Derry Girls’ future in jeopardy as co-star fears stars are ‘too old to play schoolgirls’ after Covid pandemic delays
THE future of Derry Girls is in jeopardy as a co-star fears the cast are getting too old to play schoolchildren after Covid pandemic delays.
Derry Girls Grandad Ian McElhinney, 72, worries the show’s stars Saoirse Monica Jackson, 27, Jamie Lee O’Donnell, 29, Nicola Coughlan, 34 and Louisa Harland, 28, are getting too old to play schoolgirls.
And Bridgerton actress Nicola, who is the eldest of the lot at 34 years old, will be even older playing the role of a 16-year-old if filming is pushed back any further due to lockdowns.
Ian revealed: “We certainly are intended to get back to Derry Girls but the only problem is how long it’s going to take.
“We were supposed to film Derry Girls back in May of last year. And at the moment the talk is that we will probably shoot it in the autumn of this year.
“I know with Derry Girls one of stumbling blocks, was the number of extras we might need. The amount of what we have to do with extras.
“While you may be able to control the movement of actors and how to kind of isolate them, when you start bringing in extras on any sort of significant scale then you run into issues.
“So, that was certainly one of the things that interrupted our working on Derry Girls at the time.
“That’s a long gap and slightly more critical because the girls are ‘Derry Girls’ and because the girls are far from being girls anymore.
“That doesn’t really matter because if you’re accepted as a grandad then you can carry on being a grandad.
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“I’m finding whether I like it or not that I’ve already been a grandad for a few years now it’s my reality.”
The Channel 4 sitcom, which first broadcast in 2018, hasn’t been on-screen since March 2019 and is not due to return to Autumn.
Derry Girls is set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the Nineties.