Normal People actress Aoife Hinds revealed she was a victim of racial abuse during the filming of the popular TV show. The actress, who played Connell’s girlfriend Helen on the show, said a group of pre-teens shouted racial slurs at her when she was filming in Dublin.
She told The Sunday World that the entire crew were just baffled over it. “Paul started to walk towards them as they were running off. I told him not to bother as I wanted to brush it off and get back to the scene, but that was obviously a defence mechanism.”
The actress said she regrets not confronting the youths.
She continued, “I later regretted that and wished Paul had have gone over to them, to tell them it wasn’t OK to say those kinds of things or better, to calmly go over to them myself.”
The actress said the Normal People crew were disgusted by the incident, but added that it proved that racism is still ingrained in our society.
"All the crew were extremely supportive, needless to say shocked, but it just goes to show how racism is ingrained in our society when kids are being brought up hearing all these kind of things."
Hinds is the daughter of actors Ciarán Hinds and Hélène Patarot.
Her experience proves that we all need to do more to be anti-racist, especially here in Ireland. Standing up for people who are victims of racial abuse is essential. We can no longer sit by and ignore what is going on in our society. We need to educate, listen and learn how to be more anti-racist.
