Mrs Brown’s Boys creator Brendan O’Carroll has experienced much heartbreak off-screen, with the whole cast being hit hard by tragic family losses and health scares

Mrs Brown’s Boys has been a staple part of the TV guide for over a decade, with the comedy series proving a hit for fans of Brendan O’Carroll ‘s character, matriarch Agnes Brown. The hit show has been entertaining, and sometimes infuriating, for viewers who have been split about its 2023 return.

While the comedy has sent many into fits of laughter, it’s not always been smiles off-screen. The tight-knit cast, who are either related or close friends, have faced health scares and heartbreaks, which have hit the whole team hard. Here we take a look at the tragedies behind-the-scenes, as the programme airs tonight.

In AN interview with RSVP Live, Brendan shared: “Loss is the hardest part of life and the most difficult thing to cope with… As a result, I am terrible at funerals and I avoid them if I can. Friends of mine know I won’t turn up to them. I can’t do funerals.” But the 67-year-old TV star radiates positivity still and takes immense pride in his accomplishments. When asked about his life, he said: “People say to me that I must be living my dream, but I am so far past living my dream, it is unreal.” He added: “If I died tomorrow I wouldn’t say there was anything else I wanted to achieve. I am way beyond reaching everything I’ve wanted to achieve in life.”

Tragic death of son

Brendan was rocked by a devastating tragedy in 1979. The Mrs Brown’s Boys creator, who was with first wife Doreen Dowdall at the time, became a dad for the first time. His first son, Brendan Jnr, had spina bifida and tragically passed away when he was just three-days-old. In an emotional interview on RTE ‘s The Tommy Tiernan Show in January 2021, Brendan bravely opened up on their loss. “It leaves a hole,” he said. “I was really young when my son died. He was my first child and like everyone else, I had all these things figured out in my head – the white picket fence, swing in the garden, he’d play football just like his dad and I’d go to the games with him.”

“But it changed overnight. It leaves a hole. I’m very lucky to have three fantastic kids, but they don’t fill that gap. Not that you’d want them to, but they don’t.” Brendan, who has three children with Doreen, Danny, Eric and Fiona, said the best way to deal with grief is to “keep talking about it”. The comedian admits he is not a “Bible-thumping Catholic” but believes he will see his son again one day.

Triple heartbreak

Brendan was just nine-years-old when his father sadly passed away. This meant he was very close to his mother, Maureen O’Carroll, when he was growing up. The character of Mrs Brown is actually inspired by his own beloved mammy, who sadly passed away in 1984 at the age of 71. While there are no doubt similarities, Agnes is definitely not a direct impersonation of his mum.

“I adored my mother. My dad died when I was only nine, so I grew up with my mother. It was me and her. I was the youngest of the kids,” he told Tommy Tiernan a few years ago. “She was a very sharp woman and she would see things coming down the line. I’d be trying something and she’d know if it was going to work and she would say ‘bring this to a close’. You always had to finish things with her and move on.” Maureen died when Brendan was in his 20s, but the comedian admitted it was the best thing that happened to him in a strange way.

He added: “So I never failed. The best thing she did for me was die. She died when I was 28 and for the first five years every thing I touched went to crap, and I thought I was a loser. I started to realise it was only in the losing and in failing that you learn. You learn nothing in succeeding.” In December 2021, Brendan said that his mother asked him to make two promises over how she would die. He explained: “She said, ‘I don’t want to die in a home, Brendan’ and then she said, ‘And I want to die on a sunny day’. I said ‘Ma, I’ll make sure you die at home but there is f**k all I can do about the weather ‘.”

Then in 2020, the entire cast mourned the loss of Brendan and Eilish’s sister, Fiona, who sadly passed away. Opening up about their family loss, Eilish told the Irish Mirror at the time: “Sadly my sister took very ill and passed away in Canada on March 3. I had been out there with her for Christmas but we didn’t manage to get out until the day after she died.” Eilish described Fiona as like a “second mammy” to her and brother Brendan. The Dublin native said it was a blessing the tight-knit family finished filming All Round To Mrs Brown’s before Fiona’s devastating death as they were able to mourn together.

Terrifying health scare

Brendan has battled with his own personal health problems and was struck down during one terrifying incident occurring during filming. The worried actor feared he was going to die from a heart attack after filming a Christmas special in Scotland. Speaking on Ireland’s The Late Late Show in October 2017, Brendan admitted he thought he was “a goner” and woke wife Jennifer Gibney up. “I thought I was having a heart attack. I had this bug and at about 2am I had to wake Jenny up. We were filming the Christmas special up in Glasgow,” said Brendan.

“I said to her ‘You should call an ambulance’. We called the ambulance as we wanted to meet them on the street. When Jenny and I were in the lift we were still on 999. They told her to put her hand on my tonsil, to count my heart beat. It was all going on. I had the fright of my life and I thought I was a goner. When I got in the ambulance they said ‘Well it is not your heart ‘ and I vomited it out for 12 hours. I had a very violent bug.” Thankfully, Brendan made a full recovery and got straight back to making the show.

Final goodbye

Rory Cowan played the role of his namesake for 26 years on stage and screen, but shocked fans of the show by deciding to quit in July 2017. He insisted that the split from Brendan’s comedy troupe had been completely “amicable” but he had not been enjoying playing the part for two years. “I got tired of it, I haven’t been happy for the last two years working there,” Rory told the Irish Mirror. “There was no row with Brendan, there was no dispute over money or anything, in fact quite the opposite, I got so well paid that it enabled me to be able to leave, I didn’t need to stay.”

Part of the reasons for leaving was the gruelling tour dates, while Rory also wanted to look after his ill mother – who sadly passed away in November 2018 at the age of 85. Rory left on very good terms with the rest of the cast, but later he admitted that he no longer speaks to his former colleagues. “I don’t keep in touch with the people I worked with on Mrs Brown’s Boys. Not because I left on bad terms,” he said in 2019. “It’s like anybody who changes jobs. You leave and you just don’t see the old work mates you used to work with.”

Debilitating illness

Damien McKiernan, who plays Rory Brown in the show, has previously opened up on his son’s debilitating illness. His family were rocked by the news that 12-year-old Theo had been diagnosed with a rare form of arthritis, of which there are just 60 cases in the whole world. The actor, who took over as Rory from Rory Cowan during the 2017 Christmas special, bravely explained how he got an operation for his son to the Irish Mirror in August 2019. “He developed a very rare form of arthritis in his left leg, so rare that they didn’t know what it was,” said Damien. “It’s never been recorded in Ireland or the UK before. There are only 60 cases worldwide.”