How ‘Say Nothing’ Brought the Troubles to TV: ‘A Pretty Edgy Subject’

Patrick Radden Keefe wanted his 2019 book Say Nothing to be different from other accounts of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Before sitting down to write the book, the author had noticed partisan politics seeping into many histories he was reading of the sectarian conflict. “I felt as though I wasn’t seeing real people. I was seeing caricatures — be they good or evil, depending on your point of view,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter.

He sought to make his narrative more complex, hoping his readers would have “complicated” feelings about the people he was chronicling. So he started his story with the disappearance of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of 10 accused of being a British informant by the Irish Republican Army. She is one of the “Disappeared,” a group of people thought to be quietly murdered by Republicans during the roughly 30-year period of sectarian violence called the Troubles. (The IRA has admitted to killing McConville, but has not copped to playing a role in all the disappearances.)

Radden Keefe traced the excruciating consequences of McConville’s abduction on her family while simultaneously charting the radicalization of multiple young Provisional IRA volunteers — a couple of whom later became deeply disillusioned with their roles in the conflict. That approach was acclaimed internationally even as it tread politically and emotionally sensitive territory, revisiting a time that is still vivid for some in Northern Ireland.

Now, five years later, FX is bringing that narrative to the screen, and presumably a much wider audience: The limited series adaptation of Say Nothing released all nine of its episodes Thursday (on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ in other English-speaking countries). A generally faithful adaptation of the book, it was executive produced by Radden Keefe with veterans of the literary adaptation Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson (who have produced The Hunger Games, The Goldfinch and Crazy Rich Asians among them). The team acknowledges that the stakes of their series are high, given the delicate subject matter and the fact that the show will be prodding an open wound in Northern Ireland.

“There will probably be a sort of emotional reaction in part because it’s a pretty edgy subject,” says Radden Keefe. “My hope is that as people come to the series and they digest it, they’ll see the intention and the good faith in what we’re doing.”

In part due to the complexity of the material, Say Nothing wasn’t shopped around Hollywood before it published in the U.S. in 2019. More than 3,500 people died in the Troubles, a conflict between nationalists who sought an independent Ireland (largely Catholic) and British loyalists (majority Protestant) that only officially ended in 1998. Seventeen people vanished, with four bodies not yet recovered. Northern Ireland has never had a full truth and reconciliation process, used in other civil conflicts to shed light on extensive human rights violations and to heal old wounds. An ongoing attempt by the U.K. government has been fiercely contested and challenged in court.

In the book, Radden Keefe reported on family members still mourning the Disappeared as well as the past actions of public figures who are still alive, such as former Sinn Féin party president Gerry Adams and former Provisional IRA volunteer Marian Price. (Adams has long denied ever being in the IRA; Radden Keefe portrays him in a leadership role.) This was touchy investigative work. “It’s a real story about real people and it felt very delicate and the kind of thing I’d gotten right in the book, but I wouldn’t necessarily entrust to just anyone” in the entertainment business, Radden Keefe says.

But producer Simpson wasn’t just anyone. A friend of Radden Keefe’s for years, Simpson had praised the 2015 New Yorker story that set Radden Keefe on his Troubles reporting in the first place. He requested a look at the manuscript, and in early fall of 2018, Radden Keefe acquiesced. Soon, Simpson and Jacobson were pitching Radden Keefe on a limited series adaptation where he would be an executive producer who would be consulted on every decision. “We wanted every bit of his expertise,” explains Jacobson. “That would be dumb, to miss out on all that.” (It helped that the writer had loved their work on FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, itself based on a 1996 nonfiction book.)

Radden Keefe has previously said that, as an American with Irish heritage but no strong ties to the country, being an outsider had its advantages in reporting Say Nothing. Sources didn’t feel he had an agenda; he could “say the uncomfortable thing” and leave Belfast at the end of the day. And the FX limited-series team quickly homed in on another American, screenwriter Josh Zetumer, as a potential top scribe. In the 2000s, Zetumer had penned a script about British spies in the IRA, The Infiltrator, for Simpson at Appian Way.

But overall the creative team for the series took pains not to parachute in and out of a traumatic Northern Irish history. With Radden Keefe’s book providing the bones of the story, and top creatives that were all American, the Say Nothing team found additional collaborators who had more skin in the game. The four-person writers’ room included two Irish voices: Joe Murtagh (The Woman in the Wall) and Kirsten Sheridan (In America), the daughter of My Left Foot writer-director Jim Sheridan. British casting director Nina Gold (The Crown) worked with Northern Ireland’s Carla Stronge (Kneecap) to populate the series with local talent. The crew was predominantly Irish and British, with the A camera operator, a native Irish speaker, fact-checking the production’s use of the language.

Belfast native Michael Lennox, who directed all episodes of Derry Girls, came on as an executive producer and director after devouring Radden Keefe’s book and asking his manager to inquire about the adaptation. Lennox specifically advocated for the young actors Lola Petticrew and Anthony Boyle, whom he began working with in their teens on short films. “Anthony and Lola grew up in West Belfast. They know this world,” Lennox explains to THR. Petticrew was cast as the younger version of the series’ main role, Dolours Price, while Boyle became Provisional IRA officer Brendan Hughes.

Asked if he had any reservations about joining an American production taking on the Troubles, Lennox points to what he believes are great films about the conflict made by outsider filmmakers: Hunger and Bloody Sunday by British directors Steve McQueen and Paul Greengrass, respectively. At another point, he mentions French director Yann Demange’s ’71 with admiration. “There’s been a lot of people not from the place who have had a really interesting perspective and something to say,” he says.

The Say Nothing creatives know that what they do say will be probed locally; as The Irish Times put it, “People will be scrutinising for characterisation, for dress, for period validity, for gesture and accent, for an authentic representation of the Troubles.” And when it comes to the politics, “we’re not going to please everyone,” says Zetumer. But like Radden Keefe did in his 2019 book, they are responding to what can become a highly charged issue by attempting to present an array of characters — both republican and loyalist — in complex ways that defy easy black-and-white characterizations.

“I’ve heard from readers over the years who will say ‘It’s the weirdest thing, I find myself rooting for Brendan Hughes, this guy in the IRA,’” says Radden Keefe. “’And then I turn the page and he plants 18 bombs in Belfast and he’s killing and injuring all these civilians, and it’s like my stomach drops.’” He adds, “From the very earliest conversations that Josh and I had about this series, we wanted that precise feeling.”

The depiction of Adams, a political mainstay in Northern Ireland and a key participant in the 1990s peace process, will certainly grab attention. Played by British actor Josh Finan as a young man and Northern Irish actor Michael Colgan in his later years, the series’ Adams is a shrewd paramilitary leader with political ambitions and a talent for verbally obfuscating when asked direct questions. Each episode ends with a disclaimer that Adams has always denied he was ever a member of the IRA or participated in its violence. Adams has so far doubled down on these statements in response to the series. “I’m hoping he tweets about the casting,” Zetumer says, referencing a previous social media post from Adams about Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal of an Adams-like figure in the 2017 film The Foreigner.

Another aspect of Say Nothing that may be scrutinized is how the series portrays the Disappeared and their family members. Days after THR reported in 2019 that Simpson and Jacobson’s company Color Force had optioned the book, one of McConville’s sons, Michael, told the Belfast Telegraph that he was “upset and disgusted” by the plans. “Using what happened to our mother for entertainment is sickening,” he told the paper. Radden Keefe says that at the time he had not conveyed in advance to the McConvilles that the series announcement was coming “and that was a mistake on my part.” He and Lennox have since met with family members of the Disappeared, including the McConvilles, through Northern Ireland nonprofit the Wave Trauma Centre to discuss the series. Radden Keefe has also kept family members apprised of developments, he says.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Wave Trauma Centre says these family members “appreciated the opportunity” to speak directly with Radden Keefe and Lennox. The spokesperson added, “The deep trauma that these families suffered has not diminished over the years and understandably anything that causes them to have to revisit these events is always going to be very difficult for them.” In the series’ finale, a title card offers the contact information for the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, established in 1999 to find and return the Disappeared’s remains to their families.

Though Say Nothing and its approach to this thorny period will undoubtedly spark debate, the series’ creatives express a belief that enough time has passed that general television viewers will be receptive to an ambivalent look at the violence. Newer generations are more removed from the sectarian conflict and the culture of silence it inspired, the team notes, while the refrain of young people fighting systemic injustice by rising up against the state remains timely. The question Say Nothing asks is, what are the consequences of those actions down the line, years later?

“As sensitive and complicated as it is, I think it’s really important to look at subject matter like this, especially now, and talk about the past and how we process the past,” says Lennox, who grew up Protestant in North Belfast. “I think that’s part of the way forward.”

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Say Nothing‘s is now streaming all nine episodes on Hulu.