. Like hey, that was my self-deprecating joke about myself!”
She still thinks she over-intellectualises. “I psych myself out,” she says. “I’m starting to do that less and rely on skill. I’m not thinking, ‘shit, how am I gonna make a disaster of this now’. Well, not always… it’s friggin’ exhausting.”
Her fiancé, Hector Barbour – Scottish DJ Denis Sulta, who she got engaged to in January – keeps her grounded. “We’re planning our wedding at the moment. I have a ginormous family. He’s so down for a big wedding, but I don’t want to spend the day feeling anxious that I haven’t got round to everybody.” They met at a party at a mutual friend’s house one October, where he was dressed as Santa. “I thought, ‘there’s my man!’” she says, grinning.
They both live together in Liverpool – an easy in between stop for Derry, London and Glasgow. “I love being at home with Hector. We love chilling, and not being at the centre of cool parties – watching Moana with him makes me so happy.
What’s next
Another passion is for fashion, and her ever-evolving style. On set she’s enamoured by a pair of Stella McCartney bloomers and asks that her stylist, the burgeoning Belfast creative Katie Bryce, can pull them for The Decameron promo tour. “Hector and I stayed at this amazing, chic hotel in Jamaica. I felt like, ‘I’m a lady now’ – so I was wearing 60s dresses. I love old Hollywood glam. Boho is a no ho ho for me. I look like a creepy girl, or a moth, ’cos I’m so small. Is that Saoirse Monica Jackson or a moth? Get the swatter!”
Still, well over two years since the final episode of Derry Girls aired, Jackson has often found herself mistaken for younger than the almost-31-year-old she is. “I felt locked into the schoolgirl character – I couldn’t get seen for parts my own age,” she shares. “I thought, ‘am I going to miss telling this part of my life’s story?’ So much is happening for me in real time, but in my work, I’m in the school playground. I was having arguments, breakups, big mistakes, and had a passion to tell it through my acting.”
It was a walk around Derry while filming a travel show with Joanna Lumley that gave her clarity. “Joanna said, ‘you have to get to a point of acceptance where to some people, you will always be a perpetual schoolgirl. And it will be okay, my darling, because it’ll give you a ticket to the world.”
And it has. Jackson’s Derry Girls role has made her feel like an extension of everyone’s friendship groups, a part of their families. “I can walk into a bar in New York and people sit me down to chat. I’ve had conversations on the phone with people’s mums when they stop me in the street. I’ve been welcomed into people’s back gardens in Hackney. It’s the best craic. [It] is a fucking privilege.”
Jackson also hopes she can uplift a generation of fellow Irish creatives – “Seeing people represent something that you want to do is really important” – and hopes to start producing in the future (as well as do more movies, do more work with Channel 4, and work more closely with costume designers). “I’d love there to be an answer to a new iteration of The Comic Strip [a group of pioneering alternative comics that included Dawn French and Robbie Coltrane].” Now, she’s filming the gritty drama she’s long pursued, the Liverpool-shot BBC gangland epic This City Is Ours with Sean Bean. As Cheryl, a young woman married to a drug dealer, Jackson brings the relentless yet delicate emotional depth she gives all of her characters. This time, with a Scouse accent.
A young woman approaches our table. “I’m a massive fan,” she says. “I was watching you last night! You’re my comfort watch.” Jackson is beaming. “Happy days!” she says. We look at each other and the Glasto tears balloon the moment again. She turns to me and takes my hand: “What a journey we’ve been on, eh!” And she’s only just getting started…
Cover Look: Dress, Stella McCartney. Earrings and Necklace, Misho Designs.
Photographer: Melanie Lehmann, Fashion Editor: Maddy Alford, Deputy Editor: Zoe Shenton, Art Editor: Jaime Lee, Make Up: Amanda Grossman, Hair: Ken O’Rourke, Nails: Iram Shelton, Movement Co-ordinator: Liam John, Interview: Anna Cafolla, Entertainment Editor: Christobel Hastings, Bookings Editor/Production on set: Sophie Leen, Production Editor: Beverley Croucher, Fashion Assistant: Thomas Brackley, Photo Assistant: Connor Egan.
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