MOB rules

CLARE DUNNE on how her gangland thriller is upping the stakes...

- REBECCA FLETCHER

Clare Dunne couldn’t be happier playing mob matriarch Amanda Kinsella in BBC1’s hit Irish import Kin – especially as she was abandoning hope of starring on TV just before landing the gig!

‘I had sort of given up the idea of getting in front of a camera,’ says the Dublin-born star, who reprises the role this week in the much-anticipated second series of the thriller, centred around a close-knit crime family that gets embroiled in a feud with an international cartel.

Happily, Kin’s writer, Peter McKenna, thought she was the perfect choice, with Clare proving to be the breakout star of the first season as Amanda underwent a powerful transformation from grieving mum to head of the corrupt Kinsella clan.

Devastated after the murder of her son Jamie (Cian Fitzsimons), Amanda found herself being slowly drawn into mob life, proving smarter at outwitting ruthless drugs baron Eamon Cunningham (Ciarán Hinds) than her husband Jimmy (Emmett J. Scanlan), his brother Michael (Charlie Cox) and their uncle Frank (Aidan Gillen).