Before the 2007 Northern Ireland peace process was ratified, Rev. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were mortal enemies. When Paisley stepped down from his post as First Minister of Northern Ireland in 2008, he and McGuinness were known as the “The Chuckle Brothers” for their genial public rapport.
The change was astonishing because the two men represented the extreme sides of the conflict over the six counties in the North.
From 1946 to his death in 2014, Paisley was a fiery Protestant pastor who opposed Catholicism. He even referred to the Pope as the Antichrist and founded the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which wanted Northern Ireland to remain as part of The United Kingdom and opposed the civil rights movement for Catholics in the region. Paisley and his followers were also staunchly against ecumenicalism and homosexuality.
McGuinness, who died last January, was a member of the Sinn Féin party, which favors the six counties in the north becoming part of the Republic of Ireland. In 2001, he was arrested in 1972 for carrying explosives and ammunition, and in 2001 admitted to having been a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Party.
While McGuinness had served as Education Minister and been in other government positions, Paisley unsuccessfully demanded McGuinness be removed from his post. One could easily imagine them breaking into loud arguments, but the two were so far apart, they didn’t speak to each other until the DUP and Sinn Féin started sharing power in 2007.
During the three decades McGuinness and Paisley and their factions feuded, 3,500 people died in “The Troubles.” The bloodshed and bombings took place in a region that’s slightly smaller in population than metropolitan Kansas City (1.8 million to 2 million).
The current film The Journey explores how the two men might have learned to communicate and lead their homeland away from The Troubles. While the movie’s banter is fiction, the incident is inspired by an actual trip McGuinness and Paisley took together to get from Scotland to Northern Ireland during the 2006 negotiations. The two had to share a flight to ensure that neither side killed the other.
In The Journey, the two leaders are stuck in a limo on a long drive from St. Andrews to the airport in Edinburgh and have little choice but to interact. A wily senior MI5 agent (played by the late John Hurt) is secretly monitoring the trip in order coax them into handling their disputes over religion and politics without resorting to bombings and gunfire. The agent hopes the conversation might pave the way to ending a conflict that had made both the Irish and the British weary.
The Journey is latest film from director Nick Hamm (who won a BAFTA for his short film The Harmfulness of Tobacco) and screenwriter-novelist Colin Bateman, who both hail from Northern Ireland.
In The Journey, real-life political figures like British Prime Minister Tony Blair (Toby Stephens) and Irish PM Bertie Ahern (Mark Lambert) nervously fumble as they try to play matchmakers to the seemingly implacable Paisley (Timothy Spall) and McGuinness (Dublin-born actor Colm Meaney).
Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness talk their way to peach in The Journey.
Meaney is probably best known for playing Chief Miles O’Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and for playing the frustrated father in three movie adaptations of Roddy Doyle’s The Barrytown Trilogy. He’s also starred in Layer Cake, Con Air, The Conspirator, Far and Away and Get Him to the Greek.
Spall is a favorite of British indie director Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvey, All or Nothing, Mr. Turner) and has had roles in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the Harry Potter films, Denial and The King’s Speech. Contacted separately by phone from New York, both actors explain how their lives were affected by the men they portray.
Colm, you knew Martin McGuinness, is that correct?
Colm Meaney: No. I didn’t know him. I met him on one occasion in 2011 when he was running for president of Ireland, and I supported his campaign. I thought he was the most qualified, and in my opinion, was a true statesman.
I kind of MC’ed his final rally in Dublin. I met him that night and got to hang out with him for most of the evening. It was such a joy and a pleasure. That was the only occasion on which we met.
What do you think made McGuinness think politics would be more productive than militancy?
Meaney: I think there were a number of events. The experience of the hunger strikes (which were led by Bobby Sands) in the early 80s, and they were having some electoral success then because there was a great deal of sympathy for the hunger strikers. I think the (democracy) movement started there.
I think they started to realize they could have electoral success, and also I think it began to occur to them—and it was true of both sides—that this was in a way, an unwinnable war. It became a sort of low intensity insurgency in the late 80s, and I think there was a gradual realization that British government were not going to be ejected from Ireland by force. And equally on the British side, there was a realization that the IRA were not going to be defeated militarily.
And there was another very important fact that happened in the 90s with Tony Blair’s election. Prior to Labour government coming into power, the Unionist Party in Northern Ireland was sort of affiliated with the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party consistently gave the Unionists, the Loyalist politicians, a veto over everything.
The basic response from Unionists to any proposal for any reform or any change was always no, and they were supported in that veto by the British government pretty much always.
Colm Meaney as Martin McGuinness in The Journey.
That changed when Blair came into power.
Blair, being a Labour politician, spoke to the Unionists basically said you can’t keep saying no to everything. There has to be some engagement. There has to be some change. It was hugely important in changing the Republican movement because they realized it was now possible to make some headway, to make some progress. That’s when they began to engage really forcefully in the political process.
The most recent British election seems to call back to what you’ve just talked about because the Conservative Party is trying to form a government with a Unionist party.
Meaney: Here’s a part of the complex situation in Ireland: The Unionist Party they’re trying to do a deal with is the Democratic Unionist Party. It’s is not the Unionist party that was affiliated with the Conservative Party (laughs).
That party would be the Official Unionist Party, which basically has no representation anymore. Going back to the 1920s, that was the party that ruled Northern Ireland. They were sort of slowly overtaken by the Democratic Unionist Party, which was the Unionist party that Ian Paisley founded in the 1980s.
Timothy, growing up in South London, how much were you aware of Ian Paisley? In the movie, Paisley knows someone is lying to him when the fellow (played by Freddie Highmore) claims never to have heard of or seen him.
Timothy Spall: Of course! You’d have had to have your head buried in the sand or be totally preoccupied with something insignificant not to have noticed him. All throughout my young adulthood and my childhood, it was on the television. Northern Ireland is part of the British Isles. It was a homeland conflict.
Of course, what happened was, the IRA switched their bombing campaign to London and Manchester and other places. We all went through a period of feeling like we were legitimate targets. I was very aware of it.
Unfortunately, it was something that had become the norm. It would become frightful at times. It seemed like getting past the chronic impasse was never going to be achieved. It would get closer, closer and closer, and then it would all fall to pieces. The main figures seemed to people who were pouring fuel onto the flames of discontent. It seemed like an absolutely insurmountable problem, which is why when it eventually got across the line it was astounding. I was personally astounded. I never thought there was a chance in hell of it ever happening.
Timothy Spall as Ian Paisley in The Journey.
This film is a take on what might have happened to achieve that in the last minute, but it certainly appears to have the truth about how these implacable enemies, these two impossibly passionate, uncompromising men were able to, through their connection and common humanity, reach out past their own body of support and to eventually achieve this amazing compromise.
Colm, one thing that seems kind of challenging is that for the first part of the film, you’re doing all the talking, and Mr. Spall says nothing, but you two are interacting.
Meaney: This is very much the way the relationship was.
For a number of years in the Northern Ireland Assembly before these events took place, they were both members of the Northern Assembly. Dr. Paisley would not just not speak to but not even acknowledge the existence of Martin McGuinness. He would just walk by in the corridors as though he didn’t exist.
There’s an interesting story that’s been told after these events. I think that Martin McGuinness told this story. There was one morning where suddenly, out of the blue, he was passing Paisley in the corridor, and Paisley kind of paused, looked at him and smiled and said, “Good morning.” And he was like, “Wow! What’s happened here?” And (McGuinness) knew then that things were going to change and that they could do a deal.
And so, it’s very consistent with the way the relationship was before the rapprochement in that Paisley was completely just ignoring him as if he didn’t exist.
Spall: Even in negotiations, the two different sides were not in the same room. They never sat in the same room, you know, ever. During those peace conferences, the Loyalists side were in one room, and the Republican side were on the other. And the British Government were the mediators. They never, ever, ever discussed it. They didn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence as human beings.
How do you play someone who’s not willing to talk?
Spall: It’s a part of cinema, isn’t it? You get the opportunity to be observed, not having to speak, therefore, your job is to carry silently, everything you’re not able to voice. It gives you an opportunity to establish the physicality of someone, to sit with them in quiet.
What’s interesting about Dr. Rev. Ian Paisley is that he was very rarely quiet. When he was on the television, particularly when he was being a firebrand on the stump condemning the opposition, he was one of the noisiest politicians that anyone has ever known. So to see this man, in quietude was the key to find this man. The rigid stanchions within him are kind of loosening.
That was a great opportunity to establish a certain reflection within him. In a sense, it was a loud silence, as far as I was concerned, that I was investigating within him.
When Paisley talks about meeting his wife, it’s intriguing because it’s the first time the audience hears him when he isn’t bellowing as if he’s delivering an angry sermon.
Spall: This film investigates how this sort of humdrum, for want of a better word, banal, small talk that leads to this connection. It is the root into (Paisley and McGuinness) find human in each other. These everyday, small talk conversations in which they are revealing, are connections, as they say. They flare up, and then they go back. They do break the ice.
Colm, you also played a politician or ward healer in Ron Howard’s Far and Away, but Martin McGuinness actually got something useful done.
Meaney: Exactly. There’s no comparison. I think the character in Far and Away was very much a self-serving, old-time, corrupt “ward healer” as you said, whereas McGuinness was actually, very much I believe, interested in serving his community, in serving his country and in serving humanity in a broader sense when he tried to kind of broker this pace deal.
In Alan Partridge, you played one of the most sympathetic hostage takers in screen history, and McGuinness’ stands might alienate people, but being an actor requires you to make him as human and sympathetic as possible. It’s almost like you have to represent the character as if you were his attorney.
Meaney: Certainly when you come to play unattractive or complex characters, in order to play them you have to try to see things from their point of view. You have to understand what’s motivating them or what’s driven them. In the case of Alan Partridge character, he was really kind of, for want of a better word, shat on from a large height (laughs), and he just kind of snapped.
As an actor you need to go inside and know what’s causing this person to behave this way.
Timothy, having played characters in fantasies and cartoons like the Harry Potter movies and Chicken Run, was how did it differ to play someone real like Ian Paisley?
Spall: There’s a lot of responsibility, particularly if they’re public figures. Everybody knows what they’re like, so you have to try to in some way embody their look. You can be somebody who’s a real life person, and nobody knows who they are, which, therefore, gives you a lot more freedom.
If somebody is a well-known figure, it’s not about impersonation. It’s about paying respect to and trying to become that person. You want to look a little bit like them and move a bit like them and behave like them. But the outside of somebody is their outside. What you want to do is make a connection with their inside. And you make a connection between them as a human being and you as a human being.
To me that’s a very private connection. You’re trying to make a connection where you are not impersonating but you’re trying to embody somebody. It’s a big difference, you know.
In a comedy sketch, you can get away with imitating a person’s voice, but for a two-hour movie that gets old.
Spall: Every time you have the audacity to go and try to do a bit of acting, you never know if you’re going to get it right. Your job is not to expect the consequences of what you’re going to do. It’s like not playing the consequences of someone’s actions. You play what they are, not the consequences of their actions. The consequences of their actions are what happens in the drama. You don’t play that.
You don’t play other people’s opinion of him; you play where he’s coming from inside. You make this pact despite whatever your political feelings are or what you’re feeling about them objectively. Your job is to connect your humanity with their humanity. It is acting, so it’s not a communion, but it’s kind of. You’re trying to fuse that to make it internalized rather than an exterior. Obviously, the exterior side is what comes out of the mouth, not what is going on in there. To me, that’s important. Other actors use other techniques, but to me, that sense of making a connection is very important.
In Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, you had to learn how to paint. What did you have to learn to become convincing as Ian Paisley.
Spall: It’s hard for me to say whether I am or not. What I did was I looked at him in his full blown tub thumping firebrand stuff, but then I started to look at him talking quietly and being more reflective.
There was one speech in particular that he gave to the Westminster House of Commons when he was leaving, which is very conciliatory. It’s a very different Dr. Paisley that we see, a man talking about the possibility of peace and the loosening of these rigid structures within himself.
I carried that around on my mobile phone and watched all the time, over and over. Every day I watched it at least five or six times, this moment when he was talking with quiet dignity about the possibilities.
One other thing that was an eye opener to me, or an ear opener, I should say, I listened to a lot of his sermons from quite far back that had been recorded. It’s an astounding power that he has, this absolute, almost nuclear powered, belief in the Gospel and in his ability to put it forth in true Evangelical preaching. It’s like something from another time. It’s unbelievable.
You can understand why this man actually converted people. I don’t affiliate myself with any particular church, but it’s an astounding thing to hear that in its actual practical use. It’s his belief. It’s absolutely not used as a device. It’s absolutely somebody who feels that they’re in touch with it, and it’s quite astounding.
It’s also about what it was like when he was a babe in arms. That’s always what I do. I look at pictures of people when they were children, if they exist, before all the slices of the tapestry of life have affected them. We’re really only grown up babies, you know (laughs).
In 2006, wasn’t Paisley 15 or 20 years older than you are now (60)?
Spall: 20 years older, actually (laughs). He’d been ill. He was a man of huge stature. Luckily I’m not, so I did have to go up in stature. I had a little bit of help with some makeup devices.
I had a little bit of a prosthetic chin and some teeth, and that was it really, and some raised shoes. The rest was about what it felt like to be him and what it’s like to be a man who has a large frame and whose powerful physical presence is in some way kind of dropping down, diminishing. He still has his resolve, but he’s losing his strident intransigence. It was something to investigate that. This might be a massive presumption on my part, but he was going on a change within himself.
Colm, from the way they’re portrayed in the film, it seems like you could make small talk with Martin McGuinness, whereas Ian Paisley seems like a remote theologian.
Meaney: Dr. Paisley’s life was his religion. He prayed a great deal, and however misguided I would think he was, he was sincere in that belief. How he could justify some of the things he did in the name of Christianity is a bit of a mystery to me, but I think he was certainly sincere in those beliefs.
Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) and Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall) learn how to speak to each other in The Journey.
When you were in Stephen Frears’ The Snapper, the actress who played your daughter had to learn how to do a Dublin accent to be believable as your offspring. Would it have been tricky for a Dubliner to be believable as someone from Belfast? I used to live in the American south, and the accents there are all over the place.
Meaney: That’s close to where I’m from. I’m from the Glasnevin area of North Dublin. No, well, actually, Martin was from Derry. That’s also true of Northern Ireland.
I was working with an actress from the North of Ireland when I was starting out in the theater in Dublin. She said to me, “Colm, you guy wouldn’t say, ‘Jaaansen.’ He’d say, ‘Johnson.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it says he’s from Analese Street, and on the corner Analese Street and the corner of Martin Street, they say, ‘Johnson.’” Give me a break! That’s how varied the accents are in the North of Ireland.
Martin was from Derry, which is a slightly more rural accent than the Belfast accent.
I hope you don’t mind me bringing up Star Trek, but with all the political turmoil lately in the United States and Europe lately, but do you think that Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness might have made the world of Deep Space Nine possible because if people aren’t killing each other, they can actually travel through space?
Meaney: Yeah, I’ve never considered that, but it’s certainly conceivable. I think the whole sort of message of Star Trek would be one of tolerance and of understanding and accepting difference. I think that was certainly the position that Martin came to in the latter part of his life. And for many years, from the mid-90s to his death, that was very much what he was trying to achieve: tolerance, understanding and acceptance of difference.