A disclaimer at the end of every episode of the drama series Say Nothing stating Gerry Adams denies ever being a member of the IRA is included even though the creators “fundamentally disagree” with the claim.
Joshua Zetumer, the creator of the nine-part series currently on Disney+, said the producers wanted to fairly represent the former Sinn Féin leader’s point of view.
Mr Adams has always “vociferously denied being the IRA”, Mr Zetumer told the US magazine, Town and Country “even as everybody else who has written about the Troubles has said that yes, he was in the IRA”.
Patrick Radden Keefe, author of the book the series is based on and an executive producer, added that Mr Adams, played by Josh Finan as a young man and Michael Colgan in his later years, takes issue with the “whole premise of the series”.
“The reason for the disclaimer is pretty obvious, which is that Gerry Adams—it’s not that he will take issue with little bits and pieces of what we show. He takes issue with the whole premise of the series, which is that he was in the IRA,” Mr Radden Keefe said.
He added: “I’ve had this experience as a reporter, where you write a story about somebody and they just deny these things that are clearly true.
“Legally speaking, and also just as a matter of good reporting, you have to give them the opportunity to comment. And their comment is deny these things.”
The disclaimer reads: “Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence.”
Say Nothing begins with the abduction, murder and burial by the IRA of Jean McConville, the Belfast mother of 10 and widow, then follows the lives of her family but also the IRA members, Brendan Hughes and the Price sisters, Marian and Dolours.
Prior to the broadcast of the first episode, solicitors for Mr Adams told the Isaid he had “no involvement in the killing or burial of any of those secretly buried by the IRA.”
The solicitors said that “according to media reports it is based primarily on interviews in the discredited Boston College Tapes from several anti-peace process republicans”
Mr Zetumer said it is not just “Radden Keefe who names Adams as a member, and a leader of the IRA but nearly every historian on the time period does as well”.
“That’s why the disclaimer is there: “We wanted to make sure that we were fairly representing his point of view, even if we fundamentally disagreed with it,” he said.
