INTERVIEW: Erin Connolly, audiobook artist

Hi Erin! How are you doing?

I’m good, thanks! Just bought some new records and had my first driving lesson (better late than never) so I’m in a pretty good mood!

Where are you from and what was it like growing up there?

I’m from a town called Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. Growing up there was about as normal it gets. It’s a pretty quiet town, but it’s surrounded by a lot of natural beauty - a lot of glens, mountains and lakes.

What inspired you to pursue acting?

I grew up as an only child so I credit a lot of my early socialisation to films. I would watch movies like The Grinch, The Lion King and anything Winnie-The-Pooh-related, on repeat, until I could basically recite them word-for-word. When I eventually reached the age where I could understand that films weren’t real and, instead, people came together to make them, that is what first triggered the thought of; ‘Oh wow, that sounds like fun. I’d like to try giving that a go.’

You studied Acting for Digital Media at postgraduate level - what was that like?

Acting for Digital Media at East 15 Acting School was basically everything I loved most about my undergrad degree all in the one course, with a few additional modules I hadn’t had the chance to study before. The degree focused on acting for camera, recorded voice and acting for motion capture. I had these amazing facilities at my disposal to just go in and get silly and make whatever I wanted. The beauty of that kind of work is you can be literally anything. If one day you wake up and decide, ‘Today I want to be a medieval princess’ - you can be that. If you change your mind and you want to be a six foot tall swamp creature - great!

The Walk dives into a really tragic part of Ireland’s history. What does that history mean to you?

It was a pretty difficult subject matter to work with. I would come out of a recording session and I would look around at the older women in my life and I think, ‘God, that could’ve been you.’ And that’s such a jarring thought. I don’t think I’d grasped just how recent it was and that certainly puts it into a different perspective. The thought of children being forcibly taken away from their mothers, and the abuse of those girls (because let’s face it, the vast majority of the mothers were children themselves) is like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s unfathomable. I just wanted to do their story justice, as many of the victims are still waiting for justice from the government. It was the most important thing to me and a lot of pressure, as you’re giving a voice to thousands of women who had their autonomy and dignity taken from them. These themes scarily still echo in issues we’re seeing today. I have a lot of strong feelings attached to the story and to the history. It hits very close to home.

How do you decide what each character is going to sound like?

Whenever I’m deciding on a voice for a character, I first like to think about their physicality. How do they stand? Where do they carry their weight? Are they a very introverted, inward sort of person, or are they very extroverted and outward, with their head held high? You also have to think about how things translate through a microphone. You have to think about, ‘what does what I’m doing tell a listener?’ I myself am a 5’4 23 year-old-girl from the North of Ireland, but if I want to convince a listener that I’m a middle aged man from county Cork, some adjustments are going to need to be made.

The Walk was your first professional job (congratulations!). What’s next for you?

That’s a big scary question, isn’t it? During the recording of the book, I got myself an agent, so it’s a lot of auditioning and trying to put myself out there now. My next focus is securing a voice agent in the very near future so I can carry on working on great projects like The Walk. I’m back in Ireland for now, but I’m planning a big grown up move to London with a close friend within the next year. All in all, I’ve got my nose to the grind like most other graduates. It’s time for the next big adventure.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Ooo, my advice for my younger self would be if your gut is telling you something it probably won’t lead you too far wrong. You can get all the best advice in the world but at the end of the day, it’s up to you to make the big choices in your life. Going with what you know in your heart is the best thing for you.

Be fearless.