The incredible Irish links to new John Wick spin-off show The Continental

Rory Cashin

The first episode of The Continental is available to watch at home right now.

While we were watching The Continental (check out our full review here), we were somewhat shocked to discover the amount of Irish connections, references and influences to be found throughout the mini-series.

Despite being set in 1970s New York, Ireland just keep popping up over and over again, to the point that we know when we were going to be chatting to director Albert Hughes, we just had to bring it up.

Hughes kicked off his career directing some fantastic crime movies with his brother Allen, including 1993’s Menace II Society and 1995’s Dead Presidents, before they moved on to bigger Hollywood fare such as 2001’s serial killer thriller From Hell and 2010’s apocalyptic epic The Book Of Eli.

As a solo director, Albert delivered 2018’s decent prehistoric adventure Alpha, before giving us 2020’s incredible mini-series The Good Lord Bird. And now he’s on to the John Wick spin-off, and you can check out our interview with him in full right here:

‘Mel Gibson’s character is Irish!’ the Continental director tells JOE

During the interview, in which with Hughes chats about difficult stunts, incredible song choices and the potential future of the franchise, the topic of the strong Irish connections comes up almost immediately.

“You’re in Katie McGrath land!”, Hughes immediately exclaimed when he heard were were calling from Ireland. McGrath plays The Adjudicator in the new show, a representative from The High Table who visits The Continental when everything starts to pop off.

So we then pointed out that another character in the show, a young boy who happens to be a musical genius, announces that he’s heading to a prestigious music school in Country Cork, an establishment that Mel Gibson’s character seems all too aware of, Hughes then lets us know there are even more connections that we didn’t know about:

“Mel Gibson, his character, is Hell’s Kitchen Irish. His character is of Irish New York descent. And I just realised, there are one or two more that we’re missing, because there was another Irish actor in the show. Sallay Garnett, who plays the Concierge, with the nice afro hair, she’s Black Irish. Sounds like Black Russian, or White Russian, sounds like a drink! But she lives in Ireland, I think she was born and raised there!”

And there you have it. Many, many, MANY Irish connections within the world of John Wick!

The first episode of The Continental is available to watch on Prime Video right now, with the second episode arriving on Friday 29 September, and the third and final episode dropping on Friday 6 October.

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