Rough Diamond
Interview with Horsemaster Irene Lawler
Horsemaster and qualified instructor Irene Lawler had her work cut out preparing for Rough Diamond.
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She was not only responsible for teaching the actors to ride but getting the horses to act too. "It was my first television job, so when I got the call I said yes immediately and I loved it! I was like a duck to water. I love teaching and getting people to fulfill their dreams."
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Irene started work teaching Conor, Ben and Muireann to ride about three weeks before filming began. Her challenge was to introduce the actors to the horses they were going to be working with, and get them to a comfortable level so that they would look convincingly confident on screen.
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All three were relatively new to riding and it was a different experience with each one of them.
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"Conor hadn't ridden for years but when he got up I was pleasantly surprised, he was a little rusty but he has a very good seat and he got very good very quickly." Irene explains.
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"Ben, on the other hand, was a complete and utter novice. Not only had he never sat on a horse before but he also had to get up on a racehorse within a matter of weeks! Needless to say, a racehorse is a very different beast to a riding school pony."
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Luckily for Irene he was up for anything: "Ben turned out to be a superstar. He trusted me completely which is the most important thing for an instructor. He was so willing to learn and he just put everything into it – he was brilliant to work with."
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Irene's biggest challenge was the colt itself, who she believes is the real star of the show. "He was a thoroughbred racehorse with a lovely nature and a great temperament, but I had to make him behave like a crazed animal so that was tricky.
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"He adored polo mints so they became my secret weapon – polo mints and a lot of patience! I had to train him to misbehave, to run backwards and do all the things you don't want a horse to do.
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"It was a real case of 'bribe me, bribe me and I'll do anything for you' until eventually he got to the stage when he was biting, and poor Conor had a few bite marks from when the colt thought he had polo mints!"
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Irene's top tips of the trade are "Polo mints, patience and horse doubles".
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On patience: "The first thing for a trainer to establish, above all else, is a relationship of complete trust with the animal.
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"A lot of the horses were new to me when we started, so I spent a lot of time building up a rapport and getting to know them so that when the time came to take a racehorse into a stable with lights, a boom swinger, two actors, a dolly with a camera on it and two camera crew, they would be confident enough to step across the tracks and walk in.
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"It took a long time to reach a point where they were prepared to put themselves into such an unnatural situation. If it didn't work first time then we'd try again until we got it – we were very lucky that we seemed to get it every time."
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Unlikely as it sounds, animals sometimes get doubles as well. Irene explains: "As with humans, if you ask a horse to run all day they will get tired, so if we had a particularly long day shooting with a lot of galloping, we would use horse doubles – basically two identical looking animals that we would swap.
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"The other time when we needed doubles would be when we had a rearing scene, and also a scene where the same horse had to die. Then one horse would be trained to lie down and the other would be trained to rear up and stand up on its hind legs, so that one horse wasn't under too much strain."
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The old TV saying tells us never to work with animals or children – so were there any funny incidents with the animals on set?
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Irene recounts one hilarious moment: "Ben was up on the colt and he just had to ride past the dolly and the camera, down the yard. But the colt was misbehaving because that's what we'd taught him to do – he decided that he was going to be particularly naughty and nothing was working.
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"So, as he was walking past me I gave him a slap on the backside, and with that he just took off across the yard with poor Ben on board! Ben thought he was only walking – he suddenly went from walk to canter to gallop in an instant.
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"It was like being in a Porsche, Ben was all over the place and nearly fell off. Everyone was holding their breath, but Ben just got it together, turned around and started laughing! He was brilliant, anyone else would have been jumping off with terror, but Ben just took everything in his stride."
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There weren't many real hurdles for Irene to overcome on the shoot, but for the actor Eamon Morrissey (Dermot Cahill) it was a different story.
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Eamon had such a phobia of horses when he started on Rough Diamond and Irene took him under her wing to see what she could do to help him, as he did have a couple of riding scenes to do.
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"We could have used a double for him of course but at the age of 64, Eamon wanted to face his fears. He was so keen and such a gentleman. He would come to me and say, 'look Irene, I'm not in the next two shots so can we do anything at all?'
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"And with that attitude he conquered his fear. By the time we finished filming, I had that man cantering around on his own. He really did himself proud."
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Irene previously worked on the Lassie movie in 2005.
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