Derry Girls Creator Lisa McGee & Cast Preview New Netflix Series ‘How to Get to Heaven From Belfast’

Ahead of Lisa McGee’s latest comedic odyssey across Northern Ireland, she and the cast sat down in front of audiences at the BFI to preview what’s to come from their brilliant new series. 

For the unacquainted, Lisa McGee is the esteemed creator of Northern Irish comedy-drama Derry Girls, a series set against the backdrop of the Troubles. After three stellar seasons, Derry Girls wrapped up in 2022. But now McGee returns to the place she knows best, Northern Ireland, for a new irreverent and hilarious odyssey called How to Get to Heaven From Belfast. 

How to Get to Heaven From Belfast follows three lifelong friends in their late 30s: Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), a popular TV writer; Robyn (Sinead Keenan), a stressed-out mother of three; and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), a carer. Having grown up and moved apart, leading very different lives, they are brought together after learning that Greta, the estranged fourth member of their friendship group, has sadly passed away. Together, they journey together to pay their condolences. But before long, old secrets begin to resurface, and they learn that Greta’s death may not be all what it seems to be. 

All eight episodes of How to Get to Heaven From Belfast drop on Netflix this week. The new series creator and writer Lisa McGee, as well as director Michael Lennox and the three stars — Roísín Gallagher, Sinead Keenan, and Caoilfhionn Dunne — recently sat down for a big Q&A at the BFI, hosted by journalist and a broadcaster Charlie Girling. It was a big discussion, and we’ve compiled all of the highlights below.

All of the highlights, tidbits, and key takeaways from the Q&A with Lisa McGee and director Michael Lennox

While the core cast may be different from Derry Girls, How to Get to Heaven From Belfast retains many of the same faces behind-the-scenes, not least director Michael Lennox, who helmed nineteen episodes of Derry Girls. It shares much of the same DNA. “It’s been incredible working on this because it’s the exact same team behind the camera,” McGee said. “So to be reunited with them all and to make something a bit more heightened—I’ve always wanted to have a crack at a mystery.”

The show catches the eye immediately, largely because of the unique, long title. Such a title was not actually dreamed up by McGee. Rather, it was handed to her on a flyer… literally. “When I was a student at Queen’s University in Belfast in Freshers’ Week, a street preacher gave me a flyer with the title on it. And I didn’t go to the meeting, but I remembered it, and thought that that would be brilliant for something someday.”

For Michael Lennox, getting involved in this project was a no-brainer. “When I read this for the first time, it was just this sort of madness,” he said. “The madness that comes from Lisa’s mind because she just has such her own DNA when she writes in her work, and it’s just such a privilege to be part of that show and contribute to it.”

“It was an insane shoot, but we had an amazing crew,” he added. “We had a lot of people from Derry Girls. But it wasn’t just me who was part of the directing team; we had George [Kane] and Rachna [Suri] who are here, who did multiple episodes, and it just gets better as we go through the show. So it’s just such an amazing Northern Irish crew, and Brian [Falconer] and everyone here—it was just one big film family.”

Filming in Ireland is special not just because of the people, but also for the landscapes. “It’s an amazing place to film,” he explains. “It has so many faces. You know what I mean, it’s epic. You don’t know what’s around the corner—it can be mystical, you know, it can be transcendent in places. So it’s a real gift for me to go around and find it, and it’s sort of the place itself just echoed what these guys were going through and everything sort of had this sort of cohesion, so it was brilliant.”

If there’s one signature of McGee’s work, it’s the dark sense of humour. Characters can find themselves in truly grim situations, but there’s always a comedic spin. You laugh out loud, sometimes guiltily. This humour is indicative of Northern Ireland. “What I like about that sort of Northern Irish sense of humor is how quickly it goes from one thing to the other,” she explained. “How they’ve had this very scary experience at the wake, and they’ve realized something really terrifying— that it’s not their friend in the coffin—but then they immediately start arguing over the fact that Dara does like lemon drizzle cake. That feels very truthful to me.”

The whole concept of bringing these old friends together where they embark on a number of misadventures, likens itself to a very strange comparison. “They’re like the A-Team but bad,” McGee said. “I always had this idea of this Mom-wagon being the A-Team van. You know the way the A-Team van got cooler and cooler because they would add bits to it? But theirs just gets shittier and shittier because they keep messing it up.”

While this show might be completely original, Lisa McGee couldn’t help but drop in a few nods to Derry Girls; there’s one scene in particular involving a mural. “There’s something that happens that’s a bit of a nod to Derry Girls, yeah,” she teased.

Stars Roísín Gallagher, Sinead Keenan, and Caoilfhionn Dunne discuss their experience on How to Get to Heaven From Belfast

How To Get To Heaven From Belfast Season 1. Caoilfhionn Dunne as Dara Friel, Roisin Gallagher as Saoirse Shaw, Sinead Keenan as Robyn Winters Cr. Christopher Barr/Netflix

A show like How to Get to Heaven From Belfast lives or dies on its core cast. If the casting isn’t perfect, and the main trio don’t have infectious chemistry, the whole thing falls apart. Thankfully, this series doesn’t enter that pitfall. The trio of Roísín Gallagher, Sinead Keenan, and Caoilfhionn Dunne have chemistry to spare. 

When they first met, it was a particularly awkward process, as Sinead Keenan (Robyn) recounts:

We had never met each other, and we were thrown in—like, it was in an office, like a casting room in Spotlight. And Lisa and Michael were there, and lovely Liz Lewin and Caroline Leddy were there, and Carla Stronge, our casting director. And there were plastic chairs, like you get in school, and the plastic chairs were made to look like a car. And we had scripts, and it was all like, “Hello, nice to meet you. Hello, nice to meet you. Oh, I’ve seen you in…” And then it was like, “Right, jump in.” It was all chairs and props and walking and talking and pieces of paper.

All things considered, the casting room experience worked wonders. Caoilfhionn Dunne (Dara) left with confidence. “I knew it,” she said. “Just from the reaction in the room. It wasn’t kind of anything that we were doing; it was the minute they started laughing from us doing very little. Which is a good sign in this particular circumstance—I’d be worried in any other—but yeah, the reaction to the three of us was perfect in everything that we did. They laughed when we wanted them to laugh, and when we didn’t want them to laugh.”

Chemistry was never an issue. Roísín Gallagher (Saoirse) found the key to what makes these female friendships to important. “People have talked about female friendships and what it is that makes them important, and it’s just occurred to me that women have this incredible ability to just go straight for the jugular in terms of conversation. It’s like, ‘Tell me all about your labor.’ Like, girl, that’s the sort of conversations that were being had, you know?”

Going back to the A-Team comparison, the vote on who would be the best team member was unanimous. Look no further than Sinead. “You’re resilient,” Dunne said. “You’re not scared of a lot of things. You’re not scared of more things than me. Yeah, no, I think you’re just made of stern stuff, woman, and you’re not to be crossed.”

All 8 episodes of How to Get to Heaven From Belfast are streaming on Netflix from Thursday, February 12.