Kneecap (2024) – Biopic Preview and Interview

With their debut album and now a biopic film about the band (in UK cinemas from 23rd August) garnering rave reviews, Belfast rappers Kneecap are riding high. Tony O’Neill spoke to the often-controversial trio during their whirlwind visit to New York City.

It’s fair to say that Kneecap are no strangers to controversy.  As soon as the band burst onto the scene in 2017,  a certain section of Britain’s media and political class were outraged.  The trio were variously accused of, “mocking the Queen’s death, shouting Republican slogans […]wearing balaclavas and making shooting gestures at cheering audiences…”  Instead of shrinking from the accusations, the band responded with a hilarious controversy-courting single: 2018’s Get Your Brits Out.  It was an instant classic, greeted with equal parts acclaim and horror in the press.

Things reached a fever pitch when it was reported that the National Lottery had awarded the band “a 1.6 million pound” grant (the actual amount was a fraction of that) prompting an opportunistic Tory MP to pull the funding.  His rationale? “We don’t want to hand out UK taxpayer money to people who oppose the United Kingdom.”  It was the kind of politics-meets-art firestorm the UK hasn’t seen since the heyday of the Sex Pistols, and all this was before they’d recorded their debut album.

I met Kneecap when they stopped in NYC during the whirlwind promotional tour for their debut album and the biopic film based on their early years. Far from the drug-addled sectarian thugs portrayed by critics in the tabloid press the trio – Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh), Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin), and DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) were funny, charming and keenly intelligent.  Onscreen and off, it’s obvious that Kneecap are the rarest of commodities in today’s music scene: the Real Fucking Deal.

At the recent screening and Q&A at New York’s Museum of Moving Image, the movie played to an enthusiastic packed house.  Starting with a wryly funny baptism scene, Kneecap traces the story of the Belfast trio from inception (via a chance meeting in a police interrogation room) to becoming a bona fide musical sensation.  Along the way, there are run-ins with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (in particular Josie Walker’s Detective Ellis), dissident Republicans, and members of the loyalist Orange Order.

Much of the movie revolves around the group’s early years as self-described “hoods” and small-time drug dealers, and their fractious homelives.  When it deals with the band’s home lives the film can be surprisingly affecting.  Particularly the scenes depicting Móglaí Bap’s strained relationship with his Republican father, Arlo (played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender), and his depressed, agoraphobic mother (an affecting performance by Simone Kirby).

With its dryly funny voiceover, instant classic ‘needle drops’ moments, and frequent, highly-stylised drug scenes, Kneecap immediately invites comparisons with that titan of British cinema, Trainspotting.  Like Danny Boyle and Irvine Welsh’s 90s classic, this film uses its subject matter as a vehicle to tackle big societal issues, in this case around language and national identity.  It’s a tough tightrope to walk, but like Trainspotting, Kneecap pulls it off with panache: even if you have zero interest in what’s happening in the north of Ireland, the film still delivers on a pure entertainment level. It’s an expertly crafted, druggy black comedy about the hitherto unexplored world of Irish hip-hop, which happens to have a cracking soundtrack.

“Our music comes from a subculture that has always existed in Belfast,” Mo Chara has said of the band.  “It was born out of us speaking the Irish language within our community… The parties and craic and DJ nights.”

Kneecap’s knack for turning the frustrations and aspirations of working-class kids from the north of Ireland into thrilling and incendiary music that borrows from grime, hip-hop, acid house, and punk with magpie abandon, has made them celebrities at home and abroad.  Even so, the news of an imminent biopic movie was surprising.  After all, the risk of things going spectacularly wrong was immense.

“It was a risk,” DJ Próvaí says with a shrug. “Playing ourselves, and all… That was a big concern at first.  We’re a real band, first and foremost, y’know?  None of us can act, and suddenly we’re being asked to play ourselves in a movie?  I mean, if you think about there was a strong likelihood that they’d turn the cameras on and suddenly discover that we were really shit at acting… and then what?”

It’s a risk that has undoubtedly paid off.  Making their acting debuts alongside heavyweights like Josie Walker and Michael Fassbender (“We were happy to give Michael his break by casting him,” quips DJ Próvaí) the band comport themselves magnificently. The Kneecap lads are naturals, delivering performances that range from the hilarious to the deeply emotional (especially when the movie delves into Móglaí Bap’s turbulent upbringing.)

I ask whether they found working with such heavyweights intimidating and Mo Chara shakes his head.  “Not at all… if anything, it helped us. It was good to be working with people who really knew what they were doing. Everybody was really sound, they were willing to give us the space to try things out.  They let us do our thing.  That made the whole process so much easier.  Everybody on set knew it was our first time doing this… (“They were popping our cherries,” chuckles Móglaí Bap)… and they were supportive.  If anything, having great professional actors involved made us more determined.  We knew we had to up our game.”

Anarchic, hilarious, filthy, and fun the Kneecap movie has been winning over American audiences and critics alike.  Americans’ unique cultural affinity for Ireland has undoubtedly helped.  However, it’s undeniable that the band (and director Rich Peppiatt) have done a masterful job of making life in Belfast relatable to outsiders.

“It’s been wild seeing the way different audiences respond to the film,” Mo Chara says, recalling a recent Sundance screening in Utah. “That audience didn’t know what the hell peelers are, y’know?  Not a fucking clue!   But after a few minutes, they were into it.  Of course, some stuff plays better with certain audiences.  In Glasgow, the audience was roaring during the Orangemen scene because they instinctively understand all that sectarian stuff.”

The scene in question is a high-tension chase sequence, with Mo Chara (dressed in an emerald green tracksuit) being pursued by members of the anti-Catholic Orange Order.  The movie’s knack for turning the peculiarities of Belfast life into high-octane cinematic entertainment has been earning Kneecap an avalanche of festival awards and rave reviews so far. It has even landed them Ireland’s Oscar nomination for this year’s International Feature Film award.

It helps that the band’s origin story is so, well… cinematic.  The Kneecap story began when Mo Chara found himself in police custody and, upon insisting on being interviewed in Irish, was assigned teacher and musician JJ Ó Dochartaigh as interpreter.  When JJ came across some of the lyrics Mo Chara and best friend Móglaí Bap had been writing, he encouraged them to set their words to music. The rest, as they say, is history.

I ask how the movie came about and they tell me it began when director Rich Peppiatt, a Londoner living in Belfast, saw one of the band’s notoriously raucous live shows.  “Their stage presence just blew me away,” he says. During their performance, the band caused a frenzy by throwing baggies of white powder into the audience. “It was just flour,” the director adds, somewhat ruefully. “But I realised, quite apart from their talent – which was extraordinary – there was this grassroots sense of there being a thousand young people in the crowd who knew every word they were rapping in Irish.”

This was all the more extraordinary given the wider political context. The issue of whether the Irish language should be taught in schools had resulted in the kind of political deadlock that Stormont specialises in, with hardline Unionists threatening to collapse the government if the Irish language was allowed on the curriculum.  As Peppiatt puts it, “The contrast between these young lads who were doing so much for the language on a grassroots level, versus the politicians who were doing nothing, felt like the seed of a really interesting story.”

To outsiders, it might seem strange that the Irish language would be such a hot-button issue on the island of Ireland.  Like most other things, the answer is down to politics.  “I don’t think a language should be inherently political,” Móglaí Bap says.  “But Irish was made political when the British government outlawed it in the 1700s. Before that, it was just an everyday form of communication.”

“Irish was brought to the verge of extinction,” DJ Próvaí says. “The fact that the language survived at all was down to the determination of a small grassroots, who risked everything to keep it alive.”

Although the ban is now just another sad chapter in Britain and Ireland’s bloody shared history, its ramifications are still being felt. The bitter political fight over teaching Irish in classrooms acts as the backdrop to the Kneecap movie.

“Given the history, the fact that we’re from the six counties that are still under British occupation the very fact that we rap in Irish is a political statement,” Móglaí Bap says.  “That’s something that hopefully will make the movie resonate with audiences.  It’ll make them reflect upon their own culture and language.  Hip hop has always been a powerful vehicle for making oppressed forms of language feel seen.”

Or, as Michael Fassbender (who plays Móglaí Bap’s father, Arlo) tells his young son: “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.”

With the passing of Northern Ireland’s Identity and Language bill in 2022, Kneecap have helped achieve something that would have seemed impossible ten years ago: they’ve made this once-endangered language relevant to the younger generation.

“I started attending Irish language classes in preparation to shoot the film,” Peppiatt recalls.  “The first class I went to, there were 20 people there. The teacher asked what had inspired everybody to learn the language, and around half raised their hands to say it was because of Kneecap.  That was back in 2019. Whatever happens in the future, I think the role they’ve played in the revival of interest in the Irish language is going to be a huge part of their legacy.”

When asked how the band came to trust Peppiatt with their story, their response is very… Kneecap. The deal was sealed, says Móglaí Bap, when the director “came around to our house, for a few pints and a chat.”  The meeting turned into an all-nighter.  “It was a mad one, we wound up doing a bunch of ketamine…”

“That scene in the movie, where the band staggers out of their garage with clouds of smoke billowing after them and white powder caked to their faces?  That was taken directly from that first meeting,” Peppiatt says.

“Fair play to him, he kept up with us…  I suppose that was the moment we thought, This fella’s pretty sound…” Mo Chara says.

“For a Brit,” chips in Móglaí Bap, causing the table to crack up.

It’s fair to say the band’s early years were positively fueled by cocaine, speed, ketamine, and MDMA, as evidenced by the lyrics of tracks like 3CAG and Drug Dealin’ Pagans.  The film unashamedly celebrates the kind of youthful, drug-fueled hedonism that is a common rite of passage for a vast number of young people, but which is rarely depicted on film without the requisite sermonising.  In the Kneecap movie, nobody gets strung out or OD’s or winds up prostituting themselves to support their habit.  The closest the band comes to suffering consequences for their prodigious drug use is when they attract the attention of a dissident gang who call themselves Radical Republicans Against Drugs.

I ask the band if this was intentional and Mo Chara tells me it was. “Back home drugs are such a tricky subject…” he says, “For a start, it’s all bucketed together, doesn’t matter if it’s weed or, y’know, heroin.  It’s just drugs are bad and that’s all there is to it.”  “It’s got so that it’s impossible to talk about drugs in a non-hysterical way in a public setting,” Móglaí Bap adds. “And the lack of information is killing people.”

Indeed, the band’s lyrics about selling drugs, popping pills, and smoking weed have caused almost as much controversy at home as their politics.

“You rarely get the [Royal Ulster Constabulary] in total agreement with dissident Republicans,” JJ says. “Except when it comes to condemning our lyrics.”

Appropriately enough, Kneecap has a killer soundtrack that balances the band’s songs with classic tracks by acts like The Prodigy and Orbital (who contributed a new version of Belfast.)

“Mike Asante did the score, and he’s fucking brilliant…” Mo Chara tells me.  “He comes from a hip-hop background; he worked on stuff like Top Boy… he instinctively understood what the film needed.”

I ask the band if the negative backlash they’ve gotten over the years bothers them.

“We’re used to it,” Móglaí Bap says. “Of course, the accusations of sectarianism are shit, but anyone who takes the time to listen to what we’re actually saying can see it for what it is.”

“When something like that happens,” Mo Chara says, “you can either let it get to you or…”

“Or you take the cunts to court,” DJ Próvaí says.

“Taking the cunts to court” is what Kneecap did in June when they sued the British government over the blocking of the funding award. The case is set to be heard at the High Court in November.  At the time, the band described it as “an attack on artistic culture, an attack on the Good Friday Agreement, and an attack on us and our way of expressing ourselves.”

I ask how it feels to be taking on the full weight of the British establishment. Mo Chara offers a cat-like grin in response.

“Honestly?  It feels fucking great… As they keep telling us, like it or not we are all citizens of the United Kingdom. We pay taxes and all of that other shite. So how the fuck are you going to come along and say You can’t receive money from the government unless you produce art that agrees with us?  Get to fuck!”

Whether the funding was pulled because of the Daily Mail hysteria, or because the band were deemed genuinely subversive, the effect was the same.  It’s part of a longstanding British tradition of silencing and demonising advocates of Irish unity with accusations of “terrorist sympathies”.   Kneecap have become unofficial spokespersons for the movement, speaking to young people in a way that even the most skilled Sinn Fein politician could only dream of.

Speaking of which, Gerry Adams, a man once considered so dangerous that his voice was banned from British airwaves, makes a hilarious cameo as a ketamine-induced hallucination.   I ask the band about this memorable scene.

“He was sound,” Mo Chara says. “The only thing he was funny about was the swearing.  He wouldn’t say the f-word, he’s very religious is Gerry.  So we let him change the line, I mean what are you gonna do?  It’s Gerry Adams, for fuck’s sake.”

All too soon my time with Kneecap draws to an end and we say our goodbye before they’re whisked away to the airport for the next stop on their whistlestop tour. As I wait for the lift, I talk to one of the film’s PR people about how the movie is doing in the States.  “It’s been great,” she enthuses. “Normally, films like this – foreign language, set in a place that’s kinda remote from most Americans’ day-to-day lives – don’t attract this kind of attention.  This has been instant; people just get it. It’s very gratifying.”

I ask what she puts this down to.  She ponders this, before saying, “Well, it’s all down to the band, isn’t it? It’s their personalities.  When you see them, you can’t help but like them.  They’ve just got that indefinable something... I don’t think we’ve hit the peak of this yet, not by a long shot.”

And with that, Kneecap are whisked off to another city, another press junket.  They’ll be back in NYC in September to play the Knockdown Center in Queens, and in the meantime, the movie opens domestically in the US on August 2^nd, Ireland on the 8^th, and finally Great Britain on the 23^rd.  This could be the last time I see the lads before they are bona fide superstars.

As I watch them go I realise it’s little wonder organisations like the Daily Mail and the DUP have been so determined to silence this band. Kneecap are smart and highly articulate ambassadors for a community that has been systematically oppressed, silenced, and neglected for decades.  What’s more, they seem to have the world’s attention. That terrifies the more sectarian and reactionary elements in the six counties and beyond… and rightfully so.

Kneecap: they’re smart, they’re pissed off… and they’re coming to a cinema near YOU.

Fine Art by Kneecap is out now. Kneecap (2024) will be released in UK cinemas on 23rd August.

Kneecap on Facebook, X, and Instagram

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Interview by Tony O’Neill. Find his author archive here.

Tony O’Neill is the author of the novels Sick City, Down And Out On Murder Mile and Digging The Vein, and the co-author of the bestselling Neon Angel: Memoir Of A Runaway with Cherie Currie. His new novel, The Straight Twenty-Eight, is forthcoming.