l-r: Dylan (James Maguire), Erin (Saoirse Monica-Jackson), Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), Clare (Nicola Coughlan).Above: Orla McCool (Louisa Clare Harland)
The third and final series of the hit sitcom will begin next month on Channel 4 and is set in the months before the Good Friday Agreement.
It will be premiered at Derry’s Omniplex Cinema on Strand Road on Thursday, April which the writer and members of cast are expected to attend.
Speaking to The Big Issue, Ms McGee said she wanted to bring the successful show to a close by having the schoolgirls become more politically aware.
Said the Derry-born writer: “Mainly it’s just very stupid, but in series one and two, politically, there was all this stuff going on in the background that the adults knew about and the Derry Girls were very protected.
“In season three, they’re going to have to grow up. They’re getting older and they’re going to have to have some political awareness and social responsibility.
“It’s about them realising they’re going to need a view on things. Because a lot of being a teenager is that you don’t really know who you are and what you really think.
“I don’t think this is a spoiler, but it’s about them coming face-to-face with something that’s difficult and they don’t all agree on.
“We don’t leave them these enlightened people by any means — but they have a little bit of growth.”
The late Mo Mowlam will make a brief appearance in episode one in archive news footage on TV and Lisa cited the former secretary of state among her political heroes from that era.
She said: “Definitely John Hume is the big one, and Mo. Then there was a political party that doesn’t exist any more but was very important at the time, called The Women’s Coalition.
“It sounds cheesy, but anyone who was trying to find the middle ground, for me, and put themselves in the firing line.
“Which John Hume did time and time again. And Mo. They were heroes.
“I don’t know if it is just rose-tinted glasses, but I think we had real heroes in those times. It was tough times. It was crap.
“But we had these amazing people that you could look up to, who made you think about what you were doing and how you could contribute.
“I don’t know if they exist now. They were one in a million. We were lucky to have them.
“It was in everything you talked about and so there and so present all the time.
“There were literally soldiers outside on your street — on the street I grew up in anyway. They would be kneeling down outside houses.
“And there was a paramilitary presence. A lot of complicated stuff was going on, but you just went, ‘this is life’.
Derry Girls creator and writer Lisa McGee
“There’s layers and layers of this stuff. I remember the ceasefire being a massive deal. And then the Good Friday Agreement being a massive deal.
“I was never really scared growing up. Which is weird. But then I got scared about it going back to that. Because after the Good Friday Agreement, I obviously knew it was a lot better.”
Lisa also told the new edition of The Big Issue how she has stressed about what will happen to her sitcom characters — even though they are not real.
She added: “I have a very weird relationship with this show. I have sleepless nights about what Orla is going to do for a living — how she is going to make money. She’s not real. But I get very stressed about whether they have a plan.”
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