“It’s got a beautiful tone to it”: Gillian Anderson, Lola Petticrew, Tom Cullen, Louise Kennedy and Ailbhe Keogan on Trespasses

An adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s best-selling novel, Channel 4 drama Trespasses stars Lola Petticrew as Cushla, a young woman caught between factionalism and the charming Michael (Tom Cullen), an interloper in her close-knit Belfast community. All the while, she must contend with the disapproving gaze of her finger-wagging, alcohol-swigging mother, Gina (Gillian Anderson). Following an advance screening at Ham Yard Hotel in London, the actors sat down for a Q&A, alongside Kennedy and Ailbhe Keogan, who adapted the novel for the small screen.

Since Trespasses is her first novel, the prospect of adapting it was somewhat of a daunting experience for Kennedy. “I never entertained the idea of writing the script because I’d only just figured out how to write a novel!” she quipped. She praised Keogan’s ability to modify the book so it aligned with a televisual format. For Keogan, this meant staying as true to the source material as possible. “At the early stages, we realised we’re only missing a few scenes,” Keogan explained. “We haven’t added that much at all, so we only realised we were missing them by taking the novel to its full cinematic expression.”

A fan of the book, Petticrew was keen to play the multifaceted Cushla before the adaptation was even in the works. “It was cinematic to me and I could just tell that someone somewhere was going to read it and do something with it,” they explained. “So then I called my agent, and said, ‘I just finished reading this thing and they’re going to make it into something and when they do I want to play Cushla Laverly.’” Five months later, they got a call from their agent.

Meanwhile, Cullen, who is Welsh, underwent dialect lessons to perfect Tom’s Irish brogue. “I look back at my audition tape that I sent in and it’s so utterly diabolical – I have no idea how I was cast,” he joked. In the subsequent months, he spent hours obsessing over the accent. “My sister got married, one of our best friends got married, and I was sneaking off and doing dialect coaching sessions. I listened to Jamie Dornan’s Desert Island Discs, I think over 100 times!” he said.

Though taking on the challenging role of an overbearing mother, Anderson was delighted to add her name to the series following, fittingly, a “drunken night” with Kennedy. “We threw a dinner for Louise. I’d been a big fan of the book and over dinner [she] asked if I’d play Gina, and I said, ‘F*** yeah!’” she enthused. To prepare, she closely studied the source material. “I wish I could say I drank a lot, but I don’t drink!” she continued. “I feel like everything that Gina is is in the book and is on the page of the screenplay, and, like Tom, I did a lot of work on the accent … and then just leant into my slurry Irish accent.”

For Petticrew, being able to play a character as emotionally complex as Cushla was especially rewarding. “What a treat of a part – I don’t think we get things like this very often,” they reflected. “From the get-go, it was really important that we met Cushla as a young woman who’s experiencing a sexual awakening of sorts [and] that it was something that she was absolutely in charge of…and that in those moments of her being in her sexuality, that it was sort of devoid of shame. That’s something that was really important to me.”

It’s that complexity which Anderson relished. “It feels like it’s shot very delicately, it’s very specific … and it’s got a beautiful tone to it. And the mixture of the love affair and the politics makes quite a lot of danger,” she said.

Antonia Georgiou

Trespasses is released on Channel 4 on 9^th November 2025.

Watch the trailer for Trespasses here: