Trespasses' Tom Cullen reveals how his own family history mirrors show's forbidden love

When Cushla and Michael fall in love in Channel 4's Trespasses – a four-part series based on Louise Kennedy's novel, and set in Belfast during The Troubles – it's not just the fact that he's married that makes their story taboo.

The former, a young schoolteacher, is a Catholic, while the latter, a barrister, is a Protestant – the very worst kind of sin, certainly in the eyes of many. Their illicit relationship is forced "into secret spaces and dark rooms, away from prying eyes", notes Lola Petticrew, who plays Cushla, given the "threat" such individuals faced for fraternising with the enemy.

"The stakes are stacked against these forbidden lovers," said screenwriter Ailbhe Keogan, who recalls how Seamie, a Catholic man who married a Protestant woman, is beaten up – "which is very typical of Northern Ireland at the time."

"There's actually a threat to life for these lovers," she added.

Discussing how common relationships between Catholics and Protestants were during the most tumultuous and fraught period in Northern Ireland’s history, the cast acknowledged how difficult it would have been to physically be together. "But it certainly happened, of course, because people fall in love," said Petticrew.

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"They were quite segregated," said Gillian Anderson, who plays Cushla's alcoholic mother, Gina, of the two camps. Petticrew added: "The communities were totally ghettoised into separate spaces — especially working-class communities. It would have been easier to mix among the middle classes."

Tom Cullen, who plays Michael, then recalled his own personal family history, which shares some DNA with Trespasses.

"My grandfather is Irish Catholic and my grandmother's Irish Protestant," he explained. "It's a story that has existed within my family — the difficulty of it.

"My grandmother's father had passed away by the time she met my grandfather, and I think everyone was very grateful for that, because it would've been hugely difficult… and it still was."

Speaking about what first draws Cushla and Michael to one another, Petticrew described it as "a meeting of minds and two people with an absolutely ineffable connection between them."

"And I really think that the casting of Michael, and Tom playing Michael, was integral to that, because in another pair of hands, it could have just been ‘sexy older man’. But Tom’s Michael is bursting at the seams with love."

"The things that really attracts Michael to Cushla are the same things that I’m attracted to in my fellow actor," added Cullen. "Lola has such strength, wit, intelligence and humour, and is so talented. Michael just falls in love with that, with Cushla, in the same way that I fell in love with that in Lola.

"It was so easy. Lola made that job so easy. I tried to bring as much vulnerability as possible, because in Cushla he finds this person who makes life worth living, which is what he's always wanted.

"In another world, it wouldn’t have been a forbidden love story, and that's the point. But they love each other so intensely that they're literally willing to risk their lives to love each other."

Trespasses premieres on Channel 4 on Sunday 9th November 2025.

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