Fair City star, Clelia Murphy, has revealed the reason why she decided to leave the popular soap in 2017. After playing the character of Niamh Cassidy on the program for almost twenty two years, she called it quits.
Chatting on the Six O’Clock show this week, the actress opened up about leaving the show after all that time; “I was very fortunate, I was very lucky and I also had a great run of storylines.”
“The writers of Fair City always imagined Niamh better than I did, it was always to their credit. It is a thing that I will always stand and say, ‘Fair City is a huge part of my life and a huge part of my life that I’m very grateful for’.”
So, why did she make the call to leave Niamh Cassidy behind? The 45-year-old shared that it took her some time to make the decision, but it was something that she knew she had to do; “When I was leaving Fair City – it took me three or four years to make that decision, it wasn’t a decision that I made lightly.”
“It was that fear of, ‘Oh God maybe I’ll never work again. Maybe nobody will ever give me a job again’. But I had to be true to myself and say, ‘If I don’t do this now, then when will I do it?”
Continuing she said; “I’m not afraid of working hard, I’m not afraid of putting myself out there so instead of letting fear stop you from doing something, my attitude is, ‘Oh I’m afraid of that well I’m going to give that a go’.”
“You just have to have a little bit of confidence in yourself.”
Since leaving the show she revealed that she had adapted a book written my one of her former co-stars, Claudia Carroll, into a play. Although Covid restrictions have meant that it could not be performed to a live audience, it has streamed online.
Speaking about this new career pivot she said; “I’m getting onto the stage with a play that my best friend Claudia Carroll wrote, adapted from her book.”
“So it’s a pretty special piece of theatre and it’s going on streaming because so far we can’t have an audience yet as you know because of the restrictions.”
