“She had no other factors to make us think this, but we were like, ‘She's definitely a banshee! When I walked past her house last night, I'd seen her turn on the lights three times and she caught me and I could hear seance singing from her living room!’ We would just make up all these lies but we'd start to believe them. I love that childhood innocence still living in teenagers, it's so childlike and it's holding on to that innocence, to cushion adolescence.”
Derry Girls does exactly that whilst following British Comedy’s love of crude teenage humour in the vein of another Channel 4 hit, The Inbetweeners. It is, however, away from Derry Girls still rare to see this humour shared between female characters on screen without resorting to sexualising them in the process. “It was a very special thing to have these young teenage girls that aren't sexualized, as well, in any way,” Saoirse agrees. “When we started the show, we (the characters) were only 15 years of age. And, of course, Michelle's talking about fingering and Erin is dying to get snogged, but in no way are these girls sexualised.”
“Erin is trying to figure out if she's cool or not and (is just) performing up to those things and it comes with an innocence that you're unaware of, you're not posey yet and this is before the time of the internet as well when everybody wasn’t trying to look like the exact same person. I think that the girls, especially Erin, is more fascinated by the romantic ideas about herself and who she can be, than trying to be anybody else. I love her, even talking about it now, I just feel so protective for all the characters,” she continues as I realise I might not be the only number one fan in this interview turned Derry Girls fan club.
Instead of sexualising the school girl characters for a quick laugh, Derry Girls focuses on the core bonds of friendship and sisterhood or as Saoirse puts it, “the immense power when a group of women decide to do something together.” But the teenage concerns of first kisses and crushes do feature as heavily as they did in any teenage life and in the final season, much to the fans delight across social media Erin, kisses her long suffering only male friend, James.
“I just remember being a teenager and just wanting everybody to kiss everybody all the time on TV,” she laughs talking about the reaction to the kiss. “If there was any silent moment, I'd just be like, ‘kiss him, kiss him, kiss him!’ When you're younger, that's all you’re thinking about in your mind. What leads it on so beautifully is that they're friends first and with James, she is always unapologetically herself and she doesn't ever try to impress him, that's so beautiful for that teenage romance to have that blossom. Do you know what I love the most, as well? That she plonks her lips on him and your heart breaks for her when Michelle comes down and ruins that moment because you remember that feeling of your heart racing after your first kiss. And anybody seeing you doing it, it just feels like the most private sacred thing in the world. Of course, you're going to tell everybody about it afterwards and you've also already told other people you've kissed nine boys in your holidays at this stage, you don't want them to see your first attempt at it!”
