After Ned and Adrian got involved we contacted Hugh about playing the part. Hugh is an exceptional actor and is ideal to play the character of James.”

“I was in London doing The Da Vinci Code so Tony came over twice for the auditions,” says John Conroy. “Hugh knew Ned Dowd and came to us that way. Hugh has a real vulnerability about him without him being wimpish,” says Conroy. “He brought a real likeable quality to his character so that you wanted to help him rather than shake him.”

Dubliner Hugh O’Conor (CHOCOLAT; BLOOM) had worked with Ned Dowd on THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Through Dowd, O’Conor was put in touch with Adrian Devane. “When I met Adrian, he gave me the script and explained that it was very low budget,” says O’Conor. “He also told me that Tony Herbert was going to be shooting it. I thought the screenplay was different and fun and the part of James interested me greatly. James was a very different character before we meet him in the film. He was in a relationship and quite happy. But then he gets beaten up emotionally when his girlfriend leaves him. However by the end of the movie – when he meets this girl and these adventures happen to them - he is, in a way, a different person from what he was at the beginning. That arc was interesting and fun to play.”

O’Conor decided that the best way to get inside the world of the speed dater was to do it for real. So prior to shooting the film, he and number of the cast and crew decided to do some firsthand research. “We were already nervous and had a few drinks beforehand, thinking ‘what the hell are we doing here?’” he says. “There was also Nicola (production designer), Barbara (make-up), Tony (director) and Leonie (costume designer). Every so often we’d move seats and get to sit with one of the crew and discuss what was going on. I said to the people that I was an actor and that my name was Hugh. We didn’t want to like in case someone asked what we were doing. But it was fine except for this one bloke who thought I was there just to mess things up. It was worth doing because we got to see what it was like and also how the conversations went and people interacted.”

Speed Dating, a quirky romantic comedy, also has its screwball moments and elements of murder mystery. “There were those elements,” says O’Conor, “but the central concept of speed dating was fun because it is a good dynamic and it immediately sets up this dramatic tension. What I also liked was the good cop-bad cop routine and Don (Wycherly) and Luke (Griffin) bring this crazy humour to proceedings. Then you have Gerry O’Brien, Charlotte Bradley and Nora-Jane Noone as the van der Bexton family who are also dysfunctional. In fact the only semi-normal people in the film are James and Susan, the character played by Emma Choy. But it is a comedy and that for me was the most attractive thing about it.”

O’Conor saw Van Der Bexton as someone not a million miles from himself. “In a way it is uncomfortably close to home in ways,” he says. “In James you find some parallels with your own life. I had this joke with Tony that basically he was writing about himself so it was fun to work with Tony in that way. It has been strange not to have something to hide behind and be pretty much yourself albeit in character. In other words there are no props. It has been hard in that respect.”

James’s family – the Royal Tennenbaums meets the Addams Family – are the definition of dysfunctional. A wealthy, successful and selectively deaf father (Basil); a gregarious mother, Beatrice (CHARLOTTE BRADLEY) who is a regular visitor of the drinks cabinet and their Goth daughter Juliet (SARAH-JANE NOONE) whose boyfriend, Jupiter, is a band called Elephant Sack (big in Germany apparently). “They are a very strange bunch,” says O’Conor. “But the scenes with the family were great because you got to understand your character in the context of the family. They give you a foundation and an understanding of where James came from. So the family were a key part.”

O’Conor’s favourite scenes were those where Van Der Bexton is interrogated by the hard ball cops, Long and McArdle (Don Wycherly and Luke Griffin). “I enjoyed those scenes with Don and Luke,” he says. “They are good friends of mine anyway but the thing in those interrogation scenes was trying not to laugh. Don breathing down your neck is very scary but also very funny.”

“Emma was great,” he says. “She as really natural and perfect for the part: we had fun bouncing off each other, so hopefully that comes across.” Similarly Herbert was, O’Conor says, a joy to work with: allowing the actors to contribute and ever ready to take on board any valid suggestions. “I think that the story is very sweet,” says O’Conor. “It is not a sex comedy it is more about romance.” As for his own brief dalliance with speed dating, he never did find out whether anyone ticked his box. “They never sent me an e-mail afterwards. So I never knew whether I scored or not.”

Susan King (EMMA CHOY) is a nurse at the city hospital who tends to James when he is admitted after the hit and run with temporary amnesia. Susan is James’s potential saviour: someone who is intent on helping him to remember who he is or, more importantly, recall the way he was before he lost his sense of poise and purpose. “We saw a lot of actors for that role during a casting audition in London,” says Herbert. “We subsequently whittled that number down to about ten. I really liked Emma from the beginning. For the second audition in London we got Hugh to read opposite the ten potential Susans. They were all good but there was something special about Emma. I always wanted to cast a non-European actor in that part, someone from a native English speaking country. Emma had a natural charm about her. She was beautiful but also had this girl-next-door quality which the character needs. I liked her from day one.”

For Conroy, Choy fitted the grand scheme of Speed dating being a non-specific movie. “We wanted to get away from making this an Irish movie,” he says. “The idea was to make a generic movie that would fit in any where. There is no reference to Dublin in the screenplay and Emma Choy was part of that international look and style.”

London-based Australian actress Emma Choy had appeared in the TV series, Doctors and Casualty. “There was a casting call for Speed Dating in London for actors who were not from the UK or European,” she says. “The advert stated Asian, American or non-European. I thought, ‘I’m Australian and I’m half-Chinese so something has to be right there for me’. So I sent off my CV, a photograph and a cover lettter. I then recorded a tape where I read some lines and my boyfriend played the part of James. I sent the tape to London, got a first audition and then got a recall to audition opposite Hugh.”

Choy was drawn into the screenplay by its quirky appeal. “I thought it was a lovely little romantic comedy which had just enough of a dark edge to it to be accessible to guys as well as girls,” she says. She also believes that she and her character, Susan King, have a few things in common. “Before I decided to go into acting I nearly became a nurse about ten years ago,” she says. “But instead I studied arts in university and through that I got into drama and became an actor. I think that Susan is a really open-minded character, really liberal minded. If she sees people feeling uncomfortable she would like to rectify the situation but by the same token she is not a pushover either. I think that she knows what she wants and what she will or will not tolerate. When she meets James she sees someone who really does need some help. She sees further than his amnesia, she sees a person who does not quite know who he is. So she decides to go on a mission with him to discover who he is.”

The first time we see Susan she is on duty: as a nurse: at work in the city hospital. Next time she is dressed to the nines: almost like two different characters. “Yes but there is always an edge to her,” says Choy. “She is never dull. Even in the hospital she is always coming up with these hare-brained ideas where she plays the word game with James to try and figure out what he is in life. He might even be a secret agent, she thinks. She gets excited by such things and then backs down to terra firma and her job in the hospital. She is a rock solid, go-get-‘em kind of character that she is. She does these ballsy things like going speed dating and going to the pub with James which are risks for her to take because she has no idea who this James person is. She is a risk-taker and she finds James challenging and exciting.”

In one of the films surreal moments, James takes Susan to meet the family: a clash of attitude and cultures. “They are a very dysfunctional family but very lovable at the same time,” says Choy. “I think that she is absolutely fascinated with this family. The first time she sees Juliet and Jupiter coming into the hospital she thinks, my god who are these people? This beautifully dressed, gothic styled, slightly cold and quirky woman and this wonderful eccentric Jupiter who is very cool all the time. She doesn’t know quite what to make of it but her curiosity draws her in. When she is sitting at the dinner table there is a moment where she feels a bit out of her depth: there’s Basil Van Der Bexton who looks like someone totally unfazed by life and there’s Juliet who’s trying to slyly cut down Susan and then there’s plastered Beatrice in the corner who’s trying to be the wonderful hostess and keep everything together.”

For Choy working with Herbert was educational and inspirational. “It has been a really organic process for everyone,” she says. “We all loved the script and if there were scenes that we were unhappy with he was more than happy to talk us through them until we came to a solution where everyone is happy. This is my first big job with high profile actors and I was terrified of not being good enough, of not being the right standard but Hugh in particular made it really easy for me and made me feel really comfortable. He was great to work with because we talk about the scenes together and we decide how we are going to play things out.”

Flora Montgomey (WHEN BRENDAN MET TRUDY; BASIC INSTINCT 2) plays the femme fatale, Jennifer. Initially a sinister ghostly presence in James’s life, she then comes back for real. “Casting the part of Jennifer was different in a way from the other roles,” says Herbert. “I didn’t know Flora but I was aware of her work and thought she was an excellent actress. She is a friend of John Conroy’s and he suggested her for the part. I thought that she would be great but I would never cast someone without spending some time talking to them. When we were auditioning in London I met her, we talked for a while and got on really well.”

Flora Montgomery had previously worked with John Conroy on When Brendan Met Trudy. “Getting involved on Speed Dating came about through a weird serendipity,” says Montgomery. “John was working with a friend of mine on his last film and John asked my friend if he was still in contact with me and could he get this the script to me. I got the script, read it and it just turned out to be absolutely fantastic. It is a hilariously comic spin on a very original idea.”

“What I love about the screenplay is that it is not your usual romantic comedy of nice people getting on and having a laugh together. I look the fact that it is dark and twisted and I get to do some really dark and twisted things. In one scene I get to chomp at a man’s heart. We had five minutes to shoot that scene where I’m sitting on a wall and ripping into a heart made of playdoh. There was fake blood everywhere. So it was that weird and very warped spin on men’s attitude to love and their fantasies that really attracted me to the project. It’s dark and bizarre and I love that.”

Montgomery first met writer/director Tony Herbert in this “mad pub” in Waterloo in London. “He just said to me that it would be low budget, that we would be doing make-up in the back of a loo in the back of a pub,” she says. “And I thought that’s fantastic. I have a theory that the bigger the budget, the bigger the weight. If you are working on a film with a limitless budget you could spend all day sitting in a trailer waiting for them to relight some tiny scene. On a big shoot there can be an atmosphere of intense pressure because there is so much money involved. It doesn’t seem to be as collaborative as something as low budget as speed dating.”

But Montgomery saw the potential in the screenplay and the quality in the production.
“There’s one scene where High and I are sitting in a pub,” she says. “Jennifer is trying to get back together with James and the way it is shot and styled looks very 1940s. It is a very moving scene and it looks like something straight out of End of the Affair which is so appropriate in this respect. It has that essence of dated love about it and it is so moving. In a way the film is a pastiche of various styles which is great because it doesn’t stick to one particular theme. When we doing romance it is done in a very beautiful and atmospheric way; for the speed dating scenes it is done fast and furious with jump cuts.”

In Speed Dating there are essentially two Jennifers: the creation of James’s imagination and the reality. “The real Jennifer is a tough cookie,” says Montgomery. “She’s one of these girls who when she says that she’d like to get back together with someone she doesn’t even presume that the person might not want to get back together with her. When I appear as the ghostly Jennifer I’m more of a Siren calling James onto the rocks of ruin.”

“Quite a lot of the shots that I appear in you pan across an empty room and suddenly I’m there. It is kind of spooky, a character that appears dramatically to James and gives him the shock of his life. Jennifer is quite an overblown character and I can’t really hold back. I have a few very big and bold scenes where I appear in James’s mind and you can’t really underplay those: you have to be dark and evil. I’m a figment of his imagination so it has to be bolder. I enjoy playing that.”

Montgomery herself has never speed dated. “I would have a certain fascination to see what it is like but I don’t think that I would have the guts to do it,” she says. “I would never be able to sit there and ask questions and answer them. If I had just three minutes to tell someone about myself I think that I would just curl up and die. I’m terrible at chatting people up really. I think speed dating has its place, especially these days when people have such hectic schedules and works so hard. So if you’re lonely and live in a big city it’s one way of getting to meet somebody so it does have its place. It is no different meeting someone speed dating than say meeting someone at a wedding because in both cases you are meeting random strangers who are single.”

Montgomery enjoyed working on film: even if the make-up was applied in the back of a loo and there were no glamorous trailers. The collaboration was something unique in her experience. “I love Tony’s writing and he is also very open to suggestion,” she says. “In the very first scene that I did we ripped the script apart and started again. Hugh is great to improvise with. We just sat down and did this scene. The way it had been written was much more wordy than just the genuine atmosphere of two people meeting in a pub. So Tony was more than happy to take changes on board if they were right for the film. It’s so refreshing to be just a cog in a wheel.”