RTE Kin creator reveals bombshell last minute star shake-up amid series 3 hopes

THE creator of gangland TV hit Kin has revealed he planned for a different actress to play Amanda Kinsella.

Clare Dunne scooped the Best Actress gong at the Irish Film and Television Academy awards for playing the mob chief in the RTE smash.

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But writer Peter McKenna was thinking of someone else when he sat down to pen the epic script for the first season of the show.

McKenna said: “I originally wrote Amanda with another actress in mind, who I won’t name.

“I met her and she was really nice and loved the scripts. She agreed to do our show, which was a small show.

“But before we got Kin off the ground and organised financing, she got offered another big franchise and went off to America. So we went back through people and ended up with Clare, who was perfect.”

The BAFTA and IFTA winning writer claims he was so blown away with actress Clare — who plays the wife of crime boss Jimmy Kinsella — he admits he penned the second, more popular series of Kin with her in mind.

Peter said: “The original version of Amanda Kinsella in season one was volatile and unpredictable.

“That’s not Clare who is more controlled and strategic. So for the second season I wrote for Clare.”

The Irish Sun can reveal that the hit crime drama has become the most successful acquisition the BBC has aired in the last ten years, with even more people watching on Netflix.

Writer Peter revealed his original premise for his thriller was “gangsters with feelings”.

But the creation of the Kinsella crime family came about by accident after he was involved in an aborted TV series that “was in development for a long time and ran up lots of bills”.

Bosses then gave him free rein to write a brand new series.

Peter said: “The studio rang and said ‘write whatever you want’. Rarely in my 28-year career has anybody said that.

“So I said, ‘I want to tell a story about a family in Dublin who are criminals’.”

The ex BBC writer admitted he has always been fascinated by gangsters and listens to crime podcasts.

But what interested him most was the family ties of the criminals.

‘GANGSTERS WITH FEELINGS’

Peter said: “You would read about a guy who had gone to jail or been shot in a pub, and he would have a father who had been in prison or a brother who killed himself.

“There was trauma after trauma. That’s what really interested me. They weren’t leading glamorous lives at all.

“When we spoke about the first season of Kin, we used to say ‘gangsters with feelings’.

“So we would follow the conventions of a gangster story but we would also dig into the emotions.

“The family are incredibly loyal but also hurt and damage each other. Those are the areas that interest me as a writer.

“It’s about what you do for your family and what you do to them.”

The acclaimed writer and story consultant, whose TV credits include Hidden Assets and Gangs Of London, admits his writing has changed since he started his career penning episodes for BBC’s EastEnders and Casualty.

His fast-moving scripts turned Kin into a global smash on RTE, the BBC and now Netflix.

Peter said: “People definitely have shorter attention spans than they did ten years ago. That’s reflected on how you grip them and how you hold them.

“I wanted to slowly build each episode but when we sold the scripts to Bron Studios, they said we needed to hook the audience in the first five minutes.

“So when I write Kin, the opening five pages have to be exciting.”

A number of independent producers are bidding for the show in a liquidation sale of the assets at bust Bron Studios.

Industry watchers now predict it will return for a third season after Kin was bought by Netflix.

Peter McKenna was speaking at the Celtic Media Festival.

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