Geraldine Plunkett says it was 'a shock' when Glenroe was cancelled

Eva Osborne

Irish actress Geraldine Plunkett says it was "a shock" for her and the rest of the cast when RTÉ cancelled Glenroe in 2001.

"It was a shock because they didn’t tell us at the end of the previous year that the next series was going to be the final one," she said.

"It was in the middle of the year when we found out, so it was a bit of a shock for us. But life moves on."

Plunkett is best known for playing Mary McDermott-Moran on Glenroe, and she told RSVP Magazine that she did not expect the show to be such a big success.

"The first contract was for two years, more or less, so it was a slow-ish start to the show," she said.

"By the end of the second year it had become enormously popular and it went on and on until it ran its course."

Plunkett, who is now known to a new generation of TV fans as Rose O'Brien on Fair City, also has a new roleas an ambassador for Age Friendly Ireland. In it, she aims to help overcome some of the misconceptions around getting older.

"Not all old people are the same, just like not all young people are the same. It's presumed that old people love bingo, and while some of them do, it's a stereotype. We can't all be stereotyped as one humongous mass because we're all different from each other," she says in the interview.