Aisling Sharkey, a 25-year-old actress from Lusk in County Dublin, is currently starring in season four of Ted Lasso as Niamh Harrigan, a scrappy Irish footballer on AFC Richmond's Lady Greyhounds team.
Sharkey said she had not grasped the scale of the show's fanbase before joining it. "It's bizarre," she said. "When you're filming, especially the kind of stuff we were doing, you're on the pitch for 12 hours a day, five days a week. You forget that the cameras are rolling and people are actually going to see it."
She added: "If I'm honest, being perceived on a mass level is quite terrifying."
Ted Lasso was created by Jason Sudeikis, a Saturday Night Live alumnus who also stars as the relentlessly optimistic American coach parachuted into English football. The show has won back-to-back Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series and built a devoted global fanbase.
Sharkey, who studied musical theatre in Dublin before attending Lane Theatre Arts in Epsom, where she was cast for the show, admitted she had not fully appreciated its popularity. "I mean, I didn't have an Apple TV subscription," she said, referring to the show's number one status on the streaming service. "I don't think I realised just how important the show was to people."
Her closest previous connection to football came through a former boyfriend who worked as a referee. "My ex was a ref, so I'm well versed in being at the side of a pitch with a runny nose watching some pretty average under-18 football," she said. She said women's football, as portrayed on the show, is played "for the love of the game without the politics and aggression that men's football can have."
Boot camp and on-screen inspiration
Learning to play was demanding. Sharkey said the cast completed a three-week boot camp before filming began. "I thought it might be a little cushty, kick a ball about for show and get to know each other. No, it was like boot camp with drill sergeants," she said. "It was great craic, but they didn't take it easy on us."
She said her character, Niamh, is "partially modelled on Roy Keane and Katie McCabe" for her formidable, tough-nut quality. Niamh regularly clashes on screen with her twin Siobhan, played by Rex Hayes, over the course of a seven-month shoot. "We got on so well thank god as we are in every shot together," Sharkey said. "It's like we had sibling energy from early on, and actually the entire cast just had this family, comfortable vibe."
She said the show's female characters are often "messy, annoying, aggressive," adding: "I like having that on telly and not apologising for it."
Working with Hannah Waddingham and Jason Sudeikis
Sharkey praised co-star Hannah Waddingham, whose career took off after she joined Ted Lasso as AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton. "She's a force," Sharkey said, describing Waddingham's 5ft11in presence as intoxicating. "She's so tall in every way." Sharkey said she had seen Waddingham describe deciding never to make herself small for anyone, and said the actress had taught her a lot about taking up space. "She's an oversharer too and I love that," she added.
Sudeikis, she said, is equally down to earth. "He's really good at what he does," she said. "He's human, if you know what I mean. He's lovely and patient."
A new academy for Irish performers
Alongside her Hollywood work, Sharkey is a patron of the newly founded Irish National Academy of the Arts, set up by her former teacher Rory Hughes, which is taking its first full-time intake this month.
Sharkey left conventional school after her Junior Certificate to attend a full-time performing arts college in Dublin, having already trained in dance and musical theatre. At 14, she landed a role in the BBC children's vampire fantasy series Heirs Of The Night, which took her filming in Latvia, Croatia and Norway with a chaperone but no parents. "I had my first drink, my first boyfriend, while filming that show," she recalled.
Looking back, she said she would have preferred to train in Ireland. "Ireland has never had a talent problem," she said. "I was a little girl with a talent, but what I needed was refinement to get me into a school." She said Britain has theatre primary schools that give performers an easier route to major productions, adding: "We Irish are doing it just as well with half the opportunities."
She noted the irony that, despite an international television credit, much of her Irish work is still cast through London, including her role in Ted Lasso and a recent film shot in Belfast.
Rejection, trolling and family
Sharkey said becoming an actress was never a calculated choice. "It wasn't like I made a calculated decision at 14 to become an actor," she said. "I think every actor or person in the arts will tell you, you do this as it's part of you."
She said rejection is constant in the industry. "It's en masse as an actor, you're just hearing 'no' every day, and it's hard not to take it personally sometimes," she said, adding that once past first-round auditions, factors like height, hair colour and ethnicity often decide casting.
She said she avoids reading online comments. "If you're watching a TV show, you don't like a character and you DM the actor that they're ugly and terrible, that says a lot more about you," she said. "I did my job and I got paid."
She said her Ted Lasso earnings have changed life for her family. "The money from this show has done so much for my family," she said. "We don't come from money, I don't come from performers. It's so much bigger than me."
The phone call that changed everything
Sharkey said she waited months for a callback after auditioning, having turned down a touring role in Mamma Mia on a gut feeling that she would not be doing stage work for some time. On the night of her final college show, she recalled standing backstage and telling herself to savour the moment because she doubted it would happen again soon.
The next morning, she got the call confirming she had the part. "Genuinely, it's actually indescribable, when you get a phone call like that," she said. "It changes the course of your life."
She has since worked on a new film and started writing and producing her own material. "So often, as women, we wait for opportunities, whereas I see so many men less qualified than me doing what I should be doing," she said, adding that she is trying to move past perfectionism and start creating.
Asked about a fifth season of Ted Lasso, Sharkey said she would like to return. "I'd love that, but we'll have to wait and see."
The Irish National Academy of the Arts opens its first full-time intake this September, offering training for students aged 15 to 18 with diploma and degree-level pathways in development. Ted Lasso season four is now streaming on Apple TV.
