Actress Roma Downey – ‘Back then it was a bit like Derry Girls, we found humour and camaraderie in everyday life’

Roma Downey on Derry, leaving for London and losing two members of her family in a year

Roma Downey at a premiere in Los Angeles in 2022. Photo: Getty

Dónal Lynch

It’s another beautiful morning in ­Malibu and Roma Downey is ­enjoying the heat. Her husband, Mark Burnett – a British television producer who created shows like The Apprentice and Shark Tank – loves to spend time at their home in the mountains of Park City, Utah, where he snowboards, but a childhood in Derry means Downey never takes the sunshine for granted.

After quite a few years’ absence from the screen the sun will soon rise again on her acting career. Later this month she will appear in The Baxters, an adaptation of the best-selling novels by Karen ­Kingsbury. The series, which she also executive produced, is a universal story about what Downey calls “heartache and betrayal, the messiness of families and the mistakes they make”.