In Elle.com’s recurring feature Character Study, we ask the creators behind our favorite shows to go deep about what went in to creating their memorable characters: the original idea behind them, how they were tailored to the actor and elements of them we might not see on the screen.
Northern Ireland has happy times too, though before Derry Girls, you’d be unlikely to see them on TV. In Lisa McGee’s series, the Troubles are an unavoidable part of life for five clueless high schoolers. The strife might frustrate, anger, and scare them but it never dims their joy. McGee’s characters are endearingly off-kilter in the most mundane of situations, never more so than in the show’s third and final season, streaming now on Netflix.
She’s full of love when she speaks about Clare, Derry’s most Type-A girl. A goody-two-shoes gone wild, Clare has an intense competitive streak but maintains fierce loyalty to her friends. Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan innately understood the character and her ability to convey Clare’s energy shifted the way McGee wrote her. “[Clare] could go from nothing to 90 very quickly. When Nicola was cast, I realized she can do that vocally. She can go from here to here in 0.1 seconds. It’s that thing where once you see an actor do that you write more of that,” she says. “It’s such a shorthand as well, you go, ‘Right, now Clare’s going to panic.’ We just know that’s what Clare does, so Nicola can do that physically and vocally. She’s so brilliant. I actually ended up having to write less dialogue because I knew she could take it there.”
McGee spoke with ELLE.com about envisioning Clare in her head, the home life we never see, and why she came out when she did.
Courtesy of Netflix
I’d love to hear about what the first seeds of Clare’s character were. What were your early thoughts of who she was going to be?
I always had that friend who was very ambitious and I felt like it was something I hadn’t really seen in dramas or comedies about teenage girls. Clare’s worst nightmare is not passing an exam. I just wanted to really see that play out in a character in a comic way, because it felt very truthful. I didn’t want her to be a goodie two shoes. She had to be believable as a part of this friendship group. So, I made her cutthroat in a way. I always would say to Nicola Coughlan, she’d kill her granny for a better grade.
How do you think she initially became friends with the other girls?
I feel like Erin and Clare go way back, they probably met as three-year-olds through some sort of playgroup or nursery. Clare’s an old friend of Erin’s and then I think Erin probably met Michelle in the early days of high school. Erin’s the glue that brings these two extreme characters together. Also, her cousin [Orla]. I think they’re very different people in lots of ways, but they’ll always have that connection just because they go back so long. In their costumes, they wear heart friendship necklaces, they each have a half of those. It’s nearly like Clare’s just family for Erin now. It’s just one of those old friendships that they nearly can’t remember what they have in common, but it doesn’t matter.
What do you think her family is like?
I imagine Clare having five sisters that are all younger than her and she’s the big sister who is the example. She’s quite bossy to them, I guess. I toyed with showing the sisters in one episode because I imagine her just having loads of little girls that all dress the same. Her little army of sisters. I think it’s a very girly household. In series three, we see Clare’s bedroom and it’s all pink and flowers. I think it’s a very girly house and I think there’s a lot of women in it and the dad’s very exasperated by all that energy.
Courtesy of Netflix
Did you tweak or mold the character at all when Nicola was cast?
All the characters, actually, as they were cast. Clare, I tweaked her early on before Nicola was cast. I realized because Clare and Erin go so far back, they sometimes sounded the same on the page. It’s an old friendship, so had a lot of the same thoughts about things on the page at one stage. Erin’s ambitious as well and they share these qualities and that’s probably how the friendship has remained. But I realized I needed to push them in different directions in a big way. That was where I got the idea that Clare will always be the one that tells on her friends, will always put her school record above any relationship. Erin, I pushed in a more ego like way.
I have never in my life seen a show where a non-teenager [Coughlan is 35] so convincingly plays a teenager.
It’s insane. I think she just gets in the zone. The school uniforms are an incredible thing. They all put on those uniforms and change immediately. There’s a pack thing happening that they start to feel like a group of school kids. But I start treating them differently when they’re in the uniforms as well, in the way I speak to them. I have to stop myself and say, “I’m not a teacher and this is not a classroom.” But I’ll be like, “No girls, you have to come over here.” I have to apologize to them in the moment and say, “I always forget you’re not kids.”
How did you plot out her coming out?
I knew Clare was gay before I started even really writing the first script. We didn’t want it to even be hinted at really, until that episode [where she comes out]. I wanted Erin to feel… she’s not upset that Clare’s gay, really, she’s upset that her best friend has kept this part of herself from her. I wanted to really land that on the audience the way it landed on Erin. That’s why I held it back.
Then I really wanted Clare being a lesbian to not just become a story. There’s a few jokes, but in the same way that the girls joke about straight things, like guys they fancy or whatever. I didn’t want it to be the [whole] story because I just thought this needs to be a gay character in an ensemble comedy, and that’s just one of the things she is.
If you’re from a background like ours, you always think you’ve done something wrong when you haven’t.”
With teenage shows, I can’t remember anything other than Derry Girls where the big crisis is your shirt turning pink in the laundry or raising money for a school trip. The character aren’t doing drugs, they have this innocence that I do think a lot of kids growing up actually experience.
Completely. I think when I was a teenager I started to feel like I should be these kids on TV. I should be more mature, I should be doing these things and actually that’s the lie. Most kids aren’t doing those things. They probably aren’t having sex. They’re not on drugs. They want to be, but they’re not. There’s a place for it in some shows, but I don’t like everything being about sex with teenage girls. We have no sex in Derry Girls. Michelle uses it as a punchline. She wants to have sex, she’s desperate to have sex. But I didn’t want anything genuinely sexy on our show. I just wanted them to be ridiculous. That was very important to me, that they shouldn’t be sexualized. I’d just never seen a group of girls allowed to just be the silly idiots.
What do you think her relationship to her hometown will be as she gets older?
Clare’s very clever and I think she’ll realize that that’s the place that shaped her and gave her the opportunities that she’s had. I don’t think she lives there, but she continues to do work there. They all were very happy there as kids and they have good memories.
Courtesy of Netflix
How do you think experiencing, witnessing, and growing up around conflict shaped her character?
I think she’s got a very clear sense of justice. Particularly in series three, being part of that referendum and the Good Friday agreement vote, she’ll realize how important that was. It’s maybe partly why she’s so nervous. There’s a joke, if you’re from a background like ours, you always think you’ve done something wrong when you haven’t. If you’re getting searched in security at the airport, [you think] Oh my god. You know you haven’t done anything wrong, but it’s having been brought up in that heavily armed environment. I think that it hasn’t helped her nervous disposition, but it’s probably given her a keen interest in politics and justice.
What do you think Clare really loves? What do you think really makes her the happiest?
Her friends and just them being together and doing stuff. She’s very comfortable with that little group of friends. She just wants them to be together and experience everything together. In series two, when the Clintons came and she’d been holding that spot in the line so long, she just gives it up because it doesn’t matter. Ultimately her friends are very important to her and despite everything, she’s very loyal to them.
How do you think her friends are shaped by knowing her?
They probably think for a millisecond more. They’re probably more educated because sometimes she’ll tell them something and it’ll blow their minds. They’re like, “Oh my goodness. That’s right.” I think they’re more ambitious because of her. Particularly someone like Michelle might go, “Who cares about people like us?”But Clare’s like, “No, we have to achieve.” She’s like a pushy mom sometimes.
What do you see for Clare in her future?
I thought a lot about where they all are. I think she’s gone on to a really good university. Maybe a top one, Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard even. I think she’s got a law degree and I think she’s probably a cutthroat prosecutor or something and really top of her game. She’s probably had the same girlfriend since she was 21 and they got married, probably have a few kids. She’s has ticked every box and is just a very successful woman. But she’s still friends with all the gang and they’re still getting into trouble on nights out or whatever.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Associate Editor
Adrienne Gaffney is an associate editor at ELLE who previously worked at WSJ Magazine and Vanity Fair.