These Sacred Vows stars break down first episode’s bombshell reveal

JOE spoke to stars Justine Mitchell and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor about the new Irish show's 'plot twist'. Spoilers obviously!

Created by John Butler (Handsome Devil), the series begins with a man being discovered dead and floating in a swimming pool (à la Sunset Boulevard) in Tenerife.

Tom Vaughan-Lawlor in These Sacred Vows

We quickly learn that the body belongs to Fr Vincent (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Love/Hate), a quiet and shy Munster priest.

We then flash backwards in time to when the priest first arrived on the Spanish island. This was to officiate the wedding of the daughter of his old friends and married couple, Jerry (Jason O'Mara, Irish Blood) and Sandra (Justine Mitchell, Hamnet).

Landing in Tenerife, Fr Vincent is shocked to learn that he will be sharing his accommodation with a large group of rowdy and hedonistic youngsters, who also aren't very pleased about being stuck with a man of the cloth.

From here, the priest's trip increasingly becomes a nightmare.

The youngsters are mostly rude to him or treat him with indifference, keeping him up at night with their partying.

This causes the priest to fall asleep while relaxing by the sea, losing the €1,700 deposit that Jerry had given him to book the church for the wedding.

Already cash-strapped, Fr Vincent uses his own cash to make the booking and hide his mistake.

On top of this, Jerry and Sandra's complete disinterest in having the priest meet the bride and groom so that he can write a sermon leaves him feeling baffled as to why he was invited.

At one point, he even tells a fellow man of the cloth in Spain: "Did you ever think you'd be of so little use?"

What really sends Fr Vincent over the edge, however, is Sandra revealing to him in the closing moments of the episode that he is the biological father of Sandra's daughter, who is getting married.

It turns out that before Vincent became a priest, he and Sandra had a one-night stand, while she was still together with Jerry.

Sandra never told Jerry the truth, but still wanted Fr Vincent to be a part of his biological daughter's big day.

The priest does not respond well to the news. Having already been hinted as being a recovering alcoholic, he returns to his accommodation, grabs a bottle of vodka and begins partying with the young people staying there.

Speaking to JOE at a press roundtable, actress Justine Mitchell spoke about filming that long climactic scene with Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, which features that big reveal.

Justine Mitchell, who plays Sandra

"It was windy, really windy. I remember that about it," she said.

"I just remember marvelling at Tom. The things [Sandra] says to [Vincent] really triggers something in him. All the way through... he's such a calm character, and then I tell him this thing.

"I remind him of our past, and in our past, we knew each other. We knew each other very, very well. It's kind of fun to tease him about that.

"And then I do drop this plot twist on him, and [Tom] just ignited from within [as] Vincent. It was like a bomb went off inside his head, and there was just like a five-alarm fire."

Her co-star Jason O'Mara adds: "Such a brilliant scene. I think the wind is pathetic fallacy. The winds change because everything changes after that."

Each episode of These Sacred Vows will focus on a different character.

As such, JOE had to ask Vaughan-Lawlor in another roundtable if audiences will get to see Fr Vincent reckoning with that big reveal across the rest of the series' six episodes.

In response, he said: "Yes… In the fabric of the show, every character features in every episode.

"But because it's told specifically from their perspective, there's bits we've shot [where] I was like: 'I can't wait to see myself in this scene,'

"[I saw it then and was] like: 'Why am I not in this scene?'

"It's because they shot it from someone else's perspective. [But] I was like: 'I was great that day'," he laughed.

"But [the characters] all keep popping up, and because you've been very intimate with them for an hour, you feel a great knowledge of their solitude.

"So, you're party to that privacy, and then you see them later on in a public sphere, and you go: 'Oh, I know all these things about them privately.'

"[Creator John Butler] is spinning all these plates, and it builds until the last episode, and that's when things kind of explode.

"It's spinning all the plates as a writer and director that makes him really, really top of his game creatively as a showrunner."

Teasing an apparently raunchy second episode, Vaughan-Lawlor joked: "Wait for the second episode. Like, we're not watching Glenroe anymore."

The first episode of These Sacred Vows aired on RTÉ One on Sunday, 1 February. The first two episodes are now streaming on the RTÉ Player.