WWhen it comes to comedy, there’s a little Aisling Bea who can’t turn to her hand. After training as an actress, she began performing on stand-up in her mid-twenties and quickly became a rising star on the scene, winning So You Think You’re Funny? in 2012 and was nominated for best newcomer to the festival the following year. The talkative charisma of the Kildare-born comic book was easily reflected on the screen; Bea quickly became a fixture on the panel, while continuing to land roles on sitcoms on both sides of the pond. In 2019, she wrote and starred in her own Channel 4 comedy-drama, This Way Up, playing Áine, an exuberant and quick-witted EFL teacher who struggles with her sanity. The show’s combination of dizzying humor and emotional weight paid off, and a second pandemic-designed series aired this summer. With television under control, the 37-year-old is now heading into filmmaking – specifically Home Alone’s new reboot, Home Sweet Home Alone, in which she plays the panicked matriarch Carol.

Updated versions of the beloved family movies of the 1980s and 1990s tend to garner a strong response online. How have you found the reaction to Home Sweet Home Alone so far?
Everyone says: “You do it again, you will ruin my Christmas!” Oh yeah, because Disney + removed the old one so you wouldn’t see it again, and then they make you pay money to watch it on Disney +. I found the reaction really heartwarming and funny. That’s sort of the reason Twitter was created: People complain about things that don’t matter.

Your character speaks with a chic English accent – something that sparked some heated discussion on social media when the trailer for the film was released. Why do you think people care so much?
There are a million psychological reasons. They were mostly Irish, and I could see people were trying to relate that to some form of oppression, because it was Americans who made me put an English accent. Maybe because I’m standing next to actors, people think: he’s my cousin, he’s my friend. But I’ve been an actor for 20 years, I did English, Australian and American accents – I just was less well known. I’m pretty sure I’m doing a job next year that’s going to be a Manchester accent, so everyone’s hanging on to your Twitter panties.

Your acting career started at Lamda. Was drama school a pleasant experience?
Not really. I think there is so much work to be done for drama schools. We’ve been given a variety of directors and taught to do whatever they tell you, and then later in the industry people are like, “Why didn’t people say anything, why no one didn’t say anything? But if you go to drama school, you’re trained to do what they tell you. I really found it to be a challenge, but I was very lucky with my classmates, they helped me a lot. I also think it was a huge culture shock to move to England, but it took me later to figure that out. I still sometimes feel like it’s like something is wrong, but no one is telling you what it is: you feel like the essence of who you are is weird or weird. Like taking something that I said as brutal – when I’m in Ireland it’s not straightforward. Or, there’s an idea of ​​what volume is in this country, and you’re like, I’m not loud, you’re just too quiet that I can’t hear you. Many of my friends are immigrants or the children of immigrants. I don’t know if there is a huge connection there but if there is maybe they are more tolerant because you felt like you weren’t quite getting something good thing. I felt like that most of the time.

You played in a skit troupe in college, but didn’t start boothuntil a few years later leaving theater school. Why did you come back to acting?
The only thing I knew when I left Lamda was that I would now be a respected actress of the National Theater. I didn’t have to do comedy anymore, I was just going to be serious. And how impossible it is for me… I went out without an agent, blond hair, no phone calls. I made this Irish soap for about three months it wasn’t what I expected [my career] was going to be. Then as soon as I started being funny, I started to find work. I had written short stories that I put on Facebook, and a BBC producer who saw me doing an acting showcase said I could write. I was like, “Can I? I took part in So You Think You’re Funny a year after I started stand-up and won. I was the first woman to win in 20 years. I was on TV really fast in a way that had never happened with acting – I went to great lengths on that. I really respect the transplant and felt that I had not done enough. I thought that through the hardships you should get something – I think it’s a Catholic thing. I really wanted to say sorry to everyone that I was okay.

The second series of your show This Way Up was written and filmed in confinement – it must have been an exhausting experience.
It was a very difficult thing to do the show in January. I was completely exhausted and it was all done in the most difficult way possible for many different reasons. I wrote part of it during the making of Home Sweet Home Alone: ​​I would go on set and go, “Oh no, where’s my son been, I’m in Japan and he’s home. And then try to rewrite a few notes between scenes. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to this point of work before, where there was still so much work to do and I had nothing left. It has an effect on your personality. I have definitely become less nice. I didn’t like myself very much. I say this with the greatest gratitude knowing what I can do, but it was too much for one person. I pulled out my hip, I have repetitive strain injuries, the nerves in my little finger are gone. Woe to me, I am well aware of it! But it definitely blew my mind. I never thought when I wrote: “written for anyone who needs a boost to find hope” [the final episode’s dedication] that I would need it then – my past telling me so in the editing room.

The show depicts Mental Health in an incredibly nuanced and insightful way. Was this theme present from the start of the project?
No, initially it was just me and [co-star] Sharon [Horgan] playing sisters – that was the heart of everything. But when I wrote the article about my father [in 2017, Bea wrote a piece for the Guardian about her father, who took his own life when she was three], I couldn’t respond to everyone who contacted me – there just aren’t enough emotionally charged hours in the day. You feel so guilty because you know it took someone a long time to type this. I think in a way the show became an answer, or a way I could talk about it that seemed to me to be the most time efficient.

Many of This Way Up’s most powerful moments depict Áine struggling mentally while going on with her normal life. Was this an important aspect of the show for you?
I wanted to do a show about loneliness. I felt like I didn’t always see what most looked like. I wanted to challenge the drama or the excitement. For most people, the struggle is the day-to-day, that’s where the heartache lies. This is what grief looks like most of the time: today, it’s going to be difficult to make a cup of tea. And it sounds like such a tangent, but I realized that I love watching Real Housewives, and rather than denouncing reality TV, I thought: why do I like watching these shows? It was largely the immensity of the smallness of life. It’s the same in Chick Lit – I grew up reading Irish authors like Maeve Binchy. Women weren’t allowed to have what you might define as a great life; many revolutions have taken place in kitchens and health centers and in your private parts. For me it’s the unexplored life we ​​barely come to [own] as women. Go: no, it’s my life and it’s important.

This Way Up has another recurring theme: potato waffles.
Finally, something I can talk about. I love them so much. I almost ate them for breakfast this morning but didn’t want to have them in front of a reporter. On This Way Up, the art department filled a freezer with potato waffles [for a scene in which a character eats them] and me and my sister – who was the costume designer – brought home 12 boxes. It was like: well, a showbusiness benefit. In fact, they’re the perfect food to go with Home Sweet Home Alone: ​​very 80s, very retro – they are found somewhere in a heartwarming memory. But I want it written down: I never got a dime from Captain Birdseye. I speak about it because it is necessary.

Home Sweet Home Alone released on Disney + the 12 november.