Darragh Hand

With an already diverse body of existing work, you may have seen Darragh as Michael in Netflix’s Heartstopper, or on stage in London's West End. He was part of the Olivier-nominated cast in For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, and Dear England, both of which had a sincere impact on his relationship with himself and his identity. He is set to be in the National Theatre’s latest stage adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons later this year, and is also the leading man in Netflix’s latest thriller-comedy, How to Get to Heaven From Belfast.

Each role he’s taken on so far feels gloriously different, and he perceives this as a necessary challenge to keep him on his toes creatively. With every project, he collects another token of being to hold firmly in his palms, arming himself with a deeper understanding of the world, the craft, and himself. He doesn’t shy away from letting his past characters inform the present, a testament to how we are all a work in progress. Identity lives within these lines, art and life inexplicably connected. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast unravels in absolute chaos, but as Darragh looked across the great Irish landscape during filming, he extracted another token of clarity: a renewed connection to his Irish roots—a reminder that identity will always crop up in the most unlikely of places, and once it does, it demands to be followed.

How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is now streaming on Netflix.

Can you introduce yourself by way of three things you’re passionate about?
Life, love, music.

How would you describe your relationship to London, having grown up here?
Yes, I grew up in Croydon! People debate whether or not that’s London, but I’m going to claim it. I then moved to a small town called Bexhill when I was thirteen, which is a seaside town between Hastings and Eastbourne. My relationship with the city changes as I get older. I remember being a kid, not really knowing where I lived geographically in London. I’d visit my grandma, aunties, and uncles all scattered around the city, but I didn’t have a concept of the tube lines. That made it all feel quite magical. As you get older, you find different pockets of London for different things. If I’m in Croydon, it’s family time. If I’m in West London, which is where I live at the moment, it feels more residential and calm. East London is artsy—I always find myself doing something cool there.

The artsy finds you in East London! I live in Brixton now, and I really like it.
Brixton is like the capital of the South! A lot is going on there, innit?

I love it. I always have the best time and the best interactions. Congratulations on How to Get to Heaven from Belfast! I binge-watched it in two days. I was like, “I can’t even talk to anyone about this because it’s not out!” It’s fantastic—it has the right mix of intrigue and comedy.
I remember watching it back and really noticing how the music and editing come together. Lisa [McGee] is great.

Each character is so individually complex and rich. What made Liam stand out to you?
Initially, it was the mystery of him. I felt there was a lot more of him that you would get to see over the duration of the first series. I’m really attracted to that as an actor. I like to think, “Maybe he’s not saying what he wants to say,” or maybe he is feeling one thing, but saying something else. That conflict really drew me to him and helped me to anchor and stay curious. That conflict changes as his relationship with the lead builds, and the stakes change.

This season, he serves as an interesting device to the overarching narrative. One of the first things he shares is his age, and I think that’s quite significant to his dynamic with the rest of the characters, and where he stands on his sense of morality and justice.
That’s such a good observation. I thought the same thing. It’s interesting where he sits in the world because he anchors these bigger, more extravagant characters by being doubly serious with a strong sense of justice. I think many of the characters are at the whim of external forces unknown to them. Liam is moving through the world quite intentionally and with a lot of purpose. It’s interesting you mentioned him being younger and being the anchor. We assume that as we get older, we know more. But as I get older, the more I know, the more I don’t know.

For sure! The way I see him is that because he’s younger, his sense of right and wrong is very black and white. Whereas the girls’ reactions are a little more jaded, and they give in to impulse more. Would you agree that Liam’s morality is still forming? And how did you approach playing him, especially as he’s still figuring out where he stands?
That’s a great question. I was mostly curious about why he involves himself in this mess. It would seem that the main characters are coming from this world of chaos, but he comes from this place of order. Over the duration of the show, they sort of switch roles.The clearer things become for the girls, the more confusing it is for Liam.

Similarly, in life, when things are too orderly, it can also be a bad thing. We, as people, seek chaos in strange and subconscious ways. In the show, there’s clearly something that needs to be resolved, and sometimes order isn’t the right way. Sometimes you have to descend into chaos to find answers. That was an interesting thing to play with. Why does he keep putting himself in these situations? What is he trying to figure out?

What do you think Liam symbolises in the wider context of the story?
Personally, I'm an advocate for chaos…sometimes. [Laughs] Maybe not literally, but life has a way of throwing you into situations. Liam is thrust into chaos, but he pivots and lands on his feet. It’s important to know that it’s okay to let things shift and evolve.

I think there’s a path in life where you could keep things very orderly, structured, know everything, and have a strong sense of who you are. That has its benefits, but I feel it sometimes comes at the detriment of learning something new or becoming better.

One of my best friends says the best times in her life always start with the worst times!
Exactly!

What was it like building that relationship with Roisin [Gallagher]?
It was really easy, to be honest! I said this to her on set—she, and all the girls, are the perfect example of how you lead a set. They were so warm from the jump. There was no ego or pretentiousness. I think that’s an Irish thing. We’re just a grounded people. I imagine it must have been hard to lead on this massive, highly anticipated show. But there was never a crack in their characters. They were all steadfast and warm.

Was it ever intimidating stepping onto that set?
It was challenging; it was definitely something I hadn’t done before. So in that sense, I was aware of what was needed from me. But I like learning. Whenever I go into an opportunity, I’m grateful to be slightly out of my depth. I have my eyes wide open, looking for what will help me move into this new space. It’s only scary when you’re not looking to progress.

I love that! I also love how the show touches on religion, women’s rights, and Irish nationalism. It does this very subtly, which I think makes it more poignant. Did playing Liam shift your relationship with these topics in any way?
Firstly, I think that’s just a testament to the way Lisa works. She did a similar thing with Derry Girls, where there was real subject matter to tackle, but she made it feel so human, and you could find the humour in certain situations. But the show is intrinsically feminist. It follows these three women who are trying to…

Find chaos.
Quite literally! And they’re not lying down, are they? They’re in all these circumstances where the easier thing to do would be to go with the grain. My takeaway from the whole process is a revitalised sense of my Irish heritage. Half my family are Irish, and I’ve always grown up in an Irish, Jamaican, and British household. That’s such a big part of me and how I was raised. Spending real time in the country—not with parents or family—but just by myself, and getting to see the landscape revitalised the Irish part of me.

A lot of people now are re-establishing their relationship with their roots, especially through art. I’m definitely trying to do the same thing. It impacts the way you live and work.
There’s a fine line between the life you live and your work. Especially in our field, they’re very intertwined, aren’t they? It’s nice to explore them both at the same time.

Do you think that’s something you look out for in your work?
I think so, yeah. When you get new material, I think the only metric to measure how you feel about the work is who you are at the time. There are things I read now that if I read them two years ago, they just wouldn’t be the same. It’s kind of like music. Do you know Blonde by Frank Ocean? I grew up with that album, and it’s so interesting because it’s changed so much as I’ve grown, and it means something new to me every time I listen to it. I think work is the same.

I just read a piece by Alex Lewis the other day about Blonde and how the album changes with him. I’ll have to get that across to you.
Please!

I also wanted to chat about your work in theatre. We were just talking about this with identity and how your roles feel politically urgent without saying as much. I wonder if that’s something you’re quite intentional about, or something you think about?
I would love to be intentional about that. I think I've been very lucky, and I’m extremely grateful for the shows that I’ve done. For Black Boys was so much more than just a play. It was what we were doing; we are a culture that isn’t represented on stage. It was so special to hear the audience's stories. I hope I get to experience that again in my career. Even shows like Dear England, in which there was a class of people who felt excluded from the theatre. The fact that they could go and watch something that spoke to them was the whole point.

It’s also the point of fear; you want to really say something, but you also want more people to hear it. It’s counterproductive if the things you want to say—that should be impacting everyone—are only reaching a certain number of people. It defeats the point.

I agree! And I don’t know what it is about theatre, but it just hits you more somehow.
No, I agree. I think because it’s honest, isn’t it? There’s no delay. Whatever happens is happening in the room.

I get very starstruck when I go to the theatre—I’m like, “I’m watching actors act!”
[Laughs] I get it, especially when you see something really good, and you think, “It’s different from going to the cinema and watching something really good.”

I’m a musician, so I go to a lot of live music shows, but I feel like theatre…there's just something about it that’s different. Do you play any instruments?
I’m trying to learn guitar. What instruments do you play?

Guitar as well!
I’ve got a different respect for guitarists now. My fingertips were bleeding the other day.

You must have been going at it for ages! I think theatre requires a lot of stripping back your ego, which I think I would find quite hard to do.
That’s an astute observation! Do you think?

I think to become someone else, you have to strip all of it back, and musicians don’t have to do that in the same way. I suppose they can be quite interchangeable, actually.
I definitely hear where you’re coming from. That’s a good point. When you write a story or play a show, you are creating a world. I think that is similar to what a musician does because they pull from their own experiences. I don’t get that nervous on stage, although there’s that element of vulnerability that has to be there. There’s also the security of knowing that you’re immersing yourself in service to the story. Performance is such a vulnerable thing, and to have people watch you is very intimate.

And the audience is just staring at you the whole time!
[Laughs] Yeah, and you can feel the shift during your performance. You can feel when there are dips in attention. It’s a communion, isn't it? You know you are in it together.

Acting on screen and on stage asks very different things of you and your energy. Is there something that one gives you that the other doesn’t?
That’s a really good question. I think they are different disciplines for technical reasons. But ultimately, they’re kind of the same. It comes from the same place. I love theatre for how honest and immediate it is. And you really get close to a cast and make lifelong friends. In TV and film, there is a different level of detail, which I really admire and am hungry to learn more about. There’s a subtlety and nuance you can bring to TV and film that you wouldn’t catch in a theatre just because you’re sitting too far away. I think the dynamic is fun for an actor to play with and discover. You think, “How can I live in this moment without demonstrating it?” With theatre, you perform. With TV, you’re becoming that being.

I saw you’re going to be in Dangerous Liaisons this year! You’re moving between very different worlds—contemporary theatre, Netflix, classic texts. What do you think you’ve learned about yourself through these worlds?
I’m enjoying learning different things, like seeing what it takes to make a different type of play. I’m interested in the mechanism of it. I’m learning what it is to be agile as an actor. Loads of different projects require different styles; you may work with a director who wants something different from you. Dangerous Liaisons is a classical play. It’s different to anything I've done before in the sense of the language—it means something new. But I always see it as picking up little tokens I can take forward with me.

Which of your characters do you relate to the most?
I’ll go back to what we were talking about in how we are different people at different times. When I played Sable in For Black Boys, at the time, he wasn’t too far from who I was as a person. He was a guy who struggled to commit to a relationship because he didn’t feel worthy of love. I think a lot of young men put off commitment because it’s a lot easier to have short-lived relationships as opposed to actually having someone see the ugly parts of you, or the parts that you don’t want on display. Playing Sable really did bring me through that process as a person. That was transformative. You can’t really ask for more from a role.

It’s serendipitous that you played a role that mirrored yourself, then learned about yourself through him. I’ve just got a couple more fun ones! What’s an all-time favourite guilty pleasure?
I really love old school rock reggae music, which is what my dad would listen to when he was younger—Beres Hammond, Bitty McLean. Love it. You can’t beat it.

If you had to pick a song to represent the current era of your life, what would it be?
“Weird Fishes” by Radiohead.

What’s something keeping you curious right now?
I’ve been reading a lot of poetry recently. I’ve never really got into my poetry bag up to this point. But because the character I play in Dangerous Liaisons is obsessed with poetry, I've been looking into it as a character study. It’s been so amazing to read how people express, and I guess I had never really seen it that way before. I was always like, “That’s a really nice way to put something,” but it didn’t really mean anything to me. The more I look into it, the more I’m like, “Wow. People can convey things in ways that I wouldn’t even have imagined.”