A customer pets a donkey at JJ Devine's remodeled pub. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne. Inisherin has been relocated from a remote Irish island and is now serving pints to people more than 100 miles away in Galway.
JJ Devine's public house was built on Achill Island, County Mayo for the 2022 Black Comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. However, it was dismantled as soon as the filming of the Golden Globe-winning film was completed.
Many fans were disappointed to learn that the watering hole, central to Colm and Padraic's history and the breakup of their friendship, had been dismantled.
Among them was singer Taylor Swift, who expressed her admiration the “authenticity” of the setting, which, she said, made the booze look like it had been there “forever”.
Now the family's landlord running Mee's bar in Kilkerrin village, Galway, has moved it to the back of his own pub and hopes it becomes a tourist attraction.
Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in a fictionalized version of JJ Devine's pub in The Banshees of Inisherin. Photo: Film Stills/Searchlight Pictures
The pub set was given to Luke Mee by a relative who lives on Achilles and asked if he could keep it after filming was over.
Mister Mee then put together a team of four assistants and borrowed a truck to make two. an hour's drive to the island, which is connected to the mainland by a whale-shaped bridge.
It took another two days to load a truck in the December frost before heading 170 km from County Galway. .
“Then we had to try and put it back together,” Mr. Mee told The Telegraph.
“It was like a puzzle. We would turn on the film, pause it, take screenshots, and print them out to make sure everything was in place.”
Now fans of the movie can enjoy a pint of beer in a real pub in Kilkerrin, Galway. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
The new pub is completely original, right down to the window panes that fans of the film will remember when Padraic looks sadly out the window at his former best friend Colm.
“Everything, down to the window panes. has been painstakingly restored with the help of family, friends and neighbors. This project took hours after hours,” Mr. Mee said after the unofficial opening of the pub.
For three and a half months, the close-knit team worked on the project in the strictest secrecy. which was wrapped in black PVC sheets so that the locals would not know in advance about the big opening that Mr. Mee had planned.
He said: “We kept it a secret. Even my sister Angela, who runs the pub, was not fully aware.
“I didn't expect her to lie to her regulars so I just told her we were cleaning up the smoking area.”
Swift told Martin McDonagh, the film's Oscar-nominated director, that she would visit the pub if it ever got rebuilt when she interviewed him for Vanity Fair last year.
Taylor Swift is said to have been a fan of JJ Devine's Public House after seeing him in a movie . Credit: AP Photo/Ashley Landis/File
Mee said he was credibly informed that the news of the revival of JJ Devine's Public House had been passed on to Shake It Off vocalist.
He said he reserved a free pint of beer for the superstar if she decides to visit the recreated bar after its official opening next month.
“She would be very happy to come to the pub and have fun,” he said, before joke: “You can eat whatever you want, as long as it's Guinness!”
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