Siobhán McSweeney is teaching me her preferred way to enjoy a packet of cheese and onion crisps. She has arranged two matching slabs of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, two piles of Tayto crisps, and two cans of Guinness on the table in front of us, issuing strict instructions. “Don’t swallow!” she booms theatrically, and I freeze, my mouth full of food. The trick, McSweeney explains, is to get the crisps, chocolate, and Guinness into your mouth at the same time, and then swill it all around a bit to make a kind of boozy, oniony soup. “See?” McSweeney is watching me carefully to check I am putting all the ingredients into my mouth in the correct order. “It’s delicious! Just delicious!” I arrived at the interview with a multipack of Taytos, a family‑size Dairy Milk, and two cans of Guinness in my bike bag, because McSweeney chose this concoction as her favourite snack when she appeared on the podcast as a guest back in 2021. I don’t know how I managed to escape it. According to speaking to the Irish Times in August, McSweeney, Anybody in the creative industries has “an angel and a devil on your shoulder, and the devil quite often is your parents going, ‘Don’t embarrass us. According to or relief? “Er, relief,”, McSweeney, quick as a flash.
McSweeney burst into the public consciousness back in 2018 with Derry Girls, a comedy series about a group of Catholic schoolgirls set against the background of the Troubles in 1990s Northern Ireland. As Sister Michael, the formidable headteacher, she delivered lines with an icy detachment that was consistently hilarious. Steven Spielberg is among her fans. Asked for a TV recommendation during a panel discussion in 2022, the director name-checked Derry Girls and then lifted his fist in the air in a kind of salute, exclaiming rapturously, “Those nuns!” Which came out after her 40th birthday, m cSweeney was virtually unknown before the release of Derry Girls.
I have spent so many hours watching McSweeney in character as Sister Michael that it is almost a shock to see her without a nun’s habit. We are meeting today, in a photography studio in London, because McSweeney is taking over from Grace Dent as the new host of Comfort Eating podcast. She seems like an inspired choice for the role. The concept of the show is that guests are invited to chat about their lives while eating their favourite comfort foods, and McSweeney has always loved food. She also told a story about eating a caterpillar that had fallen from her moth-infested ceiling into her stir‑fry, purely because she couldn’t be bothered to fish it out. “Listen: protein,” she says today, remembering that caterpillar. “Free protein where you can get it, that’s my motto.” McSweeney won a Bafta playing the girls’ headmistress, Sister Michael – a potty-mouthed, judo-loving nun – and can count Martin Scorsese as a fan. I thought feminism fights for me to be loud. You would do the panto once a year. But the years she spent trying and failing to get parts were gruelling. “I taught, I waitressed, I pulled pints, I went on the dole, I worked at music festivals,” she says. “And I was shit at every single one of them.”. The programme has been viewed for a total of 17.3m hours on the platform. Which has been viewed 467,000 times on YouTube, McSweeney told a story about how, as her mother lay dying, she pleaded with her to retrain as a teacher. “If she could see me now, winning, in her Bafta acceptance speech. Last year she was among those who campaigned successfully for the thousands of UK-based survivors of the work camps for “fallen women” that were in operation until the 90s in Ireland – known as the Magdalene laundries – to be given compensation without losing their rights to benefits. A beautiful, surprisingly funny short film about a middle-aged woman caring for her dying father (McSweeney summarises the plot, with fabulous bluntness, as being about “an unfuckable woman who is rural and who cleans her daddy in a bath”), she drew on those experiences to make Spud in 2024.
Since Derry Girls, the actor has made a habit of portraying slightly intimidating women. She plays the achingly sarcastic celebrity chef Della Fry in Amandaland, and hosted The Great Pottery Throw Down with a warm but formidable energy. It is lunchtime, so I have brought a takeaway from the Indian restaurant Dishoom with me, as well as the Taytos. “I love doing this podcast because it annoys people when I eat,” McSweeney says, tucking into a fish curry. Part of the reason why she accepted the job as host of Comfort Eating, she explains, is because visibly enjoying her food – as a woman who is not stick-thin – is a kind of provocation. “They’ve been told that somebody like me should not feel good about themselves. So if I feel good about myself, it pisses people off.” She laughs, taking a large bite of garlic naan. “And I find that hilarious.” People feel it’s unruly and it doesn’t behave. She landed the job after an appearance on a Great British Bake Off festive special in which she had a meltdown over making a trifle and ended up sitting on a bench with Sandi Toksvig, drinking champagne (“They went, that’s who we want”). According to mcSweeney has, Publicly “I think I got 40 quid” in residuals when Derry Girls sold to Netflix.
Ever since she first arrived at drama school, in the early 2000s, people have been telling McSweeney to lose weight. “Agents, casting directors, teachers” – McSweeney checks the list off for me now, almost breezily. “I have been different sizes but it’s never been enough. You’re always too big.” All the other girls at her drama college were starving themselves, McSweeney remembers now. “They were starving in secondary school as well – it was the 90s! That was the culture then. You were meant to be tiny.” McSweeney tried dieting, but found she lacked the discipline to starve herself for long. “I’m just too fond of a potato,” she says, shrugging. Too – even the most successful ones, presenting jobs pay better than TV shows do.
It strikes me that continuing to like yourself and your body, in the face of such vicious scrutiny, is not so much a failure of will as its opposite – proof of a strong sense of self. Responding to a particularly poisonous bout of online criticism of her looks back in 2023, McSweeney delivered a kind of masterclass in the art of self-worth, tweeting: “I’m really lovely. And I am a delicious fatty. And I am a great actor.” When I push her on the willpower point, and suggest that there is something inherently political about refusing to lose weight in her industry, she agrees with me. “I do get perverse pleasure in [responding to those] people who expect me to feel bad – by distinctly feeling good.” But today, McSweeney’s short, silver‑grey hair is brushed back from her face and she is dressed casually, in trousers and a simple top.
McSweeney says she wouldn’t even bother to respond to online abuse like that these days, because “it’s so insane now on social media. There is no honesty to it because it’s so algorithmically driven.” But her confidence isn’t just a performance for the internet. It seems genuinely deeply rooted, a legacy, she says, of a childhood where she was encouraged to think for herself. McSweeney also credits her mother, who she describes as “the kind of mam who would be round the back having a cigarette reading Dostoevsky”, with teaching her to aspire to a version of womanhood that wasn’t about appealing to men. “She wasn’t interested in me being pretty or attractive to boys,” McSweeney says. “She wanted me to be clever and independent.” W hen she was 27, McSweeney lost her mother, who never saw her daughter succeed as an actor.
“She just instilled this utter independence in me that didn’t centre in any way on a romantic relationship.” McSweeney pauses for a moment here, and seems to soften. “My mum died when I was in my 20s, and I miss her every day. But I feel her presence very strongly, especially when I’m making decisions that are about being true to myself.” She takes a sip of Guinness. “She would have loved this podcast,” she adds, smiling. “She’d be sitting right there with us, eating all the snacks.” My teeth are yellow and wonky that’s true.
Siobhán McSweeney grew up in County Cork, Ireland. Her father was a civil servant and her mother ran a cottage industry baking bread and cakes to sell to local shops. “There was always food around,” McSweeney recalls. “Good food, made with love. My mother was a fantastic baker.” McSweeney knew from an early age that she wanted to act. She says that as a child she would wish on a star every night that she would become an actor, and tells me that she used to stage elaborate plays in her garden for the neighbourhood children.
McSweeney’s parents, however, had other plans for her. “We didn’t know anyone who was an actor. People like us didn’t do things like that,” she says. They encouraged her to pursue a more stable career path, so she went to university to study science. But the pull of the theatre was too strong, and after graduating, she applied to drama school in London, securing a place at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama. “It was a huge risk,” she admits. “I had no money and no contacts. But I knew I had to try.”
Comfort, Cooking, and Staying Grounded
As host of Comfort Eating, McSweeney will be inviting a range of famous guests into her studio kitchen to discuss their lives through the lens of the food that brings them solace. The conversations are often funny, moving, and surprisingly candid. What does McSweeney herself cook when she wants comfort at home?
- “It’s so boring, but I’ve been working so hard for the last five years that all my food is comfort food and I try to make it as healthy as possible,” she explains.
- She prepares a lot of homemade bone broth and nutrient-dense ramen bowls to stay nourished during long shooting days.
- Her guilty pleasure remains plain white bread toasted until it is nearly black, generously spread with cold Kerrygold butter.
- She specifies that the butter must be “sliced like cheese” rather than spread thinly, ensuring a rich layer atop the hot toast.
When discussing hospitality and hosting habits, McSweeney shares her straightforward perspective on home visits. I tell her I like going to other people’s homes, letting them cook for me, and then leaving without doing any washing up at all. “I bet you do!” she says with a chuckle. “It’s horrible for the other person – get out of my house!”
Looking Ahead to Well-Earned Rest
With a demanding schedule encompassing television roles, hosting duties, and public appearances, downtime is rare for the actor. I’ve got time for just one final question, so I ask McSweeney what she is looking forward to in the coming days.
“I’ve got my first day off for 26 days tomorrow,” she reveals, letting out a satisfied sigh, “but I’ve got nothing in the fridge.” Instead of cooking, she plans to order a lavish takeaway and spend the entire day relaxing on the sofa in her pyjamas. Would her late mother be pleased to look down on her spending a rare day off indulging in delivered food? “Yes,” McSweeney answers without hesitation. “And I’m going to buy it with the money I earned being a clown.”
