Alicia Silverstone Breaks Down the Emotional Mysteries of Her New Acorn TV Series Irish Blood

By Lacy Baugher Milas  |  August 15, 2025 | 11:45am
(Photo: Acorn TV)
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Alicia Silverstone Breaks Down the Emotional Mysteries of Her New Acorn TV Series Irish Blood
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Alicia Silverstone has returned to television, but not in the role many of us likely expected. Known, of course, for her iconic turn as Cher Horowitz in Clueless, the idea of Silverstone starring in a crime drama may well come as a surprise to many. But Irish Blood, a mystery series that mixes a season-long emotional arc with more weekly episodic investigations, isn’t a particularly typical example of its genre. Like most of Acorn TV’s cozy crime series (see also: Harry Wild, Art Detectives), it’s as concerned with the emotional journeys of the characters at the story’s center as it is with the whodunnit plots. 

Silverstone plays Fiona Fox, a successful Los Angeles divorce attorney who has never quite gotten over her father walking out on her and her mother when she was ten years old. Her resulting daddy issues have informed much of her life, from her career to her own relationship choices (or lack thereof). But when she receives a mysterious package from Ireland that appears to be from her long-absent dad, she throws herself into an attempt to get something like closure, traveling across the pond and meeting the family she never knew she had.

But the discovery of a mysterious briefcase full of objects tied to memories from her childhood sends Fiona on an unexpected journey into a world of murder and crime, where she’s forced to confront the idea that many of her assumptions about who her father was and the kind of life he lived were incorrect.

We had the chance to chat with Silverstone herself about what drew her to this particular crime drama, playing Fiona, filming in Ireland, and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Paste Magazine: When I heard you were going to do a TV show, I have to admit that Irish Blood wasn’t the lane that I thought you were going to go with. So I would love to know what about this story really spoke to you or drew you in and made you think, “Yes, I’m going to enter my crime drama era”?

Alicia Silverstone: It wasn’t in my planning, either. [laughter] Honestly, it was two things: One, while I liked the mystery and I liked the crime elements, I found the show really quirky as well, and I liked that mixture. It was also an emotional, rich drama. There was so much for me to potentially sink my teeth into. And then, they asked me to come on as a producer when [the show] was just an idea. And as a producer, that allowed me to make all these key creative hires, from casting to every department, and work with the writers really extensively and on the edits with the editor extensively. 

I was just trying to make [the story and the character] as deep and layered as possible, and land in a real place so that it felt very grounded. And I’m an actor, so I was just happy to have something to really go deep with.

Paste: Tell me a little bit about how you see Fiona. What was your North Star for figuring out who she is and what motivates her over the journey she goes on through the show?

Silverstone: I think I just used her emotional wounds. She’s suffering this trauma from having her father leave her when she was 10 years old. He just suddenly abandons her. And they had an incredible relationship. He was her hero. He was her everything. She was obsessed with him, and then suddenly one day he was just gone. It made no sense. And so, she never got over that. She just didn’t get over that. 

Her mom didn’t know; she didn’t put her in therapy when she was ten. So she spent years being like, “Where is my dad?” And as much as she could cry to her mom about it, she also saw her mom have a bruise on her face. She thought her dad beat her up, and so in a way she hated her dad too, for that, and it became this thing they didn’t talk about. She wanted to be brave and strong for her mom, to protect her. And so, she just had all these feelings that didn’t get addressed. She had such a strong need to have her daddy.

And so then, maybe in college or high school, let’s say in college, she fell in love with someone and opened her heart up, and then he abandoned her and betrayed her. And so, she just said, “That’s it. I’m done. I’m not going to get close to anyone. My mom is it. That’s it. No one else.” Now, she’s just tough. She just wants to satisfy whatever urges and have fun, but not engage in any meaningful way with anyone. So it was easy to just lock into that pain and that need. 

Paste: Actually, I didn’t realize that her father wasn’t just missing when I started watching the show.

Silverstone: Good! You shouldn’t. I hope the audience won’t either. 

Paste: But that twist is a big reason why I think the way the show deals with their relationship is so powerful. Suddenly, Fiona has to reassess a lifetime of things she thought she knew and feelings she thought she understood. How does figuring out who her father was as a person and in connection with her and her mother, how does finding those answers really change who she is? What does that mean to her?

Silverstone: It’s all happening so fast that I think…when we slow down and pay attention, I think that’s why she’s on this hunt. She just keeps throwing herself into the fire because she wants to be close to her dad, and I think that need is still so strong, even now. She’s spent so long being angry at him, but the second there’s contact, she’s right there.  She keeps throwing herself in front of a train, basically, because there’s still a baby little girl inside of her that wants him to come back. It’s just so hard for her. But hopefully you can see her evolving in how she understands him, who he was.

Paste: One of the things that really surprised me about the show is how female-centric it is. Because I feel like this is a genre that’s maybe not necessarily always that way, but I love that Fiona gets to have suddenly all these female relationships, particularly because I get the sense that maybe that’s not something she has a ton of in her life in L.A.. What does this girl gang tribe that she’s forming mean to her? 

Silverstone: It’s everything. Finding her grandmother is so…I think you can see that on my face as soon as she walks in, what that means to her. There’s a whole world that she didn’t get. It was all taken from her, and it’s just so hard for her to try to understand the reasons why that happened, but she’s so happy to have them now.

Paste: How was filming in Ireland? It looks gorgeous, obviously, but what do you think that this particular setting adds to the show?

Silverstone: It’s a huge character in the show, I think. It’s a whole other world. It’s so pretty and so different, particularly the way people are there. And for Fiona, that’s major. 

 I think also, on a production value sense, we really get the richness of the area, but we also get incredible crews. The people who work there are so sweet and warm and funny, and it just makes it so much more fun. And the pool of actors you get in Ireland…Ireland is untapped territory for actors, let me tell you. They’re so brilliant. Performances that might be just for one scene and are still so compelling and memorable. The local people in Ireland are just so good. They’re all so good.

Paste: There’s something very moving about Fiona discovering she has this whole other culture to belong to, I think. 

Silverston: I don’t know if you can tell, and I hope this comes across, but in the beginning, when she first arrives [in Ireland], she’s so polished. She wears a ton of makeup, and she’s got her hair done, and she’s sort of a very chic businesswoman. But the long she says there, she gets [more natural]. She’s more herself. She just has no time for makeup anymore. She has no time to do her hair. She’s a wild woman now, a woman on a mission. There’s an honesty there, and I like that.

New episodes of Irish Blood stream Mondays on Acorn TV.

Lacy Baugher Milas writes about TV and Books at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV

 
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