Chris O’Dowd opens up on real reason he and family ditched LA for life back in Britain: ‘Felt very far away’
Irish comic actor Chris O’Dowd has spoken candidly about his decision to move his family back to the UK.
The 45-year-old, famed for starring in The IT Crowd, shares two children aged 10 and seven with his writer and television presenter wife Dawn O’Porter.
O’Dowd is preparing for the release of his new series Small Town, Big Story which is set to debut later this month.
The show is set in Drumban, a fictional rural Irish community, which is hosting a huge Hollywood film production that eventually uncovers the town’s long-hidden secret.
Starring Christina Hendricks and Paddy Considine, the programme was envisioned, written and co-directed by O’Dowd.
Small Town, Big Story was a personal project for the 45-year-old, who based the show on his own experience of a big production taking over a small town as part of his own big break – Irish comedy Moone Boy.
Speaking to Radio Times, O’Dowd explained making the show had brought him back his hometown of Boyle in Ireland, which he had been “looking for a reason” to do.
O’Dowd and his family recently decided to quit the showbiz capital of Los Angeles and return to the UK earlier than they had planned.
Despite loving LA, the 45-year-old revealed experiencing Covid in the US had made he and his wife “suddenly feel very far away”.
During lockdown, the actor remembered feeling nostalgic while taking the family dog on walks in a nearby ravine.
The surrounding forests reminded O’Dowd of the forests of his youth and it was “the closest I had felt to home” during their stay in the US.
While the walks were what ultimately “manifested” the idea for Small Town, Big Story, he admitted it was also a melancholy experience.
“It gave me a feeling of being far away,” he repeated.
However, homesickness was not the star’s only concern pulling him back home.
The accents of the couple’s young children, who have split their time between the UK, the US and Ireland, are still developing.
O’Dowd admitted he harboured some anxiety about his kids ending up with British accents.
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“There’s a lot of generational trauma there!” he exclaimed.
“Them having American accents I can live with but they are a bit of a mish-mash at the moment – let’s see how it plays out!” he added.