Interview with Maria Mulhall - Producer

How would you summarise the series?
Trespasses is an intimate and emotionally charged portrait of love in a time of conflict. Set against the Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland it follows Cushla Lavery, a young Catholic schoolteacher who strikes up an affair with an older married Protestant barrister. Through Cushla’s perspective, we see the collision of the personal and the political, the impossibility of staying untouched by the world around you, a world where every choice has consequences and following your heart is an act of defiance. It’s a cinematically rich and emotionally raw story about boundaries what it costs to cross them.

How did you get involved in the project?
Having recently wrapped on The Dry series 2, and having a new baby at home, I was enjoying a bit of downtime. My wife and I had just listened to Louise Kennedy’s interview on Annie Mac’s podcast, and we were so eager to read the book. The very next day, I got a call from Amanda Posey to ask whether I would be interested in working on Trespasses. Amanda was determined to find a creative partner in Belfast to help guide the authenticity and to cast the crew from here who could bring this story to life. That was two years ago now, and I’ve been gratefully living and breathing all things Trespasses ever since.

What is distinctive about shooting in Northern Ireland? How did you go about selecting the key HODs?
Belfast is an exceptional place to film. On a practical level, it offers an extraordinary variety of locations within easy reach. You can land at the airport and be on a beach, in a forest, a quarry, a train station or a studio in under twenty minutes. Creatively and technically, Northern Ireland is home to an outstanding pool of talent. From department heads to trainees, the crews here bring remarkable skill, dedication and heart to every project. A key part of my role was assembling the right team for Trespasses, people who not only understood the craft but could collaborate dynamically to bring authenticity and depth to the world we were creating.

The source material is incredibly rich, and the 1970s setting is always an exciting period to explore, particularly for design and costume. Crewing up for this was the easy part, I’m very grateful to say. While Trespasses is a work of fiction, it’s rooted in a shared history. When you’re working with people from Belfast, they all have their own relationship to what it was like living in the city in the 70s- whether that relationship be ancestral or a lived experience. That sense of collective memory brought a real emotional truth to the production, and to every single decision & choice. This crew are devils for detail.

Could you tell us about scouting the locations and what they have been like to film in?
Location scouting was a crucial part of our early planning. With Trespasses being a limited series, and Dawn directing all four episodes, it was important to have 80–90% of our locations confirmed before production began. With a mix of a lot of hard work and some luck, we managed to find some truly special spaces that brought the world of the story to life.

The standout was undoubtedly the Lavery home. This location had to make sense for our characters, but also serve as a fluid, dynamic environment for the actors and crew to move within. When we found it, our Production Designer made a few architectural adjustments and worked absolute magic with the set dressing. Suddenly, Cushla and Gina were home.

The pub was another key location. The pub needed to do a lot of the heavy lifting within the story. It needed to encapsulate the social and political “coding” of the world that we explore in the series. It’s where Cushla works alongside her brother, serves British Army soldiers, regulars from both sides of the divide, and where someone like Michael might come for a quiet drink. I’ll never forget the day we visited it for the first time, we collectively knew we struck gold. 

Tell us about the casting process beyond the three leads?
We really tried to give the casting process the time that it deserved and needed. Once Cushla, Michael and Gina were in place, we knew we had such an excellent palette to build from. Our first priority was casting Eamonn and Gerry – the next step in building the world of men who surround Cushla. The set of Michael’s friends was lots of fun, and the casting of the McGeown family was incredibly rewarding. We really wanted them to feel believable as a family. 

Casting child actors can often require the most amount of time. I think the knee jerk approach can sometimes be to ‘cast upwards’ in age but that’s not something that Dawn wanted to do, as she wanted to protect the 8-year-old innocence of Davy’s character. Always, we tried to fight for authenticity and Carla Stronge, our Casting Director, and her team were just phenomenal at finding the right actors and guiding the process.

What was the most challenging aspect of the production?
There were so many difficult aspects of Trespasses but having a story set in a specific period (1975) and based on a bestselling novel – paying justice to the book and the scripts was always going to be a the toughest of tasks. There was a lot of depth and detail in the scripts, and everything felt important in creating the world and the characters. Asking our departments for that effort in trying to get every detail and texture to sing, and to make sure we had the time in the schedule to have those breathing moments, was undoubtedly the greatest stressor. 

In equal measure, having the story told from Cushla’s point of view, meant inevitably that Lola Petticrew was in every single scene in the entire series. This is a mammoth task for an actor, especially when often forced to shoot scenes from multiple episodes in a day. To get prepared for every scene, there is a huge number of questions to be answered so the character is in the right headspace in the story. Lola is so hardworking and professional, but this was an unbelievable schedule that they managed to deliver on, with an utterly mesmerising performance throughout.

What is it about the story that makes Trespasses so relevant today?
Trespasses is set in 1975 and yet is so accessible and relevant to modern audiences. The themes of ‘trespassing’ in our series, would invoke very little shock in our modern world. It’s relevant for audiences due to the characters and their choices and struggles, not the specificity of what the themes are.  It feels like our world is becoming more polarised than ever – an anger and disconnect, and a horrendous focus on ‘otherness’. To quote a very Belfast saying “themmuns and ussuns”. Regardless of what Cushla’s circumstances are in Trespasses, the theme of ‘you’re just living your ordinary life and society is going to tell you that you can’t do that’ will always be a global story about human struggle that transcends time and place. 

Why should people watch Trespasses?
Trespasses is one of those stories that feels so dangerously alive. It’s hard not to get immersed and instantly invested in these characters lives. The storytelling is so rich, that it makes for an incredibly powerful viewing experience. It is entertaining, funny and heartbreaking in equal measure.