Growing up in the small village of Ratoath, Co Meath, the young Angela Scanlon had a dream. “You know when people ask ‘What do you wanna be when you grow up?’,” she asks, covering her face and shaking her head. “God knows where this came from, but my answer was always the same: ‘A businesswoman in a turquoise convertible, with my hair blowing in the wind’.” She winces, cackling loudly. “Talk about notions! Seven years of age!”
t’s safe to say that the now-38-year-old’s life took a different path. She may not have the flashy sports car, but the London-based presenter has become a familiar face to both Irish and British TV audiences over the past decade or so. It’s easy to see why: even via a Zoom call, it’s impossible to dislike Scanlon, whose warm, bubbly and down-to-earth nature has made her a hit on everything from Robot Wars to BBC’s The One Show, and most recently, fronting her own RTÉ chat show, Angela Scanlon’s Ask Me Anything.
She disappears from the screen for a moment, returning with a mouth full of food. I apologise for interrupting her breakfast, but she waves away the notion. “Interrupting my breakfast?! I’ve been up since five o’clock!” she says, pointing the finger at her youngest daughter Marnie, born in February of this year, as the culprit. “Ruby (4) was the same,” she laments, barely stifling a yawn. “We could push her to half-five, but she’s still up and full of beans at 6am, even now.” She smiles, shrugging. “But it’s all part of it. Sure, we’ll sleep when we’re dead, right?!”
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Angela Scanlon. Picture: Aaron J Hurley
Scanlon’s workload is beginning to ramp up once again, having only recently returned from maternity leave. When we speak, the wheels are in motion for the filming of season 2 of Angela Scanlon’s Ask Me Anything — but as a youngster, having her own show on television seemed completely unfeasible.
“TV, particularly, was a really foreign thing,” she admits. “If I really think back, there was probably a little bit of me going ‘Oh my god, I’d love to do that’ as a child — but it was so far away and so far removed from our world, I guess, that it just seemed like an impossibility. But I definitely was the ‘performer’ within my family.”
Scanlon found her way into Irish dancing as a child, and pursued it into her teenage years. It was a place, she says, that she “flourished”; something that became an “escape” for her. “It was very exciting and very good training for live telly, although I didn’t understand it at the time,” she grins.
“That sense of ‘Curtain’s up, you’re on’. When I was in school, dancing was all I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the road, I wanted to do Riverdance — and my parents were like, ‘Absolutely not. It’s not happening, you need something to fall back on. You can fanny around doing your dancing, but you’re not going into that fulltime.’ And that was made pretty clear,” she laughs. “So I went and studied business. At this point in time, the convertible was nowhere in my mind, and I was absolutely furious that I was being made to go to college — but I went.”
After college, she opened her own jewellery stall in Dublin’s Powerscourt Centre. That led to work as a stylist and as a personal shopper, and her career in TV subsequently happened “by accident”, she says. “I don’t know that I was consciously aware of wanting to get into telly; I obviously was on some level, but it was very much accidentally. ‘Will you comment on the Oscars was basically my entry point in,” she nods. “And maybe similar to dancing, as soon as I did it — I remember sitting in the studio on [TV3’s] Xposé — I thought ‘This is it’. It was so exciting and so terrifying and so varied. It felt very unfamiliar, but also extremely familiar to me. It was like ‘Yeah, this is what I wanna do.’”
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I think we’re sometimes made to feel like we have to just present the shiny version [of ourselves], and social media kind of feeds that
As well as the various TV presenting strings to her bow, Scanlon also found the time to write her own book, Joyrider, which was published earlier this year. Part memoir, part self-help guide, it focused on the importance of practicing gratitude and how empowering a force it can be in your life. In it, she also spoke openly about the eating disorder that dominated much of her earlier life.
“I think it was easy to speak about because it’s not difficult anymore,” she says, thoughtfully. “There’s a distance between that period and now; it feels like I’m a completely different person now. And I felt like if I was going to write something that was very personal to me, it was a big part of my life; basically, a quarter of my life or more was in that state. I think we’re sometimes made to feel like we have to just present the shiny version [of ourselves], and social media kind of feeds that. But I also thought ‘When I was in the throes of that [eating disorder], if I could relate to somebody who had come out the other side, maybe it would have given me a bit more hope or a bit more motivation to move through it.’”
She recalls a point at her lowest ebb that proved to be a turning point toward recovery. “Somebody who also had an eating disorder said to me ‘Ah yeah, well, this is it now. This is us, for life.’ And I remember thinking ‘No f**king way is this it.’” She takes a deep breath. “So I think that was a deep motivation for me; I knew how miserable I was, and I just didn’t want to stay that way. Whatever was unknown to me was more attractive than the certain misery that I was in. It was a very, very long process to get out of it, but it was really important for me [to recover]. I guess what I was talking about in the book was a shift in perspective and an ability to change your life — so I think it was important that people understood that there had been a change, because maybe the public perception of me was that everything had been rosy, forever. And that was never the case.”
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Angela Scanlon. Picture: Aaron J Hurley
If you follow Scanlon on Instagram, you’ll be aware how she happily shares the ups and downs of her life, including an honest post on Ruby’s 3rd birthday about her initial struggle with motherhood. She happily shares her children with the world, and the occasional snap of her husband Roy Horgan, but draws the line at sharing Ruby and Marnie’s faces.
“I think it’s easy to be in the moment and go ‘Oh, that could be really good…’,” she says of the persuasive instinct to show off your kids. “And it’s a really lovely way for people to connect with you, I suppose, and it’d be quite an easy thing to do. And I think they’re fab — so I think people would like them,” she laughs. “But yeah… I guess I always felt like I have made a choice to be in the public eye — not that it was a snap decision — and I realised everything that would come with it. But it was my choice, and it doesn’t feel like their choice.
“What hit me one day was an influencer that I follow on social media. I was out and about, and this kid was obviously with a childminder, so I didn’t see the mum — but I recognised the kid,” she grimaces.
“I think I am still very private; I very rarely post my sisters, or my close friends. But I think there is a line, for me. And I remember thinking ‘Oh my god, I recognise that baby from social media’, and that being a bit frightening to me, actually. The odd time, I’ll upload by mistake where I’ve cropped a picture, but Instagram hasn’t held onto the crop and it’ll have shifted in and [her daughter’s] face is in a mirror, or she’s in the background, or whatever it might be — and the lurch I get makes me know that it’s the right decision, for me, to keep them private. And I love following people who share their family life and I know that people really relate and connect to that, so it’s no judgement — it’s whatever works for everybody. But for me, and for us, that’s our line.”
I felt like things got a little bit awkward with Jedward on a couple of occasions
When it comes to her career, Scanlon is a clear all-rounder. Her CV is as eclectic as you can get — from documentaries, to presenting light entertainment shows, to the rough ‘n’ ready Robot Wars and virtual home makeover show Your Home Made Perfect — but there is a common theme linking all of them, she says.
“Your Home Made Perfect came off the back of Robot Wars, which was a big, shiny beast of a show, in every sense of the word,” she laughs. “And it felt like a ‘straighter’ show than Robot Wars; I thought ‘I don’t know if I wanna do this.’ Ultimately, I think it’s not that straight, but also, whether it’s documentaries or whether it’s Robot Wars, the through line for all of that is the people. On Robot Wars, I wasn’t there for the technology — I was there for the amazing bunch of people who build these robots in their sheds, trying to understand and get a bit of an insight into characters that I would never normally encounter. With documentaries, it was the same thing. I did a documentary for BBC quite early on about Trump’s superfans. In theory it was political, but it was really about people.”
The same could be said for Angela Scanlon’s Ask Me Anything. A major draw for that show, she says, was the format which allowed for a looser, more spontaneous conversation with her guests. The title is a giveaway: no topic was off the table.
“I had just said [to RTÉ’s head honchos] very casually, ‘I think you need a Saturday night show with a woman on it, FYI’,” she shrugs. “Obviously Miriam [O’Callaghan] used to do the summer every time, and obviously did Prime Time, and there’s Claire Byrne… but that entertainment space felt very male-dominated. So I threw it out there, and they came back when they were looking at this as a concept for a show. And then when we piloted it and tweaked it and changed it and shaped it a bit more for me, it just felt like the right thing to do. It felt like ‘Okay: this is an incredible opportunity to do something that maybe hasn’t really been done before, with commitment and enthusiasm from the whole team, and from RTÉ.’ So it was a no-brainer for me.”
I ask her to give the elevator pitch to those who haven’t seen series one. She throws her head back, laughing loudly. “I am absolutely sh*t at an elevator pitch, as you can tell: why use three words when you can use 30?” she says with a wide grin. “Essentially, it is a joyful entertainment show that’s a little bit silly in places. There is no chronological conversation — ‘You did this, you did that, you have a book out, tell me about the book’.
“There are quite strong gear changes, and we can go in any direction, and guests are open to that. So as a result, there’s a kind of nervous energy that’s brought — but also a kind of openness to play, really. They’re not thinking about their script, they’re not thinking about the points they need to hit, and we’re hopefully getting a bit more spontaneity.”
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Angela Scanlon. Picture: Aaron J Hurley
The approach led to interesting chats with a wide array of guests on season 1, and season 2 promises the same — this time, with a bigger audience feeding into the dynamic and the ambience (the audience on season 1 was limited by Covid restrictions). “I loved Gareth Thomas — he was a revelation to me,” she enthuses of the former Welsh rugby player. “Who else? I mean, Gemma Collins was a real treat, and Charlene McKenna, Sharon Corr. And a revelation for me was Daithí Ó Sé talking about his man Spanx,” she chuckles at the memory. “Like everyone else, you see him on The Today Show and you have a perception of him. But he’s just ballsy and cheeky and all of the things you want to see.”
The ‘all cards on deck’ approach can lead to some awkward moments too, she admits. “I felt like things got a little bit awkward with Jedward on a couple of occasions — but you know, they’re able for it,” she smiles. “They’re in the game long enough that there’s a sense of how it works. They needed quite strong prodding, and there was definitely a line for them. And PJ Gallagher — and I adore PJ — but he was a little tricksy that night! So it can be a real mixed bag.”
Fronting her own show was a major milestone in an already illustrious career, but like anything, there were the inevitable naysayers. She admits to being more nervous about the show than anything else she’s done, but purposely avoided reading the reviews.
“I remember Ryan Tubridy telling me years ago, ‘Don’t go on Twitter’ — and I remember thinking ‘As IF you don’t go on Twitter!’,” she chuckles. “But years later when I was on The One Show, I was like ‘Oh yeah, there’s a reason why you don’t go on Twitter’. People don’t generally go on Twitter to say ‘Oh I really liked her dress!’ or ‘That was a lovely interview’. You go to TripAdvisor to talk sh*t, not to say ‘Thank you for my lovely bolognese’. So it’s very one-sided and I think it’s human nature to remember those and be wounded by those, and forget that there might be anything positive in the world. So I was very disciplined around that, and ultimately I’m proud of what we did, the team is proud of what we did, and we go again — bigger and better, with more confidence and less limitations. So yeah, I’m excited to get stuck in again. And look, if we ruffle a few feathers along the way, then all the better.”
I finish by asking her a question once asked of her when she herself was a guest on The Tommy Tiernan Show. The comedian flummoxed her by catching her off-guard at the time by simply asking her: “Are you happy?”
“When he asked me that, I was like ‘Would you ever f**k off! Why are you looking in my soul!’,” she cackles. “But I was clearly not, at that time, so it felt different to receive that question. I am very content and happy now. I work at it, and I think I’ve recognised that it is an everyday thing; it’s not a destination, and then you just kick back and stay there for evermore. So it’s something that I’m quite committed to, and I have to be reminded of sometimes. But yeah, in a nutshell, I am happy.”
Even without the turquoise convertible, hair blowing in the wind? “Well,” she laughs, “that’s the next step.”
Angela Scanlon’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ returns to RTÉ One on October 15 at 9.40pm
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