Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí, better known as Kneecap, (plus director Rich Peppiatt) give the lowdown on the creation of their raucous quasi-biopic, which captures the formation of their rap trio in Belfast and the ongoing fight to save the Irish language.
It’s April, and after an early flight to Belfast, I’m taken to the Falls Road. I’m here to interview Republican-Irish rap trio Kneecap: Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh), Móglaí Bap; (Naoise Ó Caireallain) and DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh), stars of their own eponymous biopic. Its Brit director, Rich Peppiatt, is also in the room. Specifically, I’m in the Cultúrlann, the Irish language cultural centre co-founded by Móglaí Bap’s (or Naoise’s, as he introduces himself ) father in the early 1990s. The Cultúrlann is made of old red brick, with a Palestine flag anchored outside blowing in the Belfast breeze – as I understand it, a pre-October 7th fixture of the centre. It’s home to a cosy café and bookshop, yet upstairs, where I interview Rich and the lads separately, there is a theatre and classrooms where they took their six months of acting lessons.
“Because we’re doing something involving non-actors playing themselves, we just wanted them to feel very relaxed and that meant allowing them to speak how they speak, which is, you know… every other word is a ‘cunt’,” says writer/director Peppiatt. Kneecap have courted controversy over the years for their incisive yet provocative condemnations of British dominion in the North of (or, Northern) Ireland, whether that be unveiling murals of on-fire police cars, or their BBC theme tune sampling anthem ‘Get Your Brits Out’ (featuring an illustrated cover of our late Lizzie, mammaries dangling). Kneecap (the film) is as frenetic and political as the band’s lyrics, with a sharp and hilarious voiceover commentary from Mo Chara, whose refusal to speak English to the police when arrested in possession of drugs catalyses the film’s narrative (DJ Próvaí, who works at a local language school, is roped in as the translator), to scenes of drug binges portrayed in claymation or sweaty close-up.
“The film itself is not far from the storyboards,” Peppiatt continues. “Ryan [Kernaghan]’s a brilliant cinematographer. My favourite part of making this film was the two months we spent together in my kitchen. There’s over 1,000 storyboards for the film. Every transition, everything was planned, I just gave those storyboards to the editor and said, ‘Gimme that assembly’.” But for the self-control required of the director, what was it like working with three unruly rappers? “They were very disciplined… for the most part. It was certainly a challenge for them, as they are ultimately laws unto themselves, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. The time they really let loose was when Michael Fassbender was in town.”
Kneecap is what Peppiatt describes as a “tri-protagonist” film, with Mo Chara’s relationship with his protestant girlfriend propelling his arc, where Provai’s secret musical endeavours with some wayward drug dealers are in opposition to his life as a school teacher and his relationship with law-abiding language activist girlfriend, Caitlin (Fionnula Flaherty). Fassbender plays Móglaí Bap’s father, a militant republican named Arló aka Bobby Sandals, who has faked his own death and left his son and wife (played by Simone Kirby) suspended in purgatory back in West Belfast.
Once I’ve shuffled down to the next classroom, I ask the band how they handled the structure of a film set and also what it was like to work with Michael Fassbender. “I loved it,” says Mo Chara. “It was such an exciting seven weeks. Reality kind of fucking disappears, you’re up every morning and it becomes its own wee fucking world. I fucking loved it, it was pure therapeutic.” Móglaí Bap adds, “It’s the first time we’ve had a schedule in years. We were just waking up at 1pm every day, smoking a joint, doing some music and back to bed.”
Móglaí Bap, who has the most scenes with Fassbender of the three, tells me Bobby Sandals liked to watch YouTube videos on set. DJ Próvái, slightly older than the two rappers, and usually donning a balaclava, tells me that one night he drank a whole bottle of crème de menthe and threw up in the pub toilet: “It looked like Predator, all this green stuff,” “That’s disgusting,” I say reflexively. “Yeah, imagine how we felt!” Móglaí Bap replies laughing. “Then,” Próvái continues, “I look up and see Fassbender and Neil Lennon, the Celtic manager, looking down at me, and he says, ‘Happens to the best of us’. I thought to myself: ‘Fuck this is a weird time in my life’.”
Prior to Kneecap, and true to the film, DJ Próvái was an Irish language teacher known as the ‘Justin Bieber’ of the language locally. His character has the most transformative shift away from his demure life as an educator to an (often) coked-out DJ. “When we tested with audiences, Próvái was the favourite,” Peppiatt recalls. “But you have like Simone Kirby who’s my Ma in the movie, and Jess [Reynolds], and Josie Walker, all these class actors who all brought different talents to the movie”, Móglaí Bap chimes in after the créme de menthe story. This is before I could ask if the female foils to their characters were an intentional corrective to their raucous hypermasculine image. “The women that were involved, they brought such a depth to the whole story. They changed it around because it would have been just a load of smelly boys running around misbehaving.”
Mo Chara is quick to tell me, “Fassbender was incredible, but they were the ones that really changed the story. You know what I mean?” Próvái continues, “It was the women who were always the forerunners, they’re forgotten in history in fuckin’ Irish Republicanism, they were the ones out banging the bin lids whenever the British army was trying to come into the areas.” “Thankless fucking job back in the day. Any of the emotional scenes in the film is driven by the female characters.” Mo Chara rounds out. The end card of the film is a dedication to Irish mammies, in particular, Móglaí Bap’s mother who died by suicide. The band’s 2021 single ‘MAM’ raised money for Samaritans.
From here, the conversation flows, and the lads – who are swelling with pride over their film – start telling me what they think makes it so special. “Something I think that’s class that most other films don’t have is like, the psychology of language and how it can be used as a weapon,” Móglaí Bap starts. Throughout the film there’s a tension between the characters of Móglaí and Arlo, with the latter refusing to speak Irish to his son because he feels his drug use and lifestyle brings shame to the republican cause. “The language, for it to live, it has to progress. Whatever is in English has to be in Irish, there’s hip-hop with profanity and drug references in English so it has to be in Irish because the young people are going to try to find it.” “There was no word for cocaine, it’s not a native plant in Ireland,” he adds. “And then MDMA and ketamine, they all existed in English, but we didn’t have them in Irish, so we’d translate these words before Kneecap, representing this new subculture that involves the Irish language and modern youth culture.”
Peppiatt takes up the thread: “In terms of Irish language cinema, there’s a sense of, ‘Oh you’re doing a film in a language that people see as being archaic’, so you set it during the famine, or in the past, or in a rural location. But no, we’re gonna do an Irish language film that is urban and present, and no-one’s done that. It’s not very often you find yourself in a position where you’re making something that no one else has done.” Like all good biopics, Kneecap mythologises the band’s origins. The trio met at an Irish language culture festival to which they all contributed, not a police station (as suggested by the film). Yet the vitality of the message is the same.
Over the course of our conversation, I learn that the first Irish primary school was started in 1972, with no secondary school until 1981 and that Kneecap firmly believe the language belongs to the people of the land, not the people of any religion or political movement. “Protestants from around the North who always wanted to learn something about Irish were denied the opportunity because there was no legislation that schools had to provide it. Everything here comes from Irish, and I think everybody deserves that education” says Móglaí Bap. The young men talk at length about the Skaino Centre and people setting up Irish language courses and schools in the largely Protestant East Belfast, “Linda Ervine. She’s a fucking legend,” Móglaí Bap tells me. “She had Orangemen come and protest her Irish classes at the start”.
When Mo Chara tells me that as few as 15 years ago, it would be unimaginable to have this level of support for the language, I say that equally it might feel inconceivable to have such a groundswell of support for Palestine too, a cause they’ve been vocal about. “It’s always been solidarity with Palestine and Ireland, but particularly up North in Belfast. We done a lot of fundraising for the AIDA refugee camp a few years ago and we helped raise funds to build a gym there, because his brother runs a gym in Cork”.
Móglaí Bap’s brother now runs the ACALÍ Palestine gym, “He was overwhelmed by how bad the situation was. There’s a lot of amputees over there, a lot of people who have lost limbs and that was his speciality, training people with disabilities.” He tells me a lot of equipment sent there was confiscated by Israel, so they had to be sent through different countries piece by piece.
They talk about the awkward necessity of making statements on Palestine during their live shows in America, messages that slot in between songs about getting plastered and being on the dole. The conversation flows along to Irish-Americans: “We can’t forget Irish Americans oppressed minorities when they got to America, and because they were white they were able to rise through society by joining the police,”, Mo Chara says, almost unprompted. “People get comfortable and forget about oppression,” says Próvái.
Due to Covid, their debut album ‘Fine Art’ was a long time in the making and was only released in June of 2024, just ahead of the film. It meant that the album ended up having some influence on the film. “We started writing ‘Sick in the Head’, and that whole scene with the 808 in the classroom, is based on that tune from the album.” Mo Chara says.
Before I leave, and when I’ve stopped recording, Mo Chara tells me he was surprised to be asked directly about Palestine, as it’s something they often have to bring up independently. The film features a flash of the Palestine flag hanging from the flat of a tower block, one of the many political frames in the film amongst shots of the famous Falls Road murals. On my way out the door before my flight back to the belly of the beast, I tell them I’m off to get a filled soda, so off I went.
Published 22 Aug 2024
A couple of Belfast likely lads set out on a journey of rap-based resistance in Rich Peppiatt's cheeky pseudo-bio of the band Kneecap.
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