Patrick Kielty has shared his joy for being cast in his first feature film, Ballywalter. The brand new Late Late Show host said that being offered the role was the “greatest surprise and most unexpected joy,” of his career.
The 52-year-old is starring alongside Irish actress Seana Kerslake in this bittersweet comedy drama, named aptly after the town it is set in.
Speaking to the PA news agency at the London premiere for Ballywater, Patrick said: “I’ve been doing stand-up, the only acting I’d ever done in my life was a play which was in Belfast that transferred into the West End. When the guys came to me with a script, I genuinely thought that they wanted me to give them advice on one of the character roles because I was a comedian in Northern Ireland and there’s sort of an element of that in the movie.”
“So whenever they offered me the part, this was not planned, none of this was planned. This is the greatest surprise and the most unexpected joy I’ve had in my career,” he added.
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The comedian gave a little insight into the film, saying: “At the heart of the movie is a connection between people that maybe just pass each other in life along the way and how they can maybe fix each other and put themselves together. So there’s a lot of heart in the movie as well.”
This comes just as Patrick took over as the newest host of The Late Late Show on Friday. His first show at the helm attracted over 830,000 people across RTE One and RTE One +1. The County Down native noted how “crazy” a week it’s been and that he was absolutely “mindblower” by the response from his first show.
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He said: “At one point I was hoping to go on The Late Late Show as a guest to promote this movie, so now I’m hosting The Late Late Show and we’ve got this out on the one weekend, which is just crazy stuff.”
He continued, adding: “I was absolutely blown away by all of the love going into it and the messages on the night and the reaction. We were really lucky that we got a big audience, lots of people were watching it and just still buzzing off that.”
Ballywalter is in cinemas Friday September 22.
