The Disappeared: ‘If you think there are straightforward heroes and villains then you are not thinking hard enough’

Patrick Radden Keefe, wrapped in a long quilted coat, is standing on Kitchener Street in south Belfast during the filming of Say Nothing, his book about the abduction, murder and disappearance of Jean McConville.
It’s winter and it’s cold and grey. This is after eight months of filming the television series by FX Productions, to be screened on Disney+ from November 14th. The New Yorker writer, a Bostonian, is also an executive producer and now an old movie hand. “That’s the thing about a shoot,” he observes. “It’s interesting for the first 10 minutes, then it loses its novelty.”
The UVF insignia in the area tells that you are in loyalist south Belfast. But this redbrick terraced street is standing in for 1972 nationalist West Belfast.
Close by, Mike Lennox, who made Derry Girls, is directing a scene where Seamus Wright and his wife Kathleen are leaving a wake house in West Belfast. In the clip, as he reaches his black Ford Anglia car, Wright gets dog dirt on his shoe. He walks to a nearby alleyway to wipe off the poop when three undercover British army soldiers grab, hood and drag him away. This scene is the prelude to his allegedly becoming an informant, and thereafter one of the Disappeared. Lennox films the scene over and over again.
This is recent history. A global audience will be viewing, but those watching most intently will be the people of Belfast, of Northern Ireland and of this island.
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People here know the main characters, living and dead: among them, Jean McConville, Gerry Adams, sisters Dolours and Marian Price, and Brendan “The Dark” Hughes. People will be scrutinising for characterisation, for dress, for period validity, for gesture and accent, for an authentic representation of the Troubles. It is sensitive territory – Radden Keefe and Lennox know they must get it right.
The series specifically addresses the stories of Jean McConville, of Joe Lynskey and of Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, who were abducted, killed and disappeared by the IRA – the common factor in the murders is the late Dolours Price, who in the film I Dolours made by journalist Ed Moloney said she was involved in all four killings. She also admitted being one of the three who shot dead Jean McConville, and named another IRA man, the late Pat McClure, as one of the three.
She did not name the third.
Radden Keefe, in his book Say Nothing alleges that the final member of the group was her sister Marian Price, who through her solicitor has denied the claim.
Seamus Wright (25), played by Frank Blake, and 17-year-old Kevin McKee, played by Paddy Towers, were abducted, murdered and disappeared by the IRA in late 1972, allegedly because they were British army informants.
Dolours Price was one of those who drove them across the Border, as she also did with Jean McConville and Joe Lynskey, a former monk and later IRA member whom the IRA killed over a complex case related to his affair with an IRA’s man wife.
It’s a bleak afternoon with maybe two hours or so of light left as Lennox repeats and repeats the scene from various angles – a clip that takes up about 40 seconds of television time in episode two.
There are young boys and girls about, dressed in 1970s clothes, looking slightly ragamuffin, waiting for their later scene. Classic cars from the period line the street: in addition to the Anglia a green Austin of England and a brown Triumph Dolomite, and parked a distance away out of camera sight, a light brown Mercedes Benz of 1990s vintage. That’s for yet another scene to be completed in the next couple of hours.
It feels of genuine, gritty Belfast in the early days of the Troubles. There’s a poster for the Dubliners playing in the Ulster Hall and another for the Fortunes Showband. Sky satellite dishes on the roofs and walls along the street will be excised from the pictures to ensure period accuracy, as will any other signs of modernity.
In the middle of one take a local man casually walks through the alleyway, ruining the shot. Nobody is particularly bothered, just one of the perils of this craft. But you can sense a little tension between some of the producers on site, who want to push on, and Lennox, who is seeking perfection.
Also, it’s been a long day, starting off at sunrise, and people on set are looking forward to their weekend time off. But Lennox wants things done exactly right.
Finally, finally, he is reasonably happy, and he moves on to the next scene of the children playing ball on the street, a girl walking a doll in her pram, and cars moving up and down.
During these takes, Maxine Peake arrives on set. She had a leading role in the legal drama Silk and has had many TV and film roles. She plays the older Dolours Price, and is dressed in the slightly theatrical style of clothes Price wore in later life. Her task is to drive the 1993 Mercedes Benz down Kitchener Street. She does it once and then a driver backs it up Kitchener Street. She drives it down again and that is her done for the day.
She alights from the car and Lennox says, “Tough day, Maxine,” and gives her a hug. They laugh and with dusk well settled and night fast approaching, everyone starts wrapping up for the weekend.
Say Nothing covers a broad sweep of modern Irish history from the Burntollet civil rights march in 1969 to the arrest of Gerry Adams in 2014 for questioning about the murder of Jean McConville.
It’s a big production. The series was written by Josh Zetumer and a team of writers. There is a cast of 200 and a production team of 150, and an overall cost somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars. The series was filmed in Belfast; on a set near London that recreated 1970s Belfast; in Sheffield, where 1960s-built flats were used to stand in for the long-toppled Divis Flats of West Belfast; and in Bath, where an old local prison doubled as Brixton Prison. This was where the Price sisters were held after their conviction for the London Old Bailey bombings of 1973 and where they conducted their 208-day hunger strike – the force-feeding of the time keeping them alive.
Lennox directed all three series of Derry Girls, and in his head decided that that was enough Troubles material for a while. But he heard about Say Nothing and, as he admits, feeling “incredibly cynical”, wondered how this guy from Boston came to be writing about the conflict?
“And then I read it, and I read it over one night. And then I got on to my manager and, like, asked, ‘What’s the craic, who’s doing this?’ It was such a big sensitive subject, it was almost like a compulsion. I wanted to be part of it.”
He got the job, directing the first two and last two of the nine episodes. He also is a producer on the series.
The story of Jean McConville and the other characters is a world away from the comedy of Derry Girls but, as Radden Keefe explains, Lennox was chosen because “Derry Girls got Derry and its people” and because he delivered storytelling with a universality that could be appreciated in “you know, France, South Korea, Florida…”
Lennox and Radden Keefe say they were hugely sensitive to the “responsibility” of what they were embarking upon. Through victims’ support organisation Wave they engaged with some of the families of the Disappeared.
“You can understand how the idea of the drama based on the most tragic things that have happened to them and their lives would be something that some of them would be uncomfortable with,” says Radden Keefe. ”We believe that it’s important to tell, and we’ve tried to tell it with as much compassion and sensitivity toward the tragedy and the trauma that they’ve experienced as we can.
“I think that most people who watch it will agree that it’s an enormously sympathetic story about the suffering of the victims.”
Judith Roddy, who had the part of Ms de Brun in Derry Girls, plays McConville. Radden Keefe notes that another element of her tragedy is that a lot is known of her death, but very little of her life. Recalling the family’s conviction that she was murdered because she gave succour to an injured British soldier, providing a pillow to rest his head, Radden Keefe says that Roddy depicts a woman who in adversity was kind and compassionate and had great love for her children.
Much of Roddy’s portrayal, he adds, consisted of “showing her interacting with her children, just showing her as a mother and as a widowed mother of 10 kids, showing the exhaustion of that, but also the warmth”.
Dolours Price in the film I Dolours told how she was haunted by the killings of the Disappeared, saying she regarded them as a “war crime”.
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She and Brendan Hughes, whose characters are superbly crafted, suffered deep depression, it can be fairly said, and died of abuse of drink and drugs with, it seems, conscience and post-traumatic stress contributing to their deaths.
Says Radden Keefe, “What I was trying to do in the book, and what we’re trying to do in this series, is that when you look at a story about any kind of paramilitary group, often these stories are told in one of two ways. Either it’s a very sympathetic romanticised version that kind of whitewashes the terrible things that they do. Or it’s a story in which they’re kind of two-dimensional villains. They’re like moustache-twirling evil psychopaths.
“And what we’re doing is something else altogether. It doesn’t let anybody off the hook in terms of the horrors of what they do, but it shows that the costs of radical violence are borne not just by the victims, but actually by the perpetrators themselves.
“I have always said about this story, ‘If you think there are straightforward heroes and villains then you are not thinking about it hard enough’.”
Radden Keefe also reflects on how McConville’s story is such a universal tragedy, how his book had a worldwide audience and how places such as Colombia with the drugs cartels and Italy with the Red Brigades of the 1970s could identify with the characters and the suffering.
Radden Keefe stresses that the coinciding of the series with the upcoming general election in the Republic is purely accidental and that he had no desire to “enlist the book in anyone’s political project”. Regardless, the pitilessness of how the Disappeared were dealt with and who at leadership level “disappeared” them are grimly addressed, and inevitably these are matters likely to feature in the election campaign, which will be yet another challenge for Sinn Féin.
[ Searching for Northern Ireland’s disappeared: ‘As the years went on, it just became life’Opens in new window ]
After each episode there is a disclaimer saying that “Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence”.
How does Radden Keefe think the former Sinn Féin leader will react to Say Nothing? “I don’t see Gerry Adams as a straightforward villain or a straightforward hero. I think that’s part of what makes him so intriguing. So I think that the series gives him a fair shake. I think the book gives him a fair shake. But I also can see how the version of history that it’s telling is one that he would categorically dispute. You know, after all, according to him, he was never in the IRA. I can’t imagine it will be high on his streaming view.”
Viewers will be observing most acutely whether the actors capture the character of Adams; his younger self played by Liverpool man Josh Finan, and the older Adams played by actor and novelist Michael Colgan.
Jude McSpaddan is certain they do. The dialect coach for the series, on set she explains that characterisation isn’t about mimicry but about “getting the essence” of the person, of finding the right tone, inflection, accent and voice.
She had to explain to Finan and Colgan how Adams, and many others in Belfast, tends to use “nai” for now and “har” for how. She also recommended that in order to get a feel for the Belfast pitch and intonations, the cast should view I Dolours and also the series about the Troubles, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland.
Irish viewers will be familiar with many of the cast. Tom Vaughan-Lawlor of Love/Hate is cast as the older Brendan Hughes. Hazel Doupe, who played the Irish Traveller girl Frances in the film Float Like a Butterfly, acts as the younger Marian Price and Helen Behan, who appeared in This is England ‘88 and The Virtues, plays her in later life.
Radden Keefe and Lennox have no favourites as such, but there is no doubting that Lola Petticrew, who plays the young Dolours Price, and Anthony Boyle, who plays the young Brendan Hughes, have made an impression.
They are both from West Belfast. “They just understand this world,” Lennox enthuses. “They understand these characters, it’s in their DNA – that is something that you can’t fake. You can rehearse as much as you want but they have something innate in them which, when you see it on screen, feels truthful and humane and electric.
“And what’s a real reward for me is I met Anthony and Lola more than 10 years ago doing community projects in West Belfast. I just remember both of them at 16. I mean, they were just two individuals with such talent unlike anyone’s I’ve ever met.”
Radden Keefe says there was a spirit of camaraderie on set and that the production team and cast, particularly with so many from Ireland, felt they had “skin in the game” and that they must be able to “stand by this story”.
That is evident in the production. It is superior and powerful work, at all levels, in the writing, in the acting, in the direction, in the depiction of the horror and torment of the Troubles. You unavoidably ask the question, as Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes asked – what was it all for?
There is some dramatic licence, which clued-in viewers will detect, but not much: the essence of the terrible story of Jean McConville, in its humanity and inhumanity, is fully and deeply realised. There is light, shade and darkness, and much of that hard-boiled caustic Belfast wit that helped so many people through the conflict. Watching the episodes unfold, you couldn’t help but mark its resonance with Frank O’Connor’s great short story, Guests of the Nation, about the Disappeared of an earlier conflict, the War of Independence.
Is there a moral? “It’s about the costs of violence and the way they echo down the years,” says Radden Keefe. “I think it’s also about the dangers of silence. The book is called Say Nothing, right? And there are a series of things that the book asserts that some people would probably prefer that it not do, and I tend to think that if you try and turn your back on things or sweep them under the rug, they don’t go away. They fester.”
A lot of what he does as a journalist, he adds, is enter into situations where responsibility or answerability isn’t accepted or acknowledged. “I think storytelling has a function. There is an accountability in telling the truth, in setting the record straight.”
Of the 17 Disappeared, all but four of their bodies have been recovered. Still missing are Joe Lynskey, Columba McVeigh, Seamus Maguire and British army captain Robert Nairac. The end of the ninth and final episode makes an appeal for anyone with information about the location of the bodies to bring it forward.
The names of all the Disappeared “should be known the world over”, says Radden Keefe. “It was a horrifying thing that was done to them and to those families, and that’s an important story and one we have tried to tell with dignity and integrity.”
Say Nothing screens on Disney+ from Thursday, November 14th