Barry Keoghan ‘is keen’ to play Shane MacGowan in movie about Pogues legend

The artist and writer who was this week’s guest on the Under the Grill podcast with Kevin Dundon and Caoimhe Young said the Dubliner was “keen” to get involved.

“We talked about a movie long before he died and that’s still in the works,” she told the podcast.

“We did talk to Barry Keoghan about playing Shane, and he’s keen,” she added.

“Barry would be good,” Kevin agreed, although Victoria admitted it was a “little bit soon to be thinking about that stuff” following the death of Shane last year.

“I know there’s a couple of people who want to do tribute things. I’ve been working with a lot of different musicians on a tribute album that I find really, really healing,” she added.

Coming up to anniversary of the death of The Pogues front man, Victoria joined Kevin and Caoimhe Young in the kitchen to chat about the homecooked meals she loved growing up, her angel art and, of course, the love of her life.

Under the Grill: Victoria Mary Clarke says ‘Shane is very much with me’

She told the podcast: “Shane is very much with me. It’s weird, sometimes I feel Shane experiencing things through me. It’s almost like he’s going, ‘go to that movie, I want to see it’. Or ‘talk to that person’, or ‘say that joke, I want to say that joke’.”

Victoria says she finds solace in her belief in angels and is set to display her angel paintings for the first time ever in an exhibition in Dublin.

She says: “Shane would be delighted; he was always nagging me to display my art.”

To hear the full chat, you can find the Under the Grill wherever you get your podcast, it’s also available on YouTube.

Keoghan, meanwhile, who is father to two-year-old Brando, has revealed how he is enjoying a major parenting milestone with his son

The actor said that one of the reasons he’s starting to enjoy life is because he’s having “a lovely relationship with my little boy” who is now starting to talk.

“You know, I’m getting to see him grow,” he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

“He gives me such love and hope,” the proud dad 32-year-old dad declared, adding, “he's starting to talk now and give back chat”.

“Ah but the puppy eyes, man, I mean when they look at you like (that) it’s ‘ok, here's chocolate, I’ll eat it with you’.

The Batman actor who is tapped to star alongside Cillian Murphy in the upcoming Peaky Blinders movie, added: “And he loves cars, you know, cars are his thing.”

Keoghan shares son Brando with his former girlfriend, Alyson Sandro who started dating the actor in 2021, however, they split in 2023 after welcoming their son the year before.

Keoghan, however, admitted he struggling to adjust to fatherhood and was “not ashamed of it”.

Keoghan who plays a loving but "selfish" single dad in new movie Bird told Yahoo Entertainment that he can relate to the character

Keoghan plays the young father to a 12-year-old daughter Bailey (Nykiya Adams) as she becomes an adolescent in Kent, surrounded by violence and poverty.

Keoghan’s character is nicknamed Bug, a loving parent, whose sometimes “selfish” nature Keoghan said he could relate to.

“When you have a child, it’s a big moment,” he reflected. “You can kind of get in yourself and go through this place of feeling like you’re on the outside, almost.

“Like that your child doesn’t want to be connected to you because a child only really wants their mommy at that stage.”

He said he experienced “not feeling important” to his child and feeling more like a sibling than “stepping up and having responsibility and leadership.”

But he credits director Andrea Arnold for letting him get to a “comfortable place” where he could confront his feelings about fatherhood.

“[My son] Brando, he’s two, and he doesn’t chat back to me like [Adams] does. He will, though. He’s already trying to,” Keoghan said.

“But like Bug, I don’t have the experience to draw from, like things your father shows you or what your mom shows you. I speak very openly about this now, and I'm not ashamed of it.”

Keoghan’s mom died of a heroin overdose when he was 12. He spent seven years in foster homes before being taken in by his grandmother.