Derry Girls star Saoirse Monica Jackson has revealed the surprising job she had before landing her role on the hit TV show.
The actress is best known for her role in Derry Girls, which sees four teenage girls navigate life and school during The Troubles in the North in the 1990s.
The 30-year-old recently appeared on Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett’s podcast, Dish where she opened up about life before stardom.
Speaking to the pair, she revealed that she worked on a building site before she landed her role in the comedy series.
The Derry native had previously worked in door-to-door sales.
She said on the podcast: “I did like other odd wee bits of telly and I’d started doing theatre and stuff like that, so I was sort of plodding along.”
“And I was still doing other jobs at the time, I was selling door to door, which was commission based and I didn’t make a penny. And then I ended up getting sacked from it, and then I got an email for Derry Girls on the same day, so it felt like all very full circle.”
“I was crying in a Greggs on the phone to my mum and this Irish builder, it was honestly the maddest day of my life. I got sacked, and then I went to Greggs and I was crying and I was on the phone to my mum, and this Irish builder came in and he was like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I was like, ‘No, I just got fired from this job.’”
“And he was like, ‘We’re actually building these apartments for the Man City players. Come down and we’ll give you a job.’”
Saoirse Monica continued: “And it was like dark, it was seven o’clock at night, and I was like, I’m not too sure about going out… And he was like, like… And he was like, ‘Give me a second,’ he was like, ‘What’s your name?’ And I was like, ‘Saoirse,’ he was like, ‘Where are you from?’ and I said, ‘Derry,’ he was like, ‘What’s your second name?’ ‘Jackson.’”
“He was like, ‘Two seconds, I’ll make a couple of calls,’ and he came back down and he was like, ‘It’s your father, Sean.’ He knew all my family.”
“Cause everybody at home knows each other, and I was like, right, fair enough, I will come to the building site with you, but it better be lit the whole way. And we went down, and I met the boss, like his boss, and fair enough, they were building these amazing apartments, and these men that I just met that day were like so nice to me and they gave me a really good job.”
“I was a snagger on the building site, where I was going around pointing out problems.”
The actress said that she thoroughly enjoyed the experience working on the building site and revealed: “It was wild craic, you know, and they got me a wee pink hard hat and all, I was having the time of my life. They were paying me as well.”
“They were paying me a fortune as well, they were paying me really well, and then I came out of the building site and I looked my phone and I had an email that was like, there’s an audition for this thing called Derry Girls and I was like, what a day!”
