Few people are less daunted about the prospect of turning 30 than Lola Petticrew. “I used to be so afraid of getting old, and now I just think it’s the best thing ever,” they say. “I feel like I’m just coming into myself. And it feels fucking amazing. I think it’s such a fantastic thing to age – all the shit starts falling away and what you care about becomes more concentrated. I know what I want my life to be now, and I’m pretty stern on it. I don’t have to care about anything else.”
They’re telling me this over Zoom from New York, where Petticrew is shooting Furious, the new show by Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl, Dying for Sex). Petticrew plays a character who was sex-trafficked as a child and is now out for revenge, tailed by an FBI agent played by Emmy Rossum.
The role is a departure for Petticrew – who also just signed on for Netflix’s new Assassin’s Creed adaptation. They’ve spent much of the past year playing two Irish women of the Troubles generation. In November 2024 they starred as IRA agent Dolours Price in Say Nothing, an adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s true-crime book of the same name. And this November, in Channel 4’s Trespasses, they played Cushla Lavery, a young Catholic teacher who becomes involved with an older Protestant married man, with disastrous consequences. From those broad strokes of description, you might think there’s much to compare in the two roles, Petticrew’s biggest to date.
“The two of them actually couldn’t be any different,” they say. “Which is why it was so funny when people said, ‘Oh, you’re doing another Troubles story!’ These stories, these characters couldn’t be more different. It’s a funny thing that’s preserved for Irish actors and Irish stories, for some reason. I’ve never heard anyone say to an American actor, ‘Oh, are you going to do another American one?’ Or an English person, ‘Oh, you’re doing another English one?’ So it’s very odd that when I, as an Irish actor, choose to tell back-to-back Irish stories, it’s seen as weird.”
‘It’s very odd that when I, as an Irish actor, choose to tell back-to-back Irish stories, it’s seen as weird’ … Petticrew with Gillian Anderson in Trespasses. Photograph: Wildgaze
When Petticrew finds something odd, immoral or plain unfair, they will tell you so. They’ve used their platform over the past year to speak out in support of Palestine, to raise awareness for intergenerational trauma back home – like Dolours Price, they hail from west Belfast – and against classism and nepotism in the arts world. It’s a “posh boys’ club”, they tell me of acting in the UK and Ireland. “Nobody’s denying that these people are talented. What we’re talking about is making sure that working-class kids have the same opportunities so you don’t just end up with a bunch of one type of person in the arts – which is what we have. When I was growing up, it didn’t feel like a career in this industry was actually possible. When you come from wealth, you think that you can do anything. The world is open to you.”
There is pressure on many young actors to soften the views that Petticrew espouses so passionately. In February this year, Petticrew won best actor at the Iftas (Irish Film and Television awards) for their portrayal of Dolours Price, and used their speech to call out government inaction on the high rates of suicide in the north of Ireland for the generation who grew up in the aftermath of the Troubles – often termed “ceasefire babies”.
‘People want you to be less mouthy, but it’s not being divisive. It’s being on the right side of history’ … Petticrew as Cushla with Tom Cullen as Michael in Trespasses. Photograph: Steffan Hill/Channel 4
“There’s a sentiment from some people that I should be quiet and stop talking about it,” they say. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could shut up? I would love to do what other actors do and promote the thing and wear nice clothes and not have to think about all that. But it’s not a privilege that I have, unfortunately, because I can’t change the way that I grew up or where I’m from and the love that I have for it and the people who are being failed at every single avenue. If somebody’s giving me space to speak, it might as well be about something that matters.
“People want you to be less mouthy and just be grateful. But it’s not being divisive. It’s being on the right side of history. And I just don’t think any bag in the world is worth shaking the morals that I have.”
In Trespasses, Petticrew’s Cushla Lavery struggles with questions of morality and privacy, grappling with how to speak up for herself in a society that functions overwhelmingly on the basis of cultural omertà. Over the course of the series she learns to advocate for herself and for her community. It doesn’t necessarily stop her – or her love story – from being doomed. Although there’s eventual cautious hope for Cushla (and for the place she lives) at the end of the series – “giving the audience space to exhale”, Petticrew says of the show’s coda – her story remains tied up in the wider cultural story of the Troubles. “Cushla is quite able to stick up for herself, but there’s a softness in her,” says Petticrew, who devoured Trespasses, written by the Belfast author Louise Kennedy, and called her agent instantly to ask to audition for the role, even before the TV adaptation was picked up.
Petticrew as Dolours Price in Say Nothing. Photograph: Channel 4
“I suppose I knew both versions of these women,” they say of Cushla and Dolours. “I think that’s the thing about Irish people, isn’t it? We’re storytellers, and I think a lot of our houses are very matriarchal. And you quite often find yourself in situations, especially when you’re a kid, where it’s just a lot of women talking. I definitely grew up like that as well, and what a lovely way to grow up.”
It’s unsurprising, then, that any chance they get, Petticrew will return home to their beloved west Belfast. That’s what they’re planning to do not long after we speak, boarding a plane back east just in time for Christmas (and their 30th birthday on 26 December). “I cannot wait,” they say. “I’ll be straight on that plane, straight to my house, straight on my sofa with my dog, getting a west Belfast Chinese.”
What is a west Belfast Chinese, exactly? Well: salt and chilli chips with all the vegetables. Fried rice, chicken curry off the breast. Peas, fried onions, soft noodles with gravy. Then chicken balls, which are hollowed out and the batter filled with all of the aforementioned Chinese, which will be used much like a prawn cracker to dip into the curry sauce you’ve also ordered.
Petticrew explains all this without taking a breath. I blink. It’s possibly the most divisive thing they’ve ever said. “If you do it once, you’ll do it every time,” they say, and it’s convincing enough to make me take their word for it.
