My time interviewing actor Kelly Murtagh was planned to be quick. Maybe fifteen minutes or so. Have you ever had those moments where you speak to someone for the first time and can feel their positivity?
The call went from purely professional to a friendly “Hey pal, how have you been, how's the family?” within the
Talking Through The Medias was fortunate to gain the opportunity to interview with writer, actress, and producer Kelly Murtagh and discuss her work in the upcoming film The Lovebirds starring Kumail Nanjiani & Issa Rae. She plays the character Evonne, who originally was just a character mentioned in the movie but had no screen time according to Kelly. “I was able to build her and make her my own” according to Kelly. She was given the opportunity to use her skills in improving and bring life to the character with a bottle of white wine. In my experience going to the movies before social distancing closed off the theaters, I told Kelly that I witnessed genuine interest in the trailer. People laughed and whispered that they were looking forward to seeing the film. Since the shutdown of all theaters the studio made the decision to have the film debut on Netflix on the original theatrical release date of April 3rd. “I hope that’s true,” Kelly said “It will bring people together during this time. Issa and Kumail are so down to earth and the kind of people you want to be around”.
One of the other great moments was finding out that she worked on the Call of Duty Black Ops marketing campaign. This was the game that really got me into first-person shooting games. “That was back in 2012. I was in acting class and heard about this open call at a shooting range. I did the open call, not expecting that I would hear from the casting. Then a few days later I got a call that they wanted me to be in the commercial. They put me in a hotel in the middle of the desert and we got to shoot this huge commercial. The campaign at the time was ‘There’s A Soldier In All Of Us’. Everyone was running around with guns and I got to shoot this uzi. This producer walked up to me and said they wanted to use me for the print campaign”.
When she told this story the memory of the commercial featuring Kobe Bryant came back to me. I loved that commercial. Kelly never saw the billboard that she was in out in the city but friends of hers that saw it would take pictures and sent them to her to view. Kelly said she never played games like Call of Duty but her husband does and she loves watching him play and will both play Animal Crossing on Nintendo Switch.
I had a blast talking with Kelly about her upcoming projects and her experiences in the film industry. To listen to the full interview please go to our channel.
Kelly Murtagh can be found on Twitter and Instagram @kellymurtagh. You can catch Kelly as Evonne on The Lovebirds streaming on Netflix April 3rd.