Tall Tales & Murder star Aidan Gillen finally opens up on why Room to Improve's Dermot Bannon called him 'brooding and mysterious' during awkwardly tense TV moment - revealing a intriguing behind the scenes reason...

Aidan Gillen has explained his ‘intense’ appearance on Dermot Bannon’s Celebrity Super Spaces earlier this year – saying he was still in character for his latest TV show.

The actor and his partner, singer Camille O’Sullivan, showed Bannon around their Dublin home in an episode of the summertime series, which also brought us inside the homes of Vogue Williams, Joanne McNally and Clodagh McKenna.

In an interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday at the time, Bannon described ‘an intense first meeting’ in which he was ‘a bit terrified’ of the Dublin actor.

‘I suppose I still see John Boy [Gillen’s character from Love/Hate] standing there with a gun to my head,’ the architect said.

Putting the comments to Gillen this week – though slightly misremembering Bannon’s characterisation as ‘brooding and mysterious’ – the MoS was told: ‘I wasn’t being brooding and mysterious at all. He was just saying what people say.’

The globally-recognised actor playfully offered an explanation of his contributions to the episode – in which he showed Bannon the couple’s dimly-lit, though lavish, basement area – in a few grunts.

‘I was down in a dark basement, and I had just come in from work on Tall Tales & Murder,’ he said, referring to RTÉ’s new comedy drama series, at whose premiere he spoke to the MoS this week.

‘Does that help? I’d literally walked in the door, so I was in character. Maybe that’s it.’

The new comedy-drama series reunites Gillen with Love/Hate creator Stuart Carolan, who co-created Tall Tales & Murder with English actor/comedian/director Chris Addison (The Thick of It, Veep).

And it was another Dublin job for the Kin actor, who spent 25 years living abroad for his craft and is known around the world for The Wire, Game of Thrones and Peaky Blinders.

‘I did make a firm decision to get back here before retirement age,’ Gillen explained, adding that it is ‘like a holiday’ when he works in Ireland.

‘I walk around and have a real life, and do the things everybody else does. So I do love Dublin.

‘Having said that, I’ve just zoomed across the country to be here from outside Stokestown, Co. Roscommon, where I’ve been boating for the last week on the Shannon.

‘I’m quite fond of Sligo because my mother’s from Sligo. I used to live in Kerry. I love West Cork. I also love Cavan, and Monaghan as well.

‘It’s beautiful, rolling country up there, and I am genuinely very fond of the places where it’s just a little bit off the main road, the beaten track.’

The 58-year-old confirmed he gets recognised far and wide, though it is ‘never annoying’.

Meanwhile, Tall Tales & Murder director Addison explained he was paired with Carolan to create the new series by producers Avalon, after buying the rights to author Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy.

Addison told the MoS: ‘I knew immediately I couldn’t write it – it needs to be in an authentic Irish voice.

‘You can’t have an English writer, who’s not even lived in Ireland let alone been brought up here, try and ape a voice they don’t understand, which is why we found Stuart to do it.’

He said the show that made him famous, Armando Iannucci’s BBC cult classic The Thick of It, would not land today, owing to the absurdity of real-world politics.

Asked if life has imitated art much since the show about hapless politicians and their staff ended, Addison said: ‘There was a period where there were policies announced that we’d had our characters invent on the fly, satirically. That was weird.

‘I think it’s less the case now, because I think politics has fundamentally changed from when we were making The Thick of It.

‘Satire works because politics presents a facade of competence, and behind that facade is chaos and madness. Satire sits in the space between those two things.

‘But in 2016, with Brexit in the UK, Trump in the US, that facade of competence sort of fell over. ’

With the new show set to air soon, Tall Tales & Murder star Casey Walsh told the MoS he is looking forward to a ‘second chance’ in the public glare.

The newcomer was just 15 when he began releasing music with the now-disbanded Dublin hip-hop group Versatile.

Their videos racked up millions of views and the group played major festivals and, remarkably, sold out the 3 Arena in 2019.

They were ultimately raked over the coals for some juvenile lyrics – written and recorded as juveniles – and effectively ‘cancelled’ in the mainstream press.

Walsh, who still makes music, said it was ‘of course’ in the back of his mind that, in his second life as an actor, he may have to answer for mistakes made in his first.

‘I was really immature back then. I was new to being in the public eye, and I made a lot of poor decisions.

‘No one prepares you for being in the public eye like that, and I just handled a lot of stuff very wrong. I handled it very recklessly, and I’m just hoping that I get a second chance now.’

• Tall Tales & Murder debuts next Sunday, September 27, on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player