"At the end of the day, people miss Philo," says Drimnagh-born stage and film actor Peter M Smith. "They miss him as a person and being around Dublin and having a chance to pass by him on Grafton Street."
You may know 46-year-old Smith from Netflix series Who is Erin Carter? He also stars in Guy Ritchie's upcoming film In the Grey with Rosamund Pike and Jake Gyllenhaal, but next April he takes on the role of a lifetime in Moonlight, a new play about Thin Lizzy front man Phil Lynott, set to premiere in Dublin’s Vicar Street.
He’s a very good fit to play the coolest cat to ever spring out of Ireland. As well as being Lizzy mad, he was brought up around the corner from Phil’s childhood home in Crumlin and has something of his devil may care humour.
Dressed in regulation black leather, he is a friendly, soulful customer with a certain glint in his eye. He’s even got Phil’s languorous Dublin accent down pat.
However, Smith is under no illusions about playing one of the most loved and tragic stars Ireland has ever produced.
"I’m never under the impression that this is about me. I’m just a jobbing actor," he says. "I wouldn’t describe playing Phillip as pressure. I think it’s a responsibility.
"It’s a challenge but people have been saying things about where I was born, who I am, the circumstances of my life . . . If it means as an actor that my shining moment is in honour of a man who was too young when he died and had so much to do, so be it. I don’t have an ego about these things."
Written by musicians John Merrigan and Danielle Morgan and directed by IFTA-nominated film and TV director Jason Figgis, Moonlight is being staged with the full blessing of Phil’s widow and his daughters and after extensive meetings and discussions with his contemporaries.
Lynott’s story is already well known and Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan have both attempted to get biopics about the ultimate rocker off the ground.
However, Moonlight doesn’t dwell on the late star's slow decline and his death at just 36 in1986. Instead, it tells the story of his early years as the restless bohemian dreamer who became a face around town before forming Thin Lizzy in 1969 and going on to international success.
You could say Smith was born to play the role. Over twenty years ago, when Jordan and Sheridan were eyeing him for their Phil film projects, he got the ultimate seal of approval from Phil’s mother, Philomena, when he visited her in her house in Howth.
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"Philomena just sat there looking at me for a few minutes and it felt like she was screen testing me as well," he recalls. "I was 22 but I wasn’t stupid. Then she said to me, 'I want to talk to your mother’. So, after 15 minutes talking to me, she spent two hours on the phone talking to my mother.
"I think Philomena wanted to find out were there similarities between me and Philo beyond the aesthetics - did I understand what it was to be from Dublin, to be different and to struggle. What was my own mother’s struggle like . . . "
Given that this is the story of Phil Lynott, a man whose songs were like a hybrid of The Beano, The Tain and his beloved western movies, Moonlight does not take a straightforward approach.
The framing device and thesis of the show is that Lynott belongs in the pantheon of great Irish writers with Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan, who both make ghostly appearances in the play.
Moonlight takes a suitably poetic approach and covers Phil's younger years from the late sixties to the early seventies and while there are Thin Lizzy songs played by a live band on stage and original music, it is not a jukebox musical.
"John Merrigan’s writing is what differentiates this piece from the Jordan film and even Jim Sheridan’s piece, which I was supposed to take part in," Smith says. "John is proposing Philip towards his rightful place among the pantheon of great Anglo Irish writers, which is where he belongs.
"I can understand people jigging for the salacious stuff. Philip was honest about it. He was telling you about it in songs like The Sun Goes Down and the early stuff like Here I Go Again, he’s telling you about doing something he doesn’t want to do to do what he wants to do."
Merrigan and Figgis have set their play in a Beckettian limbo that sees Phil nursing a pint in a Dublin pub alongside Behan. It’s a place where old ghosts meet and there in the background is the spectre of Oscar Wilde.
"It starts when Phil has passed away," Smith says. "He’s sitting in a bar with Brendan Behan and a celestial being who is running the bar and Oscar Wilde is floating around and the lads are challenging Phil on the artistic contribution of his lyrics and his life. It gets heated between the three of them and it’s a little like Waiting For Godot.
"I’m a huge Beckett fan and that’s what really attracted me to the piece. It’s an intellectual piece but with great rock music."
The magic realism approach includes an appearance from Philomena, who is played by Smith’s old friend, Mrs Brown’s Boys actress and daughter of Brendan O’Carroll Fiona O’Carroll.
"John insisted that Philomena be embodied," Smith says. "Originally in the script, she was voiced but I thought she needed to be there physically and Fiona is perfect for the part. The emotions that exist and the unresolved love story between Phil and Philomena needs to be there. We had to tell her story and how they were soul mates so I’m glad she is personified.
"You can never downplay what Philomena went through. It was an almost stonable offence to carry a baby, a black baby, to term as a single mother. She wanted to know if I was worthy to wear the shoes, as it were, and quite rightly so."
The cast also includes Riley Clark as Wilde, Pádraig O’Loingsigh as Behan, and David Keogh taking on the roles of Scott English, John Peel and Chas Chandler. In a nice touch, Belfast-born guitarist and Thin Lizzy co-founder Eric Bell makes a cameo appearance as himself.
"And this time he’ll play for the full gig!" laughs Smith. "It’s a cameo but listen you’re talking about the man who played the most iconic guitar riff in Irish rock history."
Smith didn’t quite make it as a pop star himself. He was a member of boyband Phixx and made it to the final of TV talent show Popstars: The Rivals, which led to the formation of Girls Aloud.
He also tried to make it as a semi-professional footballer in Norway ("I grew up playing football with Graham and Robbie Keane, their mates of mine.") and then worked in computers in Spain before becoming an actor.
He now lives near Barcelona with his Colombian wife, with whom he has three daughters. He also has a grown-up son from a previous relationship.
Phil, who adopted a rocker image as a form of protection, described himself as a "black Irish bastard" and came of age during an era of "no blacks, no dogs, no Irish". Deserted by his father, he then had to overcome a lot of prejudice and that’s something that Smith has himself faced intermittently over the years.
"You always come across pockets of prejudice and racism, that’s part of life," he says. "Is it acceptable? No. Do we makes excuses for it? No. I wouldn’t accept it for my kids. I have daughters and if anyone crosses them, they’ll answer to me. Simple.
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"I remember being ten or eleven and being assaulted at Croke Park because some kid threw an orange peel over a wall and a bloke ran up and saw a load of kids and just assumed it was me. He tried to choke me . . . he had to be pulled off."
Smith is in rehearsals and table readings for Moonlight for the next few months but he also has other projects going on. The day after we meet he’s off to work on a film in Bilboa.
Asked to sum up what Phil means to him, he says, "I would say the same thing that Philip said about Jimi Hendrix - that a black man could step into his art and be the main man and nobody blinks or questions it. Philip did that for me and Jimi Hendrix did that for Phil."
Somewhere, both Phil and Jimi are smiling.
Moonlight is at Vicar Street on the 2, 3 and 9 of April 2025. Tickets priced €39.20 are on sale now through Ticketmaster.ie
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