When looking for inspiration for his latest project, Chris O’Dowd found it in an unlikely place.
The Irish comedian and actor was working on a movie in Toronto during the pandemic when the idea for a show involving aliens was sparked.
Released later this week, the series Small Town, Big Story follows Wendy Patterson (Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks), a woman who left her small hometown in rural Ireland and later found success as a TV producer in Los Angeles.
But after two decades in the Hollywood hills, she returns with a film crew in tow to work on a TV series (a dodgy historical drama titled I Am Celt), while also ready to confront a long-held secret.
One of the people standing in her way is her high-school boyfriend Seamus (Game of Thrones’ Paddy Considine) who is now the local GP and is still unsure whether to back her outrageous claims publicly.
Written and directed by Chris, the 45-year-old said he couldn’t help but shake the feeling he was surrounded by extra-terrestrials when he had the idea for the storyline.
‘It felt like it was just everywhere at the time. When I was sitting down and writing it was a small-town story before something happened. I was feeling very untethered from the world. We were living in Toronto and were trying to make a film during lockdown,’ he told Metro.
‘I was walking through a forest that reminded me of home and aliens seemed to be everywhere. Seeing them, feeling them and I think over the course of writing the show I realised they are there for a lot of people and so I just kind of leaned into it.’
The six-part series begins with two towns competing to have the production filmed there – Chris’ hometown of Boyle and the fictional Drumbán – which wins out.
Despite his hometown not securing the win, cameras still rolled there for the actual TV show, with Chris also admitting the characters were inspired by people he knew growing up.
‘Nearly all of them really (inspired the characters). My imagination is poor, so I try and see people where they are at and sprinkle some craic,’ he laughed.
‘I worked at a local pub from the age of 14 and Shelley is the character I associate with as a child because she is listening to the stories of these crazy old people as she gets them drunker and drunker. I took that from my own life,’ he added.
Chris also makes a cameo appearance as Jack E. McCarthy, writer of I Am Celt.
After claiming to have experienced an alien encounter at the turn of the millennium, Wendy is now ready to confront the past and the people who shunned her – returning ‘hellbent on revealing the truth’.
‘She left and tried to shake this experience and town off her and reinvent herself and she lists all these different places she went to try and find herself, yet it’s followed her around the world – this haunted feeling of not being believed and having to carry this secret around otherwise she would look nuts,’ Christina explained.
‘All of a sudden she is ready to confront it. She is tired of carrying this burden alone and she wants to be heard and believed. She is coming armed with Hollywood, but also in over her head. Things don’t go her way and it’s not a smooth homecoming.’
Not having grown up in Ireland herself, however, Christina faced some problems when getting into character – specifically having no clue what phrases like eejit (idiot) were.
‘There were a few moments like that or where it was written more Irish I thought she would say, and we made it a bit more American. I had to be explained things a few times,’ she laughed.
However, things hit close to home when moving to Ireland for the series after the actress’ husband – camera operator George Bianchini – claimed to have a close encounter of his own before filming had even begun.
Encouraged by Chris to ‘share what you saw’ Christina explained how everything unfolded on a night when she and her husband were moving into a new place in Dublin.
‘We were getting a mattress delivered because we were going to be there for five months. It was evening and my husband went outside to wait for it, and I was inside moving furniture around and George came in as white as a ghost,’ she shared.
‘I was asking what happened and he said, “You will never believe this. I think I just saw a UFO” and he’d taken a picture of it, and I am telling you I know this man and I looked in his face and he wasn’t lying.
‘It’s teeny tiny but you can see a little hamburger in the sky. The way it moved, he said it didn’t make a sound. We immediately sent a photo to Chris, and he sent us a photo back looking into the sky sarcastically looking for it and we had to be like “no really we saw one!”.’
Despite Chris’ initial reaction, he conceded: ‘It’s more likely there are (aliens) than there aren’t.’
Small Town, Big Story is available from February 27 on Sky Atlantic and Now.
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