April 18, 2025 • 13 mins
Ciarán Hinds’ acting pursuits have taken him far from his roots in Northern Ireland.
A quality actor - he lends himself to both villainy and simmering heroics.
His long career has included intimate Shakespearean theatre productions right through to major franchises like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and the Disney animated film Frozen.
His latest project ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ is an intimate character study on human spirit – the Prime Video series based on the novel by Richard Flanagan.
He told Jack Tame when he was first introduced to the project, he’d heard of the book but never read it.
“They sent me a couple of scripts and I was immediately hooked by the quality of the writing and the story itself,” Hinds said.
“So I went out and got myself the book.”
“Deeply moved, I was, by the savagery, the cruelty, the brutality, the love, the deep passion, the haunting... it’s a huge and hugely emotional read for anybody,” he told Tame.
“And from then, I said I’m very interested in this project, and so we went on from there.”
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at b.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Kieren Hines's acting talents lend himself to both villainous rolls
and simmering heroics. His long and storied career has included
intimate Shakespearean theater productions right through to major franchises such
as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings,
and the Disney animation Frozen. Kieran's latest project, The Narrow
(00:34):
Road to the Deep North, is an intimate character study
of human spirit. It's a series based on the novel
by Richard Fanagan said against the backdrop of a Japanese
prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, tell
me how.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Did it feel going from a soldier into a prisoner
of war to be Pinkasia Redd? When I was your
fighting his hard for soldier spirit? Yours here to buildar alven?
What are you for Callmost of that time, memory is
the only true justice.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
It's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. And Kiaren
Hines is with us this morning, Kyoda, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you very much, Jack.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It is an
extraordinary novel by Richard Flanagan. But tell us what drew
you to this production.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I guess the first thing that dremmagers the production was
a contact that my agent got touch saying that Justin
Kurzel was interested in me perhaps playing a role in
project he was doing. And I had, like chance, had
seen a film called Nitrum that or Nitrim, I'm not
sure what it's called, but that he and Sean Grant,
(01:56):
the writer, had put together and I was very, very
moved by it. So I knew that he had some
of his work. He had done Macbeth and I. So
I asked what the project was, and he said, Narrow
Wrote to the Deep North, a book I'd heard of
but had never read, and they sent me a couple
(02:17):
of scripts, and I was immediately hooked by the quality
of the writing and the story itself. So I went
out and got myself the book, and then I had
this extraordinary, extraordinary experience reading and leepally deeply moved. I
was by the stavatory, the cruelty to brutality, the love,
(02:38):
the deep assion they wanting. It's a huge and hugely
emotional read for anybody. But it also filled me in
in some history that I wasn't really aware of. And
from then I said, I'm very interested in this project,
and so it down from there.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I see, I'm interested. You say that because because it
is a love story, but it also details some of
the absolute worst horrors from Theacific campaign in the Second
World War. And as someone who grew up, I suppose
in the shadow of the Second World War or in
the decades thereafter, was the Pacific dimension to that conflict
(03:20):
something that had come across your you know it come
across your desk before. Was it something you were aware of?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Not in any in any great shakes in any way,
because because I supposed through history or through school, through whatever,
through just location, we were more involved with the war
in Europe. But I guess the reflection I would have
was probably in my late scenes seeing bridge of the
River Kwai, for example, that would have been the reference
I would have had. And then so my God, and
(03:48):
then I read a few things about it. But it's
very interesting when you read it through. For me, from
when I went through literature as opposed to history, it
makes it even more real. The horror, yeah, the savagery
of the brutality, and yet the courage and deep the
love of man to hold on to each other in
(04:10):
a sense of survival and commitment to each other. It
was huge. I mean, it's a great human book, you know,
full of horror, but full of beauty and passion and desire. Yeah,
make you read for anybody?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Do you do you think that through stories or maybe
even through personal experience. It's it's a sort of a cliche,
you know, the best of times or the worst in
times brings out the best in people. And and I suppose,
I suppose one of the things that's really clear, you
know that I'll make no bones about it. This is
at times a very confronting watch. It's it's pretty, it's
(04:49):
pretty dark, and viewers are not spared the horrors of
you know, of life and death as prisoners of war
during the Second World War in Mianma or in Burma.
Do you think we as humans need to experience those
absolute horrors in order to see the very best of
our species as well?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I'm not one for relishing or indulging in kind of
torture porn. That's a different thing. But this is this
is a sense of reality I noticed in you know
when I read it, even reading it without you know,
being visualized on camera for for a television adaptation. You know,
one's imagination takes one away into into a terrible place.
(05:33):
But what I've found about this when I saw the
rough cut was it's kind of it's held back a lot,
but it's it's there. It's held back until a moment
arrives that it becomes relentless. But it is one huge moment.
And yet so it's not regularly in your face all
(05:55):
the time or hear it comes again. So when it comes,
it's like as if it would never stop. But it
gives you the idea that these men lived under these
conditions for those years and years, although they you know,
in extremists, they show this one idea of a severe
beating and it is extraordinary and you're begging yourself, i
(06:16):
think the viewer for it to stop, to stop. And
yet the thing is all the you know, the way
the story is, these men cannot stop it. There's nothing
they can stop, and they're witness to it like we
are witnessed to watching the filmmaker make this, but in
not in any it's such a human film, and it's
it's a hard watch. You're right, it's really hard. And
(06:38):
then there's those moments that keep Dorrigo Evans the main protagonist,
this young doctor who helps keep all these people alive
in a sense of how he can save their lives,
how he can keep them going. And yet he himself
is kept alive by in a way kind of well,
it's not illicit wealth, but his heart is taken profoundly
(07:01):
by a young woman who he's not intended for. He's
intended for another woman, but he can't help. But one
time help out of the heart, dic takes your life,
and that flame keeps him alive and away because all
this kind of thing is all burning, burning together, and
there's this sense of what is love and what is
devotion and need a passion. It's this book that Richard
(07:24):
Fanninger wrote. It's full of it. And also because of
the fact that jumps between timing periods between the nineteen
forties in Australia and in Burma and then to the
nineteen eighties, and it keeps going backwards and forwards in
that time, and you see what the kind of a
shell of a man that this young passionate doctor has become.
(07:45):
He's still a renowned doctor and he still has empathy,
but he's kind of a shell of a man. He's
kind of there's a lack of warmth in him anymore,
and I think it's because of what he's been through
so deeply in his early life.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
And so you're playing Doregon Dorogo rather in the nineteen eighties,
and Jacob Lord he is playing him as a young
man in the nineteen forties, so obviously the story sort
of swings between those those two different times. Did you
work with Jacob at all? Do you with the sort
of production you don't coordinate around Dorogo's character or anything
(08:21):
like that.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
No, I guess I always wondered so because Jacob was
obviously cast to play the younger Dorigo Evans, which is
the main role, and then I guess they throw a
net out to see who can play the older one.
And it's kind of interesting. You think poor Jacob was
going to end up a bit like me when he's old.
That would be a terrible thing for him. But I
(08:45):
think it's about a spirit of people that Justin Kurzel,
director was looking for something that he's seen in the
performance I've given is what he was looking for about
the soul of this man. And I only met it
was lovely to me him. This was a terrific actor.
But I literally met him for five minutes because we
were in different time zones and I was just finishing
(09:08):
and he was literally coming back to start restart some
of the work that they'd already done, and I was
just in for three weeks to cover what I had
to do, and so at least we got to say hello.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It strikes me, Karen, that you have had nothing if
not an incredibly richly diversified and very career. You've played
all these characters and all sorts of different production shows, movies,
theater productions over the years, stories all around the world.
But I wanted to ask you about Belfast because it's
a couple of years since I think you were probably
(09:43):
getting fitted for a suit to go to the Oscars
nominated for your role in Belfast, and as someone who
grew up in Northern Ireland, did telling that story was
the personal dimension and connection you had to the place
in the city. Did that add another kind of element
to that production for you?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It was huge. It was huge to me, not the
fact that you're nominated for an Oscar and that it
was huge, the idea of just because the way my
life has gone, you know, through a lot of theater
and some television and film and bouncing from here to there,
not like a headless chicken, sometimes not knowing where am
I going? Now? What's the gig, what's the deal? What
do I have to do? How do I have to prepare?
(10:26):
Am I going to be able for this? I'm going
to write for this? But keep going. And then suddenly,
after all those years just working, suddenly Cam Brown sent
the script to me and I read it and I
just connected with it immediately, And so I guess I
don't know. I would have been in my late sixties,
late sixties, and after all those years of charging around everywhere,
(10:49):
somebody said I'm down and come home. And although we
filmed it in Berkshire, in England, all of it it
was like coming home. And they did this because Ken
had been very, very faithful to our tribe, our Northern
(11:10):
Irish tribe. Even though Ken's Catholic, it doesn't we a
try from of Irish people, and we're from the North
of Ireland, and we have our own separate banter kind
of rules, kind of behavior. And I recognized in his
sensitivity of his writing and the joy of his writing
that a different Catholic divide is kind of an invention,
(11:32):
not real in a way, but it's real. It doesn't
mean anything really because at the heart of it, if
people are the same, and what he wrote reflecting exactly
my family too.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Finally, Kieren, you're in New Zealand at the moment, shooting
shooting east of Eden. We have this terrible habit in
the New Zealand media of anyone, anytime anyone of interest
visits as sures, we're all desperate to ask them the
same question that it's actually become a bit of a parody.
But it'd be remiss for me not to ask you,
what are your impressions of New Zealand? What do you
think of New Zealand?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I love it, mate, love it. It's no I've come
here for four weeks, came to Auckland to prepare, then
down to Omaru and the Otago Hills. I mean, my
heart was taken again by another landscape that's so beautiful.
I got to share a glass of wine with Sam Neil,
(12:31):
which was a joy for me because of course he
was born in Oman County, Toronto all those years back then.
He's such a lovely man. And you know, he gave
me some advice about where to eat when it came
to Auckland, and it was also what I nursed. Apart
from the landscape, the people are very just the lovely
warmth about them, a natural warmth and I'm not just
(12:53):
blowing smoke, by the way. What I loved about was
the New Zealand crew people who are doing all the
technical work around while we do our acting. They're so great.
They work in such a calm way. They're not running
around showing you that they're working. The work is getting done,
but they're caramel about it and I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, I'm pleased to hear it. We'll all the very
best for the remainder of your time here. I hope
you can enjoy some blue cod because I know that
the water is off the coast of Armado bringing some
of the best blue cord in the world. I think,
so hopefully you can enjoy that while you're there. And
congratulations that the Narrow Road to the Deep North is
deeply moving and affecting. And thank you so much, oh great,
(13:34):
thanks soluch.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Love me to talk to.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
You you too. That is Karen Hines. The Narrow Road
to the Deep North is his news show. We'll make
sure all the details are up on the news Talks.
He'd be website for.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
More from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to
news Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at b.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Kieren Hines's acting talents lend himself to both villainous rolls
and simmering heroics. His long and storied career has included
intimate Shakespearean theater productions right through to major franchises such
as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings,
and the Disney animation Frozen. Kieran's latest project, The Narrow
(00:34):
Road to the Deep North, is an intimate character study
of human spirit. It's a series based on the novel
by Richard Fanagan said against the backdrop of a Japanese
prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, tell
me how.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Did it feel going from a soldier into a prisoner
of war to be Pinkasia Redd? When I was your
fighting his hard for soldier spirit? Yours here to buildar alven?
What are you for Callmost of that time, memory is
the only true justice.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
It's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. And Kiaren
Hines is with us this morning, Kyoda, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you very much, Jack.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It is an
extraordinary novel by Richard Flanagan. But tell us what drew
you to this production.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I guess the first thing that dremmagers the production was
a contact that my agent got touch saying that Justin
Kurzel was interested in me perhaps playing a role in
project he was doing. And I had, like chance, had
seen a film called Nitrum that or Nitrim, I'm not
sure what it's called, but that he and Sean Grant,
(01:56):
the writer, had put together and I was very, very
moved by it. So I knew that he had some
of his work. He had done Macbeth and I. So
I asked what the project was, and he said, Narrow
Wrote to the Deep North, a book I'd heard of
but had never read, and they sent me a couple
(02:17):
of scripts, and I was immediately hooked by the quality
of the writing and the story itself. So I went
out and got myself the book, and then I had
this extraordinary, extraordinary experience reading and leepally deeply moved. I
was by the stavatory, the cruelty to brutality, the love,
(02:38):
the deep assion they wanting. It's a huge and hugely
emotional read for anybody. But it also filled me in
in some history that I wasn't really aware of. And
from then I said, I'm very interested in this project,
and so it down from there.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I see, I'm interested. You say that because because it
is a love story, but it also details some of
the absolute worst horrors from Theacific campaign in the Second
World War. And as someone who grew up, I suppose
in the shadow of the Second World War or in
the decades thereafter, was the Pacific dimension to that conflict
(03:20):
something that had come across your you know it come
across your desk before. Was it something you were aware of?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Not in any in any great shakes in any way,
because because I supposed through history or through school, through whatever,
through just location, we were more involved with the war
in Europe. But I guess the reflection I would have
was probably in my late scenes seeing bridge of the
River Kwai, for example, that would have been the reference
I would have had. And then so my God, and
(03:48):
then I read a few things about it. But it's
very interesting when you read it through. For me, from
when I went through literature as opposed to history, it
makes it even more real. The horror, yeah, the savagery
of the brutality, and yet the courage and deep the
love of man to hold on to each other in
(04:10):
a sense of survival and commitment to each other. It
was huge. I mean, it's a great human book, you know,
full of horror, but full of beauty and passion and desire. Yeah,
make you read for anybody?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Do you do you think that through stories or maybe
even through personal experience. It's it's a sort of a cliche,
you know, the best of times or the worst in
times brings out the best in people. And and I suppose,
I suppose one of the things that's really clear, you
know that I'll make no bones about it. This is
at times a very confronting watch. It's it's pretty, it's
(04:49):
pretty dark, and viewers are not spared the horrors of
you know, of life and death as prisoners of war
during the Second World War in Mianma or in Burma.
Do you think we as humans need to experience those
absolute horrors in order to see the very best of
our species as well?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I'm not one for relishing or indulging in kind of
torture porn. That's a different thing. But this is this
is a sense of reality I noticed in you know
when I read it, even reading it without you know,
being visualized on camera for for a television adaptation. You know,
one's imagination takes one away into into a terrible place.
(05:33):
But what I've found about this when I saw the
rough cut was it's kind of it's held back a lot,
but it's it's there. It's held back until a moment
arrives that it becomes relentless. But it is one huge moment.
And yet so it's not regularly in your face all
(05:55):
the time or hear it comes again. So when it comes,
it's like as if it would never stop. But it
gives you the idea that these men lived under these
conditions for those years and years, although they you know,
in extremists, they show this one idea of a severe
beating and it is extraordinary and you're begging yourself, i
(06:16):
think the viewer for it to stop, to stop. And
yet the thing is all the you know, the way
the story is, these men cannot stop it. There's nothing
they can stop, and they're witness to it like we
are witnessed to watching the filmmaker make this, but in
not in any it's such a human film, and it's
it's a hard watch. You're right, it's really hard. And
(06:38):
then there's those moments that keep Dorrigo Evans the main protagonist,
this young doctor who helps keep all these people alive
in a sense of how he can save their lives,
how he can keep them going. And yet he himself
is kept alive by in a way kind of well,
it's not illicit wealth, but his heart is taken profoundly
(07:01):
by a young woman who he's not intended for. He's
intended for another woman, but he can't help. But one
time help out of the heart, dic takes your life,
and that flame keeps him alive and away because all
this kind of thing is all burning, burning together, and
there's this sense of what is love and what is
devotion and need a passion. It's this book that Richard
(07:24):
Fanninger wrote. It's full of it. And also because of
the fact that jumps between timing periods between the nineteen
forties in Australia and in Burma and then to the
nineteen eighties, and it keeps going backwards and forwards in
that time, and you see what the kind of a
shell of a man that this young passionate doctor has become.
(07:45):
He's still a renowned doctor and he still has empathy,
but he's kind of a shell of a man. He's
kind of there's a lack of warmth in him anymore,
and I think it's because of what he's been through
so deeply in his early life.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
And so you're playing Doregon Dorogo rather in the nineteen eighties,
and Jacob Lord he is playing him as a young
man in the nineteen forties, so obviously the story sort
of swings between those those two different times. Did you
work with Jacob at all? Do you with the sort
of production you don't coordinate around Dorogo's character or anything
(08:21):
like that.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
No, I guess I always wondered so because Jacob was
obviously cast to play the younger Dorigo Evans, which is
the main role, and then I guess they throw a
net out to see who can play the older one.
And it's kind of interesting. You think poor Jacob was
going to end up a bit like me when he's old.
That would be a terrible thing for him. But I
(08:45):
think it's about a spirit of people that Justin Kurzel,
director was looking for something that he's seen in the
performance I've given is what he was looking for about
the soul of this man. And I only met it
was lovely to me him. This was a terrific actor.
But I literally met him for five minutes because we
were in different time zones and I was just finishing
(09:08):
and he was literally coming back to start restart some
of the work that they'd already done, and I was
just in for three weeks to cover what I had
to do, and so at least we got to say hello.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It strikes me, Karen, that you have had nothing if
not an incredibly richly diversified and very career. You've played
all these characters and all sorts of different production shows, movies,
theater productions over the years, stories all around the world.
But I wanted to ask you about Belfast because it's
a couple of years since I think you were probably
(09:43):
getting fitted for a suit to go to the Oscars
nominated for your role in Belfast, and as someone who
grew up in Northern Ireland, did telling that story was
the personal dimension and connection you had to the place
in the city. Did that add another kind of element
to that production for you?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It was huge. It was huge to me, not the
fact that you're nominated for an Oscar and that it
was huge, the idea of just because the way my
life has gone, you know, through a lot of theater
and some television and film and bouncing from here to there,
not like a headless chicken, sometimes not knowing where am
I going? Now? What's the gig, what's the deal? What
do I have to do? How do I have to prepare?
(10:26):
Am I going to be able for this? I'm going
to write for this? But keep going. And then suddenly,
after all those years just working, suddenly Cam Brown sent
the script to me and I read it and I
just connected with it immediately, And so I guess I
don't know. I would have been in my late sixties,
late sixties, and after all those years of charging around everywhere,
(10:49):
somebody said I'm down and come home. And although we
filmed it in Berkshire, in England, all of it it
was like coming home. And they did this because Ken
had been very, very faithful to our tribe, our Northern
(11:10):
Irish tribe. Even though Ken's Catholic, it doesn't we a
try from of Irish people, and we're from the North
of Ireland, and we have our own separate banter kind
of rules, kind of behavior. And I recognized in his
sensitivity of his writing and the joy of his writing
that a different Catholic divide is kind of an invention,
(11:32):
not real in a way, but it's real. It doesn't
mean anything really because at the heart of it, if
people are the same, and what he wrote reflecting exactly
my family too.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Finally, Kieren, you're in New Zealand at the moment, shooting
shooting east of Eden. We have this terrible habit in
the New Zealand media of anyone, anytime anyone of interest
visits as sures, we're all desperate to ask them the
same question that it's actually become a bit of a parody.
But it'd be remiss for me not to ask you,
what are your impressions of New Zealand? What do you
think of New Zealand?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I love it, mate, love it. It's no I've come
here for four weeks, came to Auckland to prepare, then
down to Omaru and the Otago Hills. I mean, my
heart was taken again by another landscape that's so beautiful.
I got to share a glass of wine with Sam Neil,
(12:31):
which was a joy for me because of course he
was born in Oman County, Toronto all those years back then.
He's such a lovely man. And you know, he gave
me some advice about where to eat when it came
to Auckland, and it was also what I nursed. Apart
from the landscape, the people are very just the lovely
warmth about them, a natural warmth and I'm not just
(12:53):
blowing smoke, by the way. What I loved about was
the New Zealand crew people who are doing all the
technical work around while we do our acting. They're so great.
They work in such a calm way. They're not running
around showing you that they're working. The work is getting done,
but they're caramel about it and I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, I'm pleased to hear it. We'll all the very
best for the remainder of your time here. I hope
you can enjoy some blue cod because I know that
the water is off the coast of Armado bringing some
of the best blue cord in the world. I think,
so hopefully you can enjoy that while you're there. And
congratulations that the Narrow Road to the Deep North is
deeply moving and affecting. And thank you so much, oh great,
(13:34):
thanks soluch.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Love me to talk to.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
You you too. That is Karen Hines. The Narrow Road
to the Deep North is his news show. We'll make
sure all the details are up on the news Talks.
He'd be website for.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
More from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to
news Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.