Colm Meaney wanted to play O'Brien as American. “Rick Berman sat me down and said, ‘The whole notion of this show is that it’s multiracial’… I reluctantly started to play him Irish"
Colm Meaney discovered politics as a teenager, up against the forces of John Charles McQuaid. Since then, he has relished combining activism with acting
“The house I grew up in was built by the Dublin Corporation,” Meaney says.
“How could we build houses then and can’t build them now?... It’s fking Thatcherism, Reaganism, the neoliberals and the trickle-down economy that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both bought into, [the idea] that the market will sort everything out. B***ocks.”