🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
The Derry Girls finale brought everything full circle — not just for the characters fans have come to love over the last three seasons, but for series creator Lisa McGee as well.
When McGee was 13, she wrote a letter to first daughter Chelsea Clinton ahead of President Bill Clinton’s 1995 visit to Derry, Northern Ireland, asking if she’d like to hang out while she was in town. She never got a reply, but the idea made its way into the show in Season 2 when Derry pals Orla (Louisa Harland), Clare (Nicola Coughlan), Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) and James (Dylan Llewellyn) write her a letter of their own — and in the final moments of the series’ last episode, the letter finally gets to its recipient thanks to a cameo from Clinton herself.
“The innocence of [sending a letter like that] — and that’s one of the things I really love about writing the show. You can reconnect with that, before everything got jaded,” McGee tells Tudum.
It’s a fitting sentiment for a show that always hones in on the day-to-day lives of its characters, even when those everyday issues (grades, crushes, trying to get concert tickets, doing things without cell phones or social media) play out against a tumultuous backdrop like the Troubles. The finale wasn’t without the antics Derry Girls viewers know and love. (You didn’t really think Erin and Orla’s joint birthday party would go off without a hitch, did you?) But it was a more introspective episode that also tugged heartstrings and left both the core characters and the country looking toward the future.
Speaking from Belfast, McGee went into how the Clinton cameo came together and what it was like bringing the show to a close — along with how she’s still spending time in the ’90s.
“I’ve been watching The Midnight Club,” she says. “Very different [than Derry Girls], very scary. But the nostalgia kick from the music and the clothes — I just can’t get enough of it, you know?”
We could say the same about Derry Girls. Read on for more from McGee.
What was top of mind for you when you were writing these last episodes?
The thing that was most important was this idea that a point was approaching where these characters would be entering adulthood, and at the same time you had this incredible referendum that meant the people of Northern Ireland, the country had to grow up essentially, so the two things met in the middle. In the past two seasons, the Troubles, the political conflict — that had all been in the background for the most part and occasionally throwing the kids about, but they never really crashed into each other. I wanted to bring those two things dramatically face to face, so it felt like the best opportunity to do that in this extended [finale].
Was the plan always to end around the Good Friday Agreement, or were there other ideas that you played with?
It was always where I saw the show ending. I felt that that final episode should be about the Good Friday Agreement, I just didn’t know what way I would tell that story. It was a very different script at one point, and I decided to lean into the seriousness of it a little bit more. So I gave Michelle that backstory about her brother quite late on because I thought if we’re going to talk about this political thing, we’re going to have to do it through one of the characters because it’s quite dense. A lot of people don’t even understand it — people living in this country don’t even understand it sometimes. So I felt the best way to explain it was through the gang.
It’s a nice parallel — this pivotal moment for the country aligning with these characters turning 18 and heading into the next portion of their lives.
It was kind of perfect when I realized if I just jump a year, I could make all this more or less make sense, timeline-wise. And that jump also gave that episode an energy that felt a little bit more grown up, that maybe we could slow down.
What else did that time jump allow you to build in?
If I hadn’t been doing that finale special, I wouldn’t have had Episode 6 end that way [with Clare’s father’s death]. It gave me a bit of courage that I could end on a sad note for once. And I really liked that moment because that happened to my friend when we were teenagers. Even though we grew up in this uncertain place where there were a lot of confusing, dangerous, scary things happening all the time, her dad died suddenly, naturally. And all of us kind of went, “Something like this could happen at any time.”
The stage direction when they’re following the coffin, it just said, “And then they all grew up.” Because that’s a moment where you start to feel like we’re going to have to grow up, things are going to happen. So I love the fact that I was given the chance to have that in there.
The last episode had some excellent music cues, including “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt and “Dreams” by The Cranberries. How did you choose which songs you wanted to include?
No Doubt wasn’t in the script. We needed an emotional song for Sister Michael, almost like a romantic song about her relationship with her career — we realize in that episode she does like being a teacher, she likes educating these girls. So we thought that would be sort of fitting for Sister Michael because she’s quite rock and roll and cool, and also that’s a gorgeous, emotional song. So we just try to find bits and pieces that work with the scene, and I just listened to loads of songs and albums that I would’ve listened to growing up. I love doing that sort of stuff. The best part of my work is the research, really, just revisiting the past like that, you know?
You probably have a very excellent ’90s playlist somewhere.
Oh, I’ve got hundreds of ’90s playlists!
I was so charmed when Liam Neeson showed up this season, and I read that Helen Mirren was the one who turned him on to the show. Did he reach out about appearing, or did you approach him?
We’d heard he was a fan of the show, and we’d heard on the grapevine that if he was approached and he could do it, he’d do it. So we knew we had one shot and it had to be the right part. So we thought this was kind of ideal. Liam Neeson’s this sort of movie star hero, and him being taken down by Uncle Colm, who’s the most boring man — and he just loved it. He loves Uncle Colm, he loves that character, so he really wanted to face off with him. It was very funny and a very funny day as well.
And then I have to ask about the Chelsea Clinton cameo at the end of the episode. How did that come together — had the idea been up your sleeve since they wrote the letter, or did it come later?
No, it wasn’t even like a plan — I would love to claim I thought I’d do that from the start! We’d had quite a tricky time with COVID getting the show back up, as lots of shows did, and when I delivered the final episode and everything was moving around, budgets were moving and all this stuff, I just as a joke thought, “I’m going to do a coda that would be the most difficult thing to film that I haven’t even mentioned [before], and watch everybody freak out because there was no way we were going to get Chelsea Clinton.” So it was kind of a joke for about a day or two, and then myself and the director were like, “Should we try?” Because we’d heard she’d watched it. And I just literally started going into politicians’ DMs on Twitter, and random people, and saying, “Did you meet Hillary Clinton once? Mate, do you know how I’d get in contact with Chelsea?” Eventually, we got in touch with someone who’d worked for the Clintons. She got the script in front of them and then Chelsea was like, “Yeah, OK, if you can come to New York.” So we went to New York, and she was amazing. She was just so game, so charming. We were very, very, very nervous about wasting her time. We were terrified, but she couldn’t have been sweeter.
Were you on set that day in New York?
Yeah. It was a very small [crew], just one cameraman. But I met her... When the Clintons came to Derry and I was a teenager, in those days you never really knew famous teenagers. There weren’t that many. “She was one of us,” we thought, but she was also world famous. We were obsessed with her. I’ve always remembered that.
Are there other moments from the finale that were particularly meaningful for you? I really loved Erin’s speech at the end, interspersed with everyone casting their votes.
I loved writing that. I wrote that ending very early on, because I always had this idea I wanted to pull history through the end with the montage, and we played about with how we were going to do it. But that was very special for me because there’s some incredibly traumatic scenes in that footage, and they happened on the streets of the town I grew up in and the town the show was about.
I’d kind of avoided it for three seasons, and I knew I was going to have to address it at some point. So there’s Bloody Sunday footage. We spoke to all the families — because I wouldn’t have done anything like that without clearing that with them — and they were happy with what we’d planned. For that to have worked, they were very proud of it, and the whole city I think thought it was handled well. It was the real people that really affected me in that footage at the end.
Do you have any memories you can share about the last day of filming? Do you remember which scene you wrapped with?
The last scene we filmed was in Episode 1 when they break into the school and their faces are up against the glass. It was lovely because it was the school, it was the five of them, it was kind of where we started. But it was also incredibly emotional. We were very, very tired, and we knew it was the end so there were a lot of tears.
Has it been hard to let go of these characters now that the show is over? Or do you still find yourself thinking about them?
I think the worst thing is if you don’t leave a character in the right place. With Derry Girls, I got to do everything I wanted to do, and I felt really happy with where they were left as characters. So I really feel it was completely right. Having said that, after we finished, sometimes a line would come into my head for Orla or Michelle, and I go to write it down, and then I’m like, “They’re gone, that’s over.” And it’s like, “Where am I going to put all that love?” But I’m a writer so I have to write a new show and create new characters, and that’s what we do.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
