‘Kin’ star Clare Dunne on playing the ‘female Tony Soprano’ in new RTÉ crime drama

Amanda Kinsella appears in the series as the wife of a crime boss’s son, complex mother-of-two who serves as the 'legal' face of the family.

“Someone on set joked that I was the female Tony Soprano, a title I absolutely love,” Clare said ahead of the first episode aired on RTÉ on Sunday night.

“It was like there was no such thing as being one of those female roles that are there to serve the male. This was like, ‘oh, I’m getting the cake, all the layers’. The more I read it the more I loved it. He [Peter McKenna, creator] doesn’t limit characters because of gender, age, race or anything. He’s always just trying to create whole people and characters.

“I remember being given the script, and we only got the first four episodes, and I said to myself, ‘Holy God, he’s going there; he’s letting this woman explore every bit of herself’.

“She transforms and changes as it goes, and you get to feel that with her. I’ve seen some great strong female roles on-screen, but just from the script, I don’t think I’d ever seen so much going on in one character ever, that I’d been offered to audition for,” Clare said.

Kin centres on the Kinsella family, a besieged underworld but middle-class clan that are struggling to survive as an international cartel tightens their control on the streets of Dublin.

Aidan Gillen portrays Frank, the head of the Kinsella clan, while Emmet Scanlan plays Jimmy, his son and the wife of Amanda.

While violence is a central tenet of all crime dramas, Clare says Kin does not glamorise the life of crime.

“If there’s one word I would associate with violence in Kin it's consequences,” she said.

“We show a thing of fearing for your life and fearing for your children’s lives, and living in a sense of constant lockdown in your own life. Always looking over your shoulder. When playing Amanda, anytime I get in a car, I’m constantly checking over my shoulder and it’s a really stressful way to live, so I wouldn’t say we’re saying it’s great craic.

“I certainly play a character in which violence affects me hugely. My mission in life as a storyteller is just to explore where we are now. I wouldn’t use the word glamorise beside violence in this show, there’s nothing glamorous about it,” Clare said.

Kin has been billed as the next marquee crime drama following in the footsteps of Love/Hate, and while comparisons between the two are easy to make, Clare says the shows are actually very different.

“While it’s not a bad association to have, Kin is different to Love/Hate in that it’s a family drama that’s set in the crime world. I think it’s a bit more distilled, with less characters and more focus on their stories.

“The look of it is also different, as is the attitude. There’s way less violence and rape as we look at it and explore it in a different way. It’s different but it’s also great to be associated with that as Love/Hate created a great buzz in the country,” Clare said.

Clare said she is really excited to see the public’s reaction to Kin, given the hype it has generated before the first episode has aired, as she believes the show is “absorbing”

“I remember I sat down to read the script and I didn’t take my eyes off the pages for hours. I just thought to myself, ‘this is amazing’. I was completely absorbed. It’s confident writing and it’s deep.

“Peter’s [writing] was so slick. This guy is in his zone and is in his ‘I know what I’m doing mode’.”

This article was originally published on September 13, 2021.