Life is imitating art in Small Town, Big Story, with Hollywood star Christina Hendricks heading to rural Ireland to bring her latest TV role to life.

However, in the series, she’s not in front of the camera, but behind it as character Wendy Patterson – a hotshot TV producer whose time in Drumbán comes with a checkered history dating back to her teenage years. And there’s also the issue of Wendy’s ex, Séamus (Paddy Considine) to contend with as well.

With a mission to bring her historical TV show to the screen, the character has her work cut out for her as she tries to make her way up the ladder in Hollywood.

Speaking ahead of the release of Small Town, Big Story season one on Sky Max, Christina opens up about trading Hollywood for Ireland, Wendy and Seamus’s shared history, and what it was really like spending time on a boat with Paddy Considine.

Small Town, Big Story is about a town in rural Ireland. It becomes the location for this big Hollywood production. It's all about location. I play Wendy, a film producer who is coming back to her hometown. I bring this big Hollywood production to this small place that’s never experienced anything like this. So, it's my old world and my new world combining.

The story is about the town's reaction to having Hollywood on its doorstep and a studio and crew adapting to being in this small town. Then, of course, there's a spin on the fact that there's also something else happening which involves several of the characters and Wendy’s past.

We meet Wendy in California, in Los Angeles. We see a little bit of her surroundings, her home, and we get to know her just a little bit. There are some little clues about her lifestyle. We quickly find out that she's got this work opportunity. A new producing gig back in her childhood home in Ireland for this big studio called History with a Twist.

It’s a bigger project than she's ever worked on before. So, it's a big deal for Wendy. You will discover that she might just be a little bit in over her head. She's learning as she goes, but she's really trying to have this confident pose about herself, saying, "I got this”. But as the story progresses things really start to fall apart for her a little bit.

We have a lot of flashbacks to the millennium and a teenage Wendy and Seamus. We see Wendy’s adolescence back in Drumbán. They capture those sort of awkward teen moments but beautiful moments you have growing up. She’s young, a gothy rock'n'roll teenager interested in Seamus with the world at her feet.

I think the Wendy I play remains that person a little bit, but you start to see that maybe she felt a little bit like an outsider back then. The flashbacks are all moments in her life that revolve around the time something rather significant happened in her life. (She had this alien abduction.) So young Wendy and adult Wendy are not too far apart; they are very similar and have experienced this event that really changed her trajectory.

Wendy starts out very trepidatious about going home to Ireland. It's been over 20 years, she's completely reinvented herself in LA with her job, but she has this opportunity to bring this big production back home. She thinks if she's ever going to go back and confront her past, if she's going to have a relationship with her father again and really put to bed her negative feelings about this hometown, this is the time to do it. And why not come back as a big Hollywood producer with this big fancy show and say, "Hey, look at me, I'm back," in such a grand way?

She starts off on this journey to confront her past and finds out very quickly that it's not as satisfying as she hoped it would be. All the channels she’s using to try to reconnect with people from the smalltown are falling apart here and there. Her whole plan is not working; the production is not going well, the relationships are not going well, and then there are all these signs of the otherworldly events, that happened before are happening again. So, there's this uncertainty of what's going to happen next, all around her.

Wendy and Seamus were close as teenagers. They were excited about each other and possibly interested in being romantic with one another. They were just young, innocent teenagers doing stuff, but their relationship gets turned upside down because they experienced this extraordinary event together that only the two of them know about and ‘think they have experienced’.

In present day, Seamus has written Wendy off. He has completely dismissed that this event ever happened and how he betrayed her in front of her family and the whole town and made her a laughing stock. This is a time for her to come back to her hometown and say to him, "Hey, you gotta have my back. I feel like I've been going crazy for years. I've been gaslit for years. Everyone thinks I'm nuts. My therapist thinks I'm nuts. You’re the only one who can help me out of this crisis." Seamus is just not prepared to do it.

There are all these unresolved feelings between them and this connected experience when you share something with someone that no one else has. Yet, it's this push and pull of now being adults and the things we have to do to live our daily lives, and that's different for each one of them.

I love working with Paddy. Our stories are completely intertwined. We only have a number of scenes together, but they are substantial, and they were my favourite scenes to do on the show because they were really meaty acting scenes.

We really got to confront things as actors and explore a bunch of different levels of who these people are and their history together. I think he's amazing, and I've been a fan of his for a very long time. I think I met him maybe 15 years ago and I hadn't seen him since, so it was great to work with him.

He had so many roles in this production, how was it working with Chris? Chris has been really busy jumping from role to role. The way we shot this show, we had to shoot different scenes from the episodes at the same time.

Normally, you would shoot one episode at a time, but for this one, we shot all episodes together. Chris had to jump from directing to acting and producing. As much of a ping pong as it was for me, I'm sure it was ten times more confusing for Chris. I would love to hear how he has managed to do it all.

He said fun? Well, it was interesting. I think he was being a politician, it was a tiny rocky boat… we almost died but I'm glad he thought it was fun.

Yes, I think you will enjoy it when you see how we have interpreted a set within a set. I love seeing the movie production roll into town with the trucks and the equipment and everyone in their costumes standing around.

I love that sort of silly humour of seeing ‘Hollywood out of place’, I think it is always amusing. And of course, there are all sorts of inside jokes that we have in the film industry, but you don't have to be in it to enjoy making fun of it. I think that's what we're doing – really having a laugh at ourselves, which is refreshing.

We were discussing how real small towns celebrate a production rolling in like in Small Town, Big Story. I had visited a place outside of Ashford Castle, Ireland, where they shot The Quiet Man over 50 years ago. There were old film posters everywhere because the film was the town’s claim to fame. So it’s not farfetched to say the whole community wants to get involved because it’s a big deal.

It’s a reflective glory. You get to watch it back and remember that “Your cousin worked on it, in craft service, or someone down the road did. It brings the community together and it brings in business. I bet it also annoys a lot of people - productions hold up traffic and stop people driving through but that is where the humour lies.

I love all the townsfolk. They are all hilarious to me especially when in a group. I must say, there is something about Barbara the butcher that really touches my soul. Her quiet hostility and scheming really makes me laugh. When they are all together it is a joy!

One thing I think is really funny is that this is a comedy but we play it very, very seriously, which I think makes it even more funny. We have all the material to work with and we have made it into a real life situation for the characters to find themselves in.

There is the recurring dropping of birds from the sky at inopportune moments. The way that it happens and people’s reactions, completely cracks me up. For example, a large swan drops from the sky and just clobbers one of the characters. It is so out of the blue and so startling that watching it cracks me up every time!

The show is escapism. It’s fun, light, and quirky. You will get attached to characters who are heartwarming in many ways. I think it’s going to be a feel-good series but offbeat in a way you haven’t seen before. It’s because it really is from the mind of Chris O’Dowd and it’s… weird in there! (Laughs).

Ireland is cold and wet, muddy and windy, but very, very, pretty.

Clever jokes, big laughs.