“When people see the name Brigid Leahy, they expect to see a granny from Tipperary,” laughs the Dublin-based actor and writer (33) from California.
“The last person they’re expecting is an Asian-American woman,” she says.
Leahy is Vietnamese-Irish-American, to be exact, with a father whose family left Cork in 1860 and a mother who left her own native country following the Vietnam War at the age of 16.
“One time I got a taxi [in Dublin], and the taxi driver kept looking at me in the rear-view mirror and was like, so are you Brigid Leahy’s carer or, like, is your name Brigid Leahy?
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“Or I picked up a prescription once, and they were like, is this for your granny? Are you Brigid?”
Last year was busy for Brigids, with wide-ranging celebrations for the 1,500th anniversary of St Brigid’s death, which included the Brigid Project – a collection of portraits by Deirdre Brennan, which Leahy was photographed for – and the Brigid Festival on the saint’s feast day.
Leahy got married two years ago, to a man from Dublin, at a Kildare ceremony attended by many of her US-based friends and relatives.
“And what’s really funny is my sister, Fiona, she followed me out here to do a working holiday and then she met her husband, so she lives here as well. She married a man from Wexford,” she says.
“And the four of us are all best friends; we went on a joint honeymoon together last year to Japan. So having Fiona here is great, and we have that shared experience.
“And, of course, my dad is delighted to have two Irish sons-in-law.”
Although Leahy’s father and grandfather had Irish passports and were registered on the foreign birth registry, Leahy herself was not, and so she went through the process of becoming a naturalised Irish citizen. She received her citizenship in June.
“It was like this circuitous route that I had to take to reclaim my own roots,” Leahy says.
“My family, we have such a strong Irish tradition that we’ve carried for generations – like all my cousins are Aidan, Caitlin, Colin, and my dad’s Patrick, my sister is Fiona. And so, it was a really powerful moment to say I’m actually Irish now.
“Becoming naturalised was also very powerful because my mom is a naturalised citizen of the United States. [She] left Vietnam as a refugee […] and she was in a refugee camp in Thailand before being sponsored to come to the US by a convent in Kentucky.
“And so I thought about my mother and her losing her statehood – she was a stateless person – and becoming naturalised, and I have this amazing privilege to be a dual citizen, and to have that belonging to two nations, which I think is really powerful and beautiful.”
I want to work with people who are not looking for fame or, you know, financial gain. They really want to change the landscape and tell a really good story
Having graduated with a degree in history from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Leahy knew she wanted to continue her studies abroad, and says moving to Ireland in 2014 “was a no-brainer”.
“I’d been to Ireland before and had absolutely fallen in love with the country. And my family, they’ve come here so often over the years just for holidays, and they had told me how magical it was,” she says.
In 2014, Leahy pursued a Master’s degree in public history and cultural heritage at Trinity College Dublin, for which she focused her research on the politics of commemorative practices for Vietnamese diasporic groups, and how they commemorate the Vietnam War.
“I’ve become really close with the Vietnamese community here – and my friend Kim, she owns one of the first Vietnamese restaurants in Ireland, Pho Kim on Parnell Street.
“And so that was really special to take both of my identities and be able to use them in my academic work,” she says.
As well as history, acting had always been a passion of Leahy’s and she had taken part in student theatre productions at UCLA. It didn’t take her long to find acting opportunities in Dublin when she arrived.
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“I got off the plane and I saw auditions for a musical and I was like, ‘I’ll do that’, and I got cast, so I was immediately part of the arts community here, which was fantastic, especially coming from another country. And I’ve always found a home with artists here,” she says.
As well as work on the stage, Leahy has acted in several productions here, including the film Disenchanted, starring Amy Adams, which was filmed in Wicklow, and Irish TV drama Smother, filmed in Lahinch, Co Clare. Leahy debuted her Irish accent while filming Smother, prompting the director to think she grew up here, which, she says, was “the best compliment anyone’s ever given me”.
People often ask Leahy why she left the home of Hollywood to pursue an acting career in Ireland, and to that she says: “Immediately, Ireland felt like the landscape I needed to make art. Here, art is less commercial, and you can really feel the desire for collaboration.
“In Hollywood, now, they’re just churning out franchise after franchise after franchise and Ireland still feels like a place where we protect art and authentic stories. And there’s a reason why Ireland, for such a small country, has such [an] amazing cultural and artistic output – it’s because it’s something that we value here as a people.
“I really felt that when I came here that this is the type of art I want to make. I want to work with people who are not looking for fame or, you know, financial gain. They really want to change the landscape and tell a really good story.”
Leahy’s acting career has come full circle as she is returning to the Smock Alley stage, the venue of her first performance on Irish soil, to perform in A Misanthrope by Sugarglass, starting on July 17th. The play is described as an Irish reworking of Molière’s play, set in a make-believe tech company at Dublin’s Silicon Docks.
“It’s great to have a piece by Molière adapted to fit something that’s so relevant today, and it’s a really fun setting to be working in,” she says.
When the acting world went quiet during the Covid pandemic, Leahy decided to turn her hand to writing.
“I was accepted into this artist collective called the West Studio Group – it’s an initiative by the Dublin Fringe Festival for black and global majority artists – and from that, I’ve met so many amazing artists and have been able to collaborate with them.
“I actually have my first play on at the Fringe this year. It’s called The Chalice and it’s going to be on in the New Theatre in September.”
Leahy also co-wrote a short film called Good Chips – in which a family of Vietnamese immigrants struggle to keep their takeaway business afloat in Dublin of 1989 – which won the Writers Guild of Ireland Zebbie award for best short film script in 2024. Leahy and her collaborator have since been granted funding to develop it into a feature film.
Leahy has been grateful to benefit from government supports for the arts, she says. “In the US, there aren’t very many public supports of arts, it’s all private. [Whereas, in Ireland] I’ve been granted two theatre project awards to write two plays and Screen Ireland has been so supportive of a couple of projects that I’ve worked on. So, you know, Ireland has the institutions to support emerging artists and that feels so out of reach in the US.
“It feels like art is a bit more democratised here.”
A Misanthrope is at Smock Alley Theatre from July 17th to August 2nd, and The Chalice will be at the Dublin Fringe Festival in September
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
