Rising Hollywood star Jessie Buckley says making a new TV drama about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has changed her outlook on life.
The Kerry singer and actress, who is breaking box office records in her latest film Wild Rose,
plays the wife of a firefighter in the Sky Atlantic series.
Although the power plant meltdown happened before 29-year-old Jessie was born, she said she felt “emotionally involved” while filming the five-part drama.
The star added: “[I play] Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of one of the first firefighters who went into the explosion after it happened.
“She’s a very human way of telling the stories of the millions that were involved in dealing with the effects of the explosion. The script completely blew me away.
“I wasn’t born when it happened but when I was at primary school there was a charity set up by Adi Roche for children affected by the explosion. They would come and live in Ireland for a year and go to my school. So I felt very emotionally involved.
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“But the pressure is your responsibility to tell these people’s stories.
“There was one day I was on set and there were various extras from Lithuania and Ukraine.
“There was this woman beside me crying her eyes out. At the end I gave her a hug and she said her son had been a victim of that explosion.”
Jessie, who first came to public attention as a teenager on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, stars opposite Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson.
Chernobyl recounts the events of April 26, 1986, and how the accident at the Ukranian nuclear power plant in what was then the USSR resulted from a safety test gone wrong.
Jessie spent months researching for her role using Voices From Chernobyl – a book of first-hand accounts written by Svetlana Alexievich.
Chernobyl is on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 9pm.
