`I`mnotconfident withmyfriendswhen Igoout.Iwouldn`t

‘I’m not confident
with my friends when
I go out. I wouldn’t
think of myself as the
best-looking girl there.
And it’s weird when
people come up to me’
How does she deal with the nerves? “I just
laugh it off. I make jokes. There’s no point in
going home and being like, ‘I was so nervous
that I don’t even remember half of it.’ I’m,
like, ‘I’m wearing amazing clothes, my
make-up looks great, my hair looks great. I
might as well just enjoy it.’ I’m lucky. I just
tell myself that I’m being an idiot. Why am
I nervous? It’s not like I’m jumping off a cliff
— usually,” she laughs.
Performance nerves aside, Thalia doesn’t
seem remotely fazed by her huge success. Her
reaction to the moniker of ‘girl of the moment’
is one of baffled amusement: “Hilarious! So
funny, because I’m not the girl of the moment.
You know, I’m a schoolgirl, I’m 17.”
So there’s no pressure attached? “No.
Like, there is pressure when I’m on jobs, to
20 | LIFE | Sunday Independent | 22 April 2012
do my best. But at this point, I’ve done it long
enough to know what my best is, and it’s easy
to do. It’s come to the point where I’m
comfortable in my own skin.”
People who have known her since she first
started out say that Thalia has always had
this mixture of maturity and youth. Does she
think she has changed much over the last
year? “I’ve gained a lot of maturity. I used to
be really immature, really cheeky and bold,
just silly. And I’ve completely changed now.
I respect people a lot more. I have an
experience of a working environment now.
“I’ve noticed that I’m a lot more
comfortable, I’m a lot more confident now.
I have almost a false confidence about
myself. Because I’m not confident with my
friends when I go out. I wouldn’t think of
myself as the best-looking girl there. And it’s
weird when people come up to me and they
go, ‘Oh my God, you’re Thalia Heffernan!’
They’re almost more confident than I am. I
get really awkward in those situations and
I don’t know what to do.”
Thalia’s pedigree probably helps to inform
her ability to handle such success so young.
Her parents are Susan Ebrill and Gerard
Heffernan. “She modelled a long time ago,”
she smiles of her mother, teasingly
emphasising the word long. Her mother, who
now works with Dublin gourmet emporium
Wilde & Green, is also an accountant for the
family TV production company, Frontier
Films. “She does the most out of any mum
I know. She’s working constantly. She’s like
me as well. She’s tired all the time but she’ll
persevere. I really am inspired by my mum.”
Her father is legendary TV producer
Gerard Heffernan — Blackboard Jungle,
No Frontiers. His radio and TV presenter
twin, David, has three sons, including Jesse
Heffernan of Dublin hip-hop collective, The
Animators and comedian Aaron Heffernan,
best known for his Obama impressions.
“He’s so talented it’s sick. He’s the one I
completely idolise,” Thalia says of Aaron.
Thalia is the youngest of three sisters, one
lives in London and the other has just
moved to Australia — she’s missing her a lot,
rattling around on her own in the big
house where she has lived all her life.
“We’re all very close, we’re quite a unit.”
She sees a lot more of her father nowadays,
since the end of No Frontiers. “I used to never
see my dad when I was younger,” she says.
“I’m really, really close to my dad now. Since
No Frontiers stopped, we’ve bonded really
well. We’re just really alike. We love going
into really weird detail about things, like
novels and stories and movies, until the
cows come home. I wouldn’t have spent a lot
of time with him as a child. It’d be like,
‘Where are you?’ ‘South Africa.’ ‘OK.’ ‘Where
are you?’ ‘Australia.’ ‘OK.’”
They travelled together to South Africa
two years ago, and Gerard now runs new
ideas past his youngest daughter. “I’m his
little hamster. It’s great that I can work
now. He knows that I’ve a bit of a head on
my shoulders. I’m not just a kid that will like
anything on TV.”
Performance of some sort is in the family.
Her father’s family — her grandparents,
Dave and Gerard and their brother Tony,
travelled the country as a singing and acting
troupe when the boys were growing up.
“We have a very eccentric family. It doesn’t
seem it to us, but I’d say to other people it
seems quite eccentric,” says Thalia
Kathryn Thomas is a close family friend,
and John Rocha, whose show Thalia walked
in last year at London Fashion Week, is one
of her father’s closest friends. “We used to go
to Ballymaloe,” she recalls of childhood
holidays with the Rochas, whose daughter
Simone is one of the best friends of Thalia’s
eldest sister. “John actually lives quite close
to me. So when I work for him, it’s a lot more
than work. It’s like a reunion when I work
with him and Odette.”
With this background, does TV presenting
appeal? “To be honest, I’m too embarrassed
to go on live things,” she demurs, laughingly
recounting a live TV interview throughout
which she claims she laughed maniacally. If
she wasn’t modelling, she’d be aiming for a