Never mind that the bit turned out to be a hoax — it wasn’t actually Jenny, “just a random donkey,” the Academy confirmed. The beast’s showcase appearance helped to highlight an influx of talent from the Emerald Isle that has given the country’s creative class plenty to bray about.
“Not only is Jenny an actor,” he said, “but she is a certified emotional-support donkey. Or at least that’s what we told the airline to get her on the plane from Ireland.”
Two years ago, when the black Irish comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” was nominated for nine Academy Awards, host Jimmy Kimmel welcomed the film’s four-legged star — Jenny the donkey — to the Oscars stage.
Been to the movies recently? Irish actors are everywhere, from Cillian Murphy (“Small Things Like These”) and Barry Keoghan (“Saltburn”) to Saoirse Ronan (“Blitz”) and Paul Mescal (“Gladiator II”).
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Found a new favorite musical act? For some of you, maybe that’s Dublin’s Fontaines D.C., who won NME’s “Best Band in the World” award in 2022, or the neo-traditional folk group Mary Wallopers, whom the Guardian has called “stout of heart, voice and beer,” or the brooding deep-woods folk of Lankum, whose most recent LP, “False Lankum,” was chosen by the same paper as the best album of 2023.
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Read a good book lately? Odds are pretty good that it was written by an Irishman or woman: Paul Lynch (who wrote the 2023 Booker Prize winner “Prophet Song”), perhaps, or Tana French (the “First Lady of Irish Crime”), or maybe Sally Rooney, author most recently of “Intermezzo” (2024), whose 2018 novel, “Normal People,” has been made into the popular Hulu series of the same name, which stars Mescal.
Irish band Fontaines D.C. Simon Wheatley
Also on your TV screen, Sharon Horgan’s “Bad Sisters” recently returned for its second season on Apple TV+. And Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Say Nothing” (2018), the Dorchester native’s gripping tale of the darkest days of the Troubles, recently returned to the Globe’s nonfiction bestseller list following the release of the television miniseries based on the book.
“There’s a lot of skilled people here, a lot of talent,” the Dublin-based documentary filmmaker Ciaran Cassidy recently told the Globe. He’s the director, most recently, of “Housewife of the Year,” a nostalgic look back at a long-running Irish reality show that reflected the traditional patriarchal society the country has sloughed off over the past few decades.
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From left: Sarah Greene, Eve Hewson, Sharon Horgan, and Eva Birthistle in “Bad Sisters.” Apple TV+
“There’s kind of a lot of confidence in the generation,” Cassidy said. “These are singular stories, but they actually translate internationally if they’re executed well.”
The filmmaker noted the success of “The Quiet Girl” (2022), which was nominated for best international feature at the 95th Academy Awards, written and directed by first-time filmmaker Colm Bairéad. A coming-of-age film that features the Irish language, it is known in Ireland as “An Cailin Ciúin.”
Another Irish-language film that has enjoyed some success in the United States is last year’s “Kneecap,” a madcap rendering of the origin story of the Northern Ireland rap group of the same name, whose members celebrate the country’s indigenous language.
“We knew obviously that storytelling was important in Irish culture,” said the rapper called Mo Chara (Liam Ó Hannaidh) in a recent interview with the Globe. “And we thought the best way in modern times to tell stories is hip-hop.”
The three band members first bonded over the human rights campaign to recognize the Irish language, often called Gaelic, which had been discouraged in Ireland for centuries. In 2022, the British Parliament passed the Identity and Language Act to recognize and protect it.
Other policy matters have helped to shape Ireland’s cultural awakening in recent years, including the 2015 referendum that legalized same-sex marriage and the 2018 vote that repealed the country’s Eighth Amendment, overturning a strict abortion ban.
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Declan Crowley is the cultural programming manager of the Irish Cultural Centre of Greater Boston, in Canton. Winner of multiple medals at the World Irish Dance Championships, he played the principal role in Michael Flatley’s internationally renowned musical “Lord of the Dance” from 2009 to 2013.
“Let’s start with the fact that the Irish pub model is what the entire world sees as a pub,” Crowley said. “You say ‘a pub,’ it’s Irish by nature. That travels globally. Wherever you are on planet Earth, there’s going to be an Irish pub.”
Crowley, who is from upstate New York — he’s third-generation Irish — also points to the working-class history of Irish culture as a key reason why the country’s influence has traveled so well in recent years.
“We often say that high-caliber art is not born out of abundance — it’s born out of nothing,” he said. Like Cassidy, Crowley suggests that Irish storytelling about ordinary people can be especially relatable across ethnic and national lines: “There’s cross-cultural reference in that.”
To be sure, this is not the first time Irish culture has made its mark around the globe. From James Joyce and Daniel Day-Lewis (who holds dual Irish and British citizenship) to U2 and Sinead O’Connor, Ireland’s creative talents have been well-documented.
But there’s been a particular abundance of late. Murphy won the Oscar for best actor last year for his starring role in “Oppenheimer.” The previous year saw 14 Oscar nominations for Irish films, actors, and others behind-the-scenes, including Keoghan, Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Kerry Condon, all for “Banshees,” and Mescal for “Aftersun.”
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Last year, Hozier’s song “Too Sweet” went viral, hitting the number one spot on the charts in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Though Hozier claims not to be religious (he was raised a Quaker), there’s a spiritual feel to a lot of his music.
“Growing up in Ireland,” he has said, “there are a lot of aspects of God that hang in the air. And my music reflects that.”
“It’s not the song, it is the singin’,” as he put it in his 2018 soul anthem “Nina Cried Power.” “It’s the heaven of the human spirit ringin’.”
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.