Huck: The Netflix Star
Yes, I know. Last week was an unscheduled stopgap for your favourite blog. It wasn’t my intention. Not to make excuses, but the play I am involved with right now took up a lot of my time and energy last week. It turns out being a part of the production crew is just as stressful as being an actor in a play. That is the lesson I am learning through all this. I wanted to talk about something last week that has to do with acting, as it happens. Welcome to Monday and the first of hopefully four blogs this week. That is the challenge I am setting myself while this play is taking a break. Let’s talk about my Netflix debut.
Before you start Googling, no, I don’t have my own comedy special, nor am I a part of any Netflix gameshow. A while ago, I got a job as an extra on a show called How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. When you do extra work, there is no follow-up. They don’t contact you about when the show will air or any plot details. This leads to a lot of confusion and curiosity among extras like me. We just show up when we are told and bring whatever is required. For this job, my brief was that I was a crew member on The Late Late Show. So, I had brought black clothing and showed up at RTE Studios at a certain time. That was it.
I rocked up on the day, and a part of me oddly didn’t think we would actually be filming on The Late Late Show set. We were. After signing in, I was given an earpiece and a fake RTE Studios lanyard (with the name William Burke, fyi). There is a lot of waiting around with these kinds of jobs. I am well used to that at this stage. Funnily enough, I was mistaken for an actual crew member a couple of times. This shows again just how out of the loop anyone is.
Eventually, we were brought to the set. The Late Late Show set is tiny, by the way. It is absolutely true what they say about TV: it makes things look so much bigger. It was so long ago that I can’t remember how it went, but I ended up being paired with another extra as the “hair and makeup” team. We, along with the other crew extras, were told to stand between the audience and the set where the cameras were, watching the scene play out.
The episode of the show was St. Patrick’s Day-themed (even though we filmed it in October last year). Patrick Kielty himself came out to introduce the show, as he does every Friday (this was filmed on a Saturday). This is where I am edging into spoiler territory for the show. However, having been there on the day and now having seen the episode, I still don’t fully understand what was going on. The scene is essentially a dream sequence. The main character is brought onto the set when the show's guest recognises her. Things get weird, and the show goes to an ad break. This is where Ya Boi comes in. The woman I was with and I were asked to come in and pretend to touch up Patrick Kielty’s makeup. I say “we”. I was her assistant with all the makeup bags, and she pretended to riffle through them. That was it. We did a couple of takes of that, and that was us done for the day.
Cut to now, and the show is now streaming on Netflix. I haven’t watched the entire series. In the most arrogant way, I kind of lost interest in the show after my episode. It’s episode five, by the way. The show up until that point had some good laughs. It was written by Lisa McGee, who wrote Derry Girls. So, if you like Derry Girls, this may be your cup of tea.
That’s enough from me. Patrick Kielty, by the way, seems like a lovely guy. I had absolutely no direct interaction with him, but he comes across as quite shy and introverted when the cameras aren’t rolling, but also polite and chatty. Thank you for reading, and thank you as ever for your time.
