Despite the current global pandemic, Brendan O’Carroll has confirmed that the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special and live performances will go ahead as planned.
Brendan, who currently resides in Florida, USA, has said that his experience of lockdown has been very different than how it has been here in Ireland.
Explaining his Covid-19 experience to Joe Duffy on RTE Radio One’s Liveline, Brendan said, “stores never really closed, our golf club never closed, the supermarket was always fully stocked, so it’s much more relaxed than it is in Europe and especially at home in Ireland.”
While some changes will have to be made for the live shows, Brendan is determined that the Christmas special will go ahead as normal, “we had to push the tour back by a year but other than that, we’ve been able to pay everybody, people have to eat.”
“You just keep going and see what happens next. I’m confident by next year we’ll be back. One thing I’m delighted with over here is that they do hold Ireland up as people who are doing what is right for Covid-19. We’ll be recording the Christmas specials in October.”
Brendan continued, “we got a list of guidelines from the BBC about two weeks with 70 things we can and can’t do. I think that list is getting shorter as time goes on though. I’m confident the recordings will go ahead but whether or not we have a live audience is going to be the thing.”
“These things can pass very quickly and it’s quite possible by the time we get to August that people will look back to this part of the year and just forget it ever happened. I think there’s going to be a bounceback, I really do.”
Continuing to speak about his experience living in America, Brendan said that it’s quite difficult after the heartbreaking killing of George Floyd. Speaking of the riots, Brendan continued, “this is systemic, this isn’t just a couple of bad apples. Four black people who were suspected of a crime were shot in the last few weeks and there were no repercussions whatsoever.”
“This is the outburst of people who have just said ‘listen, we’ve had enough’. I don’t know if any change is going to come out of what is happening now but certainly no change is going to come from the White House.”
