Derry Girls

McGee chats about the Netflix hit's lasting impact, the art of character development, and what's up for her next.

I find I need to know where I’m going; I need to know what the end of the episode is and what the acts are, and what the end of the series might be. In many ways, I was very blessed with the opportunities that I got early on, and I learned a lot by working on a lot of different shows, but it’s just so funny to me that the story I had the whole time is the one that broke out. I got there, and I realized that my voice and story was valuable and interesting, but I wish I’d known that from the start, the way that a lot of guys do. I wish I had known the things that were different about me as a working-class female writer in a room in London were the things that were going to be my strengths and set me apart from everyone else. It sounds like a depressing project in a way, but there was a lot of joy and color in it too. I think I started in plays because I just knew I wanted to write for actors; I knew I wanted to write drama. It’s like a piece of music, and you sort of conduct the rhythm of it and how things fall. When I was a child, I used to pretend to be Jessica Fletcher. To be able to end it exactly how I wanted to wrap it up was such a gift. I’m writing a new show now, and it’s a comedy as well, and I’ve kind of forgotten how hard that is at the start, how difficult it is to create these people again. I start with a real person, and I take one element of that real person that I find interesting, and I might take another element of someone else I know and smash those two together and see what happens. I planned it for three seasons, so to be able to do that was amazing.

The sentiment also applies to fans of the series, which is written and created by actual Derry girl Lisa McGee, who came of age in the Catholic-majority town of ...

(Sister Michael even wears one to champion Clare in the moving second to last episode.) “By Season 3, we were having like ‘love is love’ [pins] and we went all out,” says Prior. “The 'swangels' as we called them,” says Prior, who custom-designed the hand-made and hand-feathered wings — trimmed with rave-friendly lighting — to match how each character would put their costume together. “So you have that symbol in the center of town.” Orla wears her wings attached to her sleeves to excitedly flap, while James goes all out with a regal (and English) Elizabethan ruff collar. Orla, Derry’s resident aerobiciser, literally marches to the beat of her own drum in “trackies,” and exhibits her unflappable quirkiness through “dressing for the occasion,” per Prior. “I just felt Erin would definitely be Geri because Geri was the self-proclaimed leader and the one that was always speaking on behalf of them,” explains McGee, in assigning each a Spice persona. “There was a line that Lisa had written in season one about Sister Michael watching [the Clint Eastwood TV series] Rawhide,” says Prior, who began incorporating a “cowboy” theme into the nun’s costumes. McGee actually looks back fondly on the democratizing uniforms, but like Erin, once attempted to “express my individuality,” as the teen declares, by switching out her blazer for a denim jacket. "Being a Derry Girl, well, it's a f*cking state of mind.” Wise words — and a requisite F-bomb — from the troublemaking but loyal and foul-mouthed to a fault Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) in the Season 2 finale of the ‘90s-set teen comedy. “We actually made her skirt look like it was turned up three times,” says Prior, who manipulated lining fabric to mimic the age-old DIY trick without the actual bulkiness. The nostalgia factor is almost a sixth Derry girl: The sounds of “We Like to Party” by Venga Boys or “Ready or Not” by Fugees'' immediately transport us back to formative moments, and Erin’s and Clare’s connecting “best friends” necklaces revisit our questionable teen fashion. Self-serious (and self-unaware) Erin’s on-point cardigans, miniskirts, and layered vests — or waistcoats, in Irish — reflect her mood and aspiration of the moment.

It's time to bid farewell to our favorite Derry Girls (and the wee English fella). Season 3 hits Netflix on Friday. Does it pass muster?

Derry Girls Season 3 successfully weaves together the political turmoil of the time and the struggles of adolescence beautifully. Season 3 of Derry Girls is just as hilarious as the first two seasons. However, Jackson steps to the plate as the unspoken leader of our crew, delivering a layered, well-crafted, and equal parts humorous and heartfelt performance. “Hope” is the name of the game, more so in Season 3 than its predecessors. [RELATED: Top 10 Feel-Good TV Shows Guaranteed to Make You Feel Good](https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/top-10-feel-good-tv-shows-guaranteed-to-make-you-feel-good/) [Siobhán McSweeney](https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/tag/siobhan-mcweeney) as Sister Michael. The chemistry between the adults is easy and breezy, coming from a grounded, natural place. While there are a few instances of overacting (mainly from the teens), it isn’t enough to detract from my enjoyment. At the same time, there’s talk of The Troubles coming to an end. Despite the three-year gap between seasons, Season 3 picks up right where the show left off, never missing a beat. The guest performances seamlessly meld with the high-octane, high-energy work churned out by our leading players. Well, it also depends on your interpretation of what’s a spoiler.

We had the chance to speak with creator Lisa McGee on the occasion of the international release of the final season of the comedy, Derry Girls.

However, with the Derry Girls phenomenon, Lisa McGee wanted to show another side of the conflict through the point of view of families living their lives as best as they could while dealing with a sectarian conflict taking place right outside their homes. We talked about THAT cameo in season 3, storylines that didn’t make the final cut, what the future holds for the girls, and much more. Over the years, numerous movies and series about this conflict have been made and have depicted the violence and sorrow taking place in Northern Ireland.

Learn all the movies and shows streaming new on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more this weekend—plus, our picks for the best releases for October 6-9.

Gloucester Rugby Released Friday, October 7 The options above only scratch the surface, so you know that this weekend’s full lineup will have amazing options for what to watch this weekend! Showtime’s new Let The Right One In series is inspired by the Swedish film and novel of the same name (and later, a 2010 American version of the film which co-starred Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz). Ramsey’s Birdy is an equally feisty young woman, who will stop at nothing to avoid having to marry one of the suitors her father (Andrew Scott) wants her to wed so he can advance their family’s social status. Set against backdrop of the Troubles in 1990s Northern Ireland, the show is the story of five friends at a strict Catholic high school, Erin (Saiorse-Monica Jackson), her cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), Clare (Nicola Coughlan), Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) and Michelle’s English cousin, James (Dylan Llewellyn), as they come of age. Want to know more about these highlights and the rest of the stellar weekend lineup? And for something lighter, there’s a new Lena Dunham film on Amazon Prime Video, Catherine Called Birdy, about a young girl in the Middle Ages desperate to avoid being married off to one of the many disgusting (but rich!) men her parents want her to be with. Unable to leave the house until dark, Eleanor is trapped inside, while her father has to find a way to not only feed her the blood she craves but try to find a cure for her. But that’s okay because that will give us time to watch Showtime’s new drama, Let The Right One In, the series about a 12-year-old girl named Eleanor who’s also a vampire. One of these girls is a vampire, others are teens living in a politically turbulent country, and another is fending off gross, hairy suitors her parents want her to marry, but despite their differences, the struggles are all the same. Just a bunch of girls trying to live their lives, that’s what this weekend’s new movies and shows are all about.

Lisa McGee's comedy takes place during Northern Ireland's Troubles, but exudes a timeless and universal appeal.

What do they do now that peace is looming and adulthood is staring them in the face, threatening to change everything about the world as they know it? The impeccable writing pays homage to Irish history, and crucially honors the legacy of female friendships (and their one English fella), especially those formed in hallowed hallways and during sleepovers. When he claims he still feels out of place, Michelle poignantly tells him: “Being a Derry girl is a state of mind.” And that right there, folks, is the line of the show. Derry Girls doesn’t dismiss the seriousness of the conflict, though. In the final seven episodes, the girls and their unlikely English lad get to mature without losing any of their eccentricities. As season three kicks off, the Troubles are almost over, and our protagonists are about to turn 18. The on-point Irish jargon (helpful tip: keep the subtitles on) makes Derry Girls more immersive. Derry Girls offers an excellent snapshot of the ’90s Derry bubble, aided by shooting on location. Derry Girls’ entertaining teens—Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), her cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), and friends Clare (Nicola Coughlan) and Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell)—have a knack for landing in bizarre situations. The show’s beauty lies in an effervescent portrait of friendship, with the flawless cast’s comedic spark crackling through the screen. After all, being a teen is a dumpster fire no matter where in the world you suffer through it. A hilarious and hyper-specific ’90s nostalgia trip, it’s focused on the four titular Derry girls and one “wee English fella.” The series, which returns to Netflix in the U.S.

The third and final season of Derry Girls has finally hit Netflix. Hear how stars Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Jamie-Lee O'Donnell and Dylan Llewellyn feel about ...

Really, it's so sad but also so happy to have him have a great ending and have the show have a great ending. And to say goodbye to the character James and to the show is, it's like a mix of emotions. It's one of the biggest Halloween celebrations in the world and we get loads of tourists and stuff coming over and we really make a big deal out of it. And to have the people of Derry all be extras in our Halloween sequence and people come out to just watch us film, it's so amazing. JL: I'm going on to shoot the second season of a show I've done over here, a Channel Four show called Screw. Those were always fun and stuck out for me, and doing rehearsals with the girls and learning the dance routines was always good fun. And even though it's a studio, it feels so warm and it feels so cozy and it feels so incredibly real. And that's just a real credit to Lisa McGee, the writer. So, they're sort of figuring out what they're gonna do, the next step after they leave school, where they want to go and what kind of becomes of them. [third and final season](https://www.eonline.com/news/1323537/the-trailer-for-derry-girls-last-season-is-exactly-what-we-needed-this-st-patricks-day) of the hit comedy series already premiered in the U.K. And so, I think even from then on, it's sort of really built and built so much more. But now, international fans will finally get to see how the Derry Girls' story comes to a close with the new season hitting [Netflix](https://www.eonline.com/news/netflix) on Oct.

'Derry Girls' star Saoirse-Monica Jackson on Lisa McGee's writing, the season-three finale, the inspiration for Erin's many faces, that kiss with James, ...

I remember writing to the BRIT School (a prestigious performing-arts school in London) at age 12, and you had to be 16 to go there. And I just love the sheer and utter balls of Erin kissing him first; I love that she went in for it. Erin is a mash-up of myself as a teenager, Lisa as a teenager, and the girls of Derry today. I love the idea of her and Bill and Hillary just sat around together with a bowl of popcorn watching Derry Girls. She even says it in that closing speech — that she’s scared of the world and doesn’t feel ready for it all. I almost wanted to see more of them as a couple. She was sort of going through that time as a teenager when no matter what we said — and I think I’m quite a cool older cousin — she was repulsed or acted like we were ruining her life. My brother went to school in the south, and I went to school in the north. My mom was from the south, from Donegal, and my dad’s from Derry, so I think I had the best of both worlds. That nature gets passed on to the young girls — fighting for what you want and what you need, believing in who you are, and having this thirst for the entire world. I think the success of the show was mainly down to Lisa’s writing. But when Jackson speaks, the differences between the actor and her character become apparent: Erin talks at two octaves higher, is much more animated, and will contort her entire body just to make a point or scrunch her face in multiple directions at once to show disgust, awe, or incomprehension.

This season was filled with more hilarious one-liners and an even more exciting guest star (Liam Neeson!). But if you were disappointed to finish the season and ...

All three seasons of Derry Girls are available on Netflix with an account. This season was filled with more hilarious one-liners and an even more exciting guest star (Liam Neeson!). Sadly, Derry Girls is over and done, with Season 3, Episode 7 being the finale.

The third and final season of the beloved coming-of-age story is now on Netflix. Here's why Derry Girls will be missed.

Set in the town of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Derry Girls debuted in 2018 and tells the story of a group of teenagers coming of age in the 1990s. Not sneaking to Belfast for a Take That concert or paying for the class trip to Paris. Deep in the endless scroll of Netflix’s catalog, there exists a tiny little show called Derry Girls.

Derry, Northern Ireland, is not only the location of Netflix's "Derry Girls" but also the location of Bloody Sunday, one of the deadliest days of the ...

[U.S.’s Bloody Sunday in 1965](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=2), the famous incident where [John Lewis](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/john-lewis-remembrance-inspired-me-black-gen-z-activist) and other civil rights marchers were attacked by state police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge walking from Selma, Alabama to the capital of Montgomery. However, the British retained control of the six counties that now make up [Northern Ireland](https://www.britannica.com/place/Northern-Ireland). — a common tale, one connected to the trope of the [19th century potato famine migrant](https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/irish-potato-famine). (While a famine did play a role in mass Irish migration to the U.S., that famine was a [result of colonialism](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40403619), which had forced Irish peasant farmers to produce potatoes for English and Anglo-Irish landowners, exposing them to crop failure resulting in mass starvation.) You might’ve heard of the [the Irish Free State](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/irish-free-state-declared) was established; and the Republic of Ireland was established in 1949. [first colony](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/ireland-has-yet-to-come-to-terms-with-its-imperial-past-1.4444146), with the Normans [arriving in the 1100s](https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ireland-english-colonization) and Protestant settlers arriving in Ireland in the 1600s. While the show is nominally about five teens who make up the Derry Girls gang and their families — and how much of a timeless banger “Dreams” by the Cranberries is — it’s also set against the backdrop of the Troubles. However, the Irish Bloody Sunday was, for example, [the subject of U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/u2-sunday-bloody-sunday-50th-anniversary-massacre-1292600/) On the day of, during a civil rights protest march led by Catholics, British soldiers shot 26 civilians, killing 14, in what was the [deadliest mass shooting of the era.](https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/violence/majinc.htm) The day went on to become one of the most defining ones in the Troubles. Derry, the location of Derry Girls — officially called Londonderry by the British and by loyalists — had a significant role in the Troubles, as the site of Bloody Sunday in 1972. [Derry Girls](https://www.teenvogue.com/tag/netflix) aired in the UK and Ireland this spring, and finally arrives on [Netflix in the U.S.](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/whats-coming-to-netflix-october-2022) today. [roughly spanning from 1968 to 1998,](https://www.britannica.com/event/The-Troubles-Northern-Ireland-history) though its political roots go back much further, and its ramifications are far from resolved.

"I'm the only writer on the show, so it's kind of been my life for the last five years," admits McGee.

People always say they'd never want to go back and relive their teenage years, but I kind of did, and it's been so weird and lovely. [fight for their reproductive rights](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abortion-walkout-reproductive-rights) in the U.S. The show is always a balm, but right now, as teen girls

The season premiere finds the wains stressing about test results, attempting a heist, and meeting a detective chief inspector with a particular set of ...

Instead, the best episodes of Derry Girls are more akin to the most relentlessly escalating Key and Peele sketches, such as To what end, we will never know, because the ways of cats are too mysterious for us to fathom, but wake up, sheeple, the conspiracy is plain as day! He doesn’t really think they’re burglars, and just wants to know if they can identify the real culprits, but he’s clueless as to the effect of the setting for this little chitchat. Ever helpful, Michelle can identify one of their butts, sadly a piece of information that doesn’t clear the bar as a rationale for a warrant. (The GCSE is the U.K.’s rough equivalent of a high-school diploma in the U.S., and good results are required for students to attend an extra year of high school in preparation for A-level exams. Derry Girls’ own Cassandra is cursed to see and understand reality and yet is unable to convince anyone around him of that reality. Unlike the girls, she’s supremely unbothered about their GCSE results because the school has already received them for all students, “and also, I don’t care.” Rather than provide specifics, she advises the wains to enjoy what time they have left. That’s not to say everyone is footloose and fancy-free; the girls are anxiously awaiting exam results that will determine the course of their lives forevermore, while Gerry and Granda Joe embark on an errand that teeters on a knife edge between silly and grim. Both genuinely LOL-worthy, near-throwaway jokes about the agony caused by centuries of colonial violence are rare as hen’s teeth and will fall flat if their funny-to-bleak proportions are off. While browsing the racks at the video-rental shop, the wains pester Dennis about how it’s possible for him to work there and at the sweetshop until he finally exclaims “Jesus Christ, I was asked less questions when I was interned!” Let’s hit pause here to admire one of the best and most quintessentially Derry Girls lines of the episode. As the wains deny any knowledge whatsoever of American Gigolo, the camera pushes in on Mary and Sarah, looking very guilty in the background. If this absolute banger of a sitcom is new to you, I encourage you to fire up the pilot before proceeding further.