McGee chats about the Netflix hit's lasting impact, the art of character development, and what’s up for her next.
If you haven’t watched it yet, Derry Girls is, in the words of salty protagonist Michelle Mallon, “class” — one of those shows you casually snap on, only to find yourself audibly laughing in no time. Based on creator Lisa McGee’s own Catholic school friend group, the hilarious comedy is centered around four scrappy teenage girls from Northern Ireland (and a male cousin from London) as they get up to the kind of hijinks teenagers tend to get up to in the early ’90s, toward the end of the Troubles, the three-decade-long violent conflict between Irish Catholic nationalists and English Protestant unionists. The series stars Saoirse-Monica Jackson (as Erin), Louisa Harland (Orla), Jamie-Lee O’Donnell (Michelle), Dylan Llewellyn (James), Bridgerton’s own Nicola Coughlan (Clare), and Siobhan McSweeney (Sister George Michael), and McGee’s whip-smart comic sensibility has made devout Derry Girls fans out of everyone from kids to seniors alike around the globe.
Before Derry Girls, McGee cut her teeth writing various TV series, including Being Human, The White Queen, a sitcom called London Irish back in 2013, and Raw, a 2008 to 2013 series she created about the restaurant business. Most recently, in 2020, she co-created a psychological drama called The Deceived with her husband, writer Tobias Beer, and her latest project, Skint, which tackles the idea of poverty via seven 15-minute monologues from individuals from all walks of life, is currently airing on the BBC.
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As the final season of Derry Girls is set to premiere stateside on Netflix on October 7, fans have been eagerly chomping at the bit to see how the five friends will make their foray into young adulthood. The third season takes care to wrap things up thoughtfully, gradually winding down from Derry Girl slapstick to a sweeter, more wistful tone, with poignant plot twists that anchor each character to a place and time. McGee hopped on a Zoom with Shondaland to discuss what it was like to wrap up the show, how she approaches character development, and what she’s working on next.
Note: This interview contains brief spoilers for Derry Girls.
VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: Every character on Derry Girls is so perfectly rendered. What inspired you to write it?
LISA McGEE: I always wanted to write about my school days — that convent-school Catholic girl experience. I felt it hadn’t been represented truthfully before. My friends were ridiculous and funny. They were the ones who got themselves into the scrapes; they weren’t girlfriends of lead characters. The political stuff came second to that because that just happened to be the environment I grew up in. The characters and friendship were the most important elements when I started writing it.
VMS: What pleases you most about the show’s success?
LM: I love the range of people that watch it. You get everyone from very young kids who maybe shouldn’t be watching it yet to old men. Certainly, in Ireland, you get old guys coming up to you saying, “I knew a Sister George Michael” or “I knew an Uncle Colm” — certainly, everyone seems to know someone like him. It was something I wrote that was very particular to me, very specific, but it spoke to people from all walks of life. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I wasn’t expecting to get messages from Mexico and India about how their mums are just like Ma Mary.
Lisa McGee
Charles McQuillan//Getty Images
VMS: It’s also refreshing to see teenagers live lives before cell phones.
LM: Yes. iPhones and stuff, they’re not your friend. They solve things too easily. So story-wise, you could go back to that classic storytelling with misunderstandings because things can’t be cleared up right away.
VMS: Like Clare having to go to three parties before she found everyone in the finale! Did you always plan on ending Derry Girls after three seasons?
LM: I did. I felt like it was about that little gap between childhood and adulthood. I wanted it to feel fast and furious like that period in your life — it goes by in the blink of an eye. I planned it for three seasons, so to be able to do that was amazing. To be able to end it exactly how I wanted to wrap it up was such a gift. It rarely happens that a writer gets to do that. There was also one very small door into Irish history, where the country seemed to grow up over a number of years, that sort of aligned with my teenage years. I just felt it all slotted together really nicely, with them turning 18 with the Good Friday Agreement vote. Those characters are endearing and fun because of the stage of life they’re in. If they got older, they might’ve become annoying.
VMS: How do you approach character development on a project?
LM: Character development is the part that’s really difficult to crack — to make a character unique but believable as a person in comedy is quite a tricky path to walk sometimes. I start with a real person, and I take one element of that real person that I find interesting, and I might take another element of someone else I know and smash those two together and see what happens. I’ll start doing some character work, maybe write dialogue for them. I can’t really start the script until I can hear them. Once I can hear them, then I’m good. I know they don’t sound like any other character, and I know what they would say nearly in any situation. It’s tricky. I’m writing a new show now, and it’s a comedy as well, and I’ve kind of forgotten how hard that is at the start, how difficult it is to create these people again. Because the luxury of doing a show that ran for three seasons is once I’ve done that, I could just write them.
VMS: You channel them after a while, I would imagine. It’s intuitive. “Michelle would say this here …”
LM: Michelle just kind of writes herself, honestly. It was just happening. She’s a character who knows what she thinks about everything, so I’ve never really had to think about Michelle much. She sort of told me.
VMS: There’s a loose “yes, and” vibe heightening each comic scene — is it tightly scripted, or does the cast throw a few errant extra “d--kheads” in there?
LM: There wasn’t really improv because it’s such a large ensemble cast. It was pretty tightly scripted. When you bring in Sister Michael and her sidekick, there are about 13 of them sometimes in one scene. So, there isn’t much room to maneuver. It’s like a piece of music, and you sort of conduct the rhythm of it and how things fall. Everything has to get worse for them plot-wise, but also they start to whip themselves up, so the pace gets faster. Sometimes the dad, who is played by Tommy Tiernan — he’s a very famous stand-up comedian here in Ireland — he sometimes improvs bits and pieces just because he’s got that comic history. But apart from that, there wasn’t much, no.
VMS: Was it hard for you to let these characters go?
LM: It felt like [it was] completely the right time to do it — I just know it was right. But also I have little notebooks around my house, so if a line for one of them would’ve come into my head, I would write it down in the Orla book or whatever. I remember after we were editing the show when it was over, I wrote something down for Orla and then realized that I don’t write for her anymore. She’s gone. It is weirdly — not to be too dramatic — a bit of a death. It’s the end of all these characters. But then you discover what’s beautiful about being a writer, what I really love and I’m so lucky, is you can do it again. You can build another world. And that’s sort of how I’ve coped with it, really. I’ve thrown myself into another show. Derry Girls was a very special show for me because it was about my family and friends. There’ll never be another show for me like that, so I was very aware of that.
VMS: Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
LM: Always. My biggest idol was and is Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. I wanted to be Jessica Fletcher. When I was a child, I used to pretend to be Jessica Fletcher. I thought I’d be a novelist like her and solve murders in my spare time.
VMS: As one does! You started out as a playwright. Did you always want to write TV specifically? Was it something you always dreamed of? How did that switch come about?
LM: I was always a massive TV fan. It was always a dream — I just wasn’t quite sure how you would make that happen in Ireland. There’s a massive theatrical tradition, obviously. I knew about playwrights, and I knew how that happened, so I felt like there was more opportunity for that, so I did that first. Through my plays, television presented itself because I got an agent and those doors opened. I think I started in plays because I just knew I wanted to write for actors; I knew I wanted to write drama. That was just my way in. But it’s just a dream. I still can’t believe I do it!
VMS: What do you wish you’d known about working in television during your first gig that you know now?
LM: That’s such a good question. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I wish I had known the things that were different about me as a working-class female writer in a room in London were the things that were going to be my strengths and set me apart from everyone else. I wish I just sort of backed myself a little bit more and listened to myself a bit more. I got there, and I realized that my voice and story was valuable and interesting, but I wish I’d known that from the start, the way that a lot of guys do. In many ways, I was very blessed with the opportunities that I got early on, and I learned a lot by working on a lot of different shows, but it’s just so funny to me that the story I had the whole time is the one that broke out.
VMS: Tell me a little bit about Skint. It must’ve been a big change from working with ensemble dialogue to working on monologues. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired it?
LM: It’s seven monologues from seven writers. I kind of curated it, but I wrote one as well. Because of my background, I feel very strongly about people from working-class backgrounds getting the opportunities that other people have. All of the writers have personal experience of poverty. So, it was just really fascinating, the breadth of stories you got. Some are really funny, and some are devastating. I learned a lot from working with those other writers. It was an incredible experience. It was really about putting more stories out there from writers who have had that experience. It sounds like a depressing project in a way, but there was a lot of joy and color in it too.
VMS: There are plenty of people who watch TV because it’s the only source of entertainment they can really afford. They need to see themselves too.
LM: Totally. If you’re writing TV and you’re coming from that background, you are incredible. Because you had to be remarkable to do it.
VMS: Was it great working with Saoirse-Monica Jackson (Erin on Derry Girls) again?
LM: I know she can do lots of things — she’s brilliant. It’s so nice to know someone’s style comedically. With all five of them, you know how they’re going to nail things, and you can be very confident it’s going to land. My piece was funny. It’s sort of this bit about this character who is hiding their trauma behind a bubbly persona. She’s very physical, and we can do a lot of that.
VMS: When you’re writing, what’s your daily process like? Music, or no music? Coffee, or no coffee? Are you a 9-to-5 writer? Are you a 3 a.m. writer? How do you get the muse going?
LM: I love how obsessed other writers are about finding out other people’s process because we’re all just trying to work it out, aren’t we? The truth is probably a bit of everything. My ambition for the last 20 years is to be a 9-to-5 writer, and it’s just never going to happen for me.
I do a lot of work before I even start a script. I realize most of the work is kind of done walking around and thinking and making notes. If I’m writing something like Derry Girls, which is set in a certain time, I’ll listen to ’90s music. I only recently stopped listening to ’90s music because, during Derry Girls, that’s all I listened to. Then, I’ll have intense periods when I script. When it gets to the scripting stage, it’s like there’s never enough time, and it’s intense. But it feels like it’s taken all that time to brew the idea. I used to think when I was a younger writer that working was sitting down and tapping out things, and I guess that’s not the case. You can’t do that until you’re ready. Most of it is note-taking and trying out bits of dialogue, and then you start structuring and popping the story in place. There are so many stages of it. I find I need to know where I’m going; I need to know what the end of the episode is and what the acts are, and what the end of the series might be. I need to always have a path I’m going down, but I might go in different directions.
VMS: It all happens in your head, and it’s just getting it from your head to the page.
LM: I think that’s it. And sometimes, you have to write stuff that just gets banned. I wrote 10 pages the other day, and I was really delighted with myself writing them, and they felt really good. Then I read them back and went, “I needed to do that, but that’s not going to be on the show.” Sometimes, you just have to work through something.
VMS: Sometimes, it’s like a writing exercise that leads to the final project.
What can we look forward to seeing next? Can you talk about it?
LM: I can’t say who it’s with or anything yet, but I can broadly say I’m working on an out-and-out silly comedy more in the Derry Girls world of ideas, very gag heavy. Female lead, as well. Then I’m also doing a dark comedy thriller. It’s early days, I’d say, for both of them. There’s a lot of figuring out to do.