IT’S not every day you almost drop a teapot on Uma Thurman’s head.
Just as the teapot was hurtling towards one of Tea & Sympathy’s regulars, Shane McNaughton had to rely on his hurling reflexes to save him from probably the most embarrassing moment of his life.
Up until a couple of months ago, the Cushendall hurler-turned-actor was enjoying life in New York.
There was a nice steady stream of stage work coming his way and he was nominated for best actor in ‘The 8th’ for The First Irish Theatre Festival.
The play, written by Tralee native Sean Sugrue, ran for a few weeks in the Secret Theatre Off Broadway.
‘A year after the death of their father, Saoirse and Tomas return home for his one-year anniversary mass.
The family still deep in grief continue to argue over the suspicious manner in how Dennis died.
While tensions rise inside the house, outside the people of Ireland are equally divided as they prepare to vote on whether to repeal the eighth amendment and legalise abortion in the most contentious social issue Ireland has seen since its independence.’
McNaughton enjoyed his role and was about to throw himself into the next project before lockdown derailed everything.
But back to Uma Thurman.
The famous American actress often has coffee in her local café in Greenwich Village where McNaughton works.
“I was delivering for Tea & Sympathy – it’s a wee Anglo-Irish shop in Greenwich,” McNaughton explains.
“They’ve a little café, a chippie and a grocery store. The café can only seat 10 or 15 people. I remember almost dropping a teapot on Uma Thurman’s head. I caught the thing before it hit her.
“I was just making tea and I was getting one of the fancy teapots that hang all around the shop. She didn’t notice but I think her daughter, whom she was with, might have. Imagine dropping a teapot on Uma Thurman’s head.
“You would get a lot of famous people coming into the shop. Glenn Close lives across the road and I delivered to Brian De Palma – the Scarface director. Julieanne Moore and Mike Myers would be in the place all the time. It’s a cool wee spot.”
Four years ago, just days after playing in an All-Ireland final with Ruairi Ogs at Croke Park, McNaughton rolled the dice and headed to America to learn the acting trade at the prestigious Stella Adler Studio in New York.
“Whenever I was in school in New York a lot of my class-mates found it hard to find their community, whereas I never struggled with that because the Irish theatre community and scene over there is so inviting and that’s a massive help.
“Everyone is in the same boat in terms of getting work; everyone is happy when someone gets a gig. Everyone is struggling but it’s just a good environment to be in and it’s good to surround yourself with those people.”
McNaughton came home to see his family for a couple of weeks at the back end of February but never imagined that he would be stranded at home due to a pandemic.
Being back in Cushendall has given the 31-year-old some good thinking time and he has probably worked out why he decided to leave for the States in the first place.
A hugely talented hurler for club and county, McNaughton says: “I was really enjoying New York. I’ve had time to think about things because I’ve had little else to think about, but if I’m being honest with myself I think I left because I didn’t feel I fitted into any theatre community because I was predominantly known as a hurler here.
“Any time I was in Belfast, Belfast wasn’t about the Lyric Theatre. Belfast, to me, was Casement Park.”
Not many have the courage to follow their dreams – but his instinct was to go to America, and he’s had sound advice over the last four years that has convinced him he made the right move.
“Colin Broderick from Tyrone, a very successful author, put a comment under one of my tweets comments which read: ‘Burn the boats’.
“He then wrote underneath it what it meant.”
McNaughton already knew what it meant. Veteran St Gall’s coach Mickey Culbert, who is McNaughton’s Godfather, once used the phrase before a Championship match that Cushendall were involved in.
“Mickey Culbert gave this speech one time and said: ‘Burn the boats’, which basically means you’ve no other option but to go forward, you’ve no other option but to succeed.”
Although he may find himself in the Glens, McNaughton has burned the boats and is looking forward to resuming his budding acting career in New York when the pandemic passes.
“I hope we can travel again so I can go out to New York and start working again. I’ll certainly be going back with a different appreciation of things, all of us will. The idea of sitting in Times Square right now, I’d love to be sitting there right now looking at thousands of people. Little things like that you don’t think you’ll miss. Even the subway… But I’ll go back and just hammer the pavements, auditioning.”
