Alanna Diggin from Tralee who took part in the RTE2 Connected show.
SHE was on our TV screens for the past two months, sharing her life with the great Irish public as part of the RTE2 reality show ‘Connected’.
But as the series, which followed the lives of six women from around Ireland over the course of nearly a year, ended on Tuesday night, we caught up Alanna Diggin from Tralee to find out how she felt about doing the show and how it came about and how it helped her deal with personal tragedy.
“[local musician] John Buggy was contacted by a production company and asked if he knew any online bloggers that would be into taking part in a project. I know his son Zach and he suggested me, so it went on from there,” explained the 21 year old, originally from Alderwood Road, but now living in Caheranne Village.
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“We started filming in October/November last year as a kind of testing ground and from Christmas onwards the real filming began. We finished then at the beginning of October,” she said. The show itself only aired over two months from September to November.
Alanna carried around a small video camera and filmed herself over the 10 months at various times of the day. “If anything seemed remotely interesting I’d start filming,” she said.
Alanna explained why she got involved.
“I suppose the main reason they [the production company] were interested in me was because I lost my dad, Kevin, from suicide in 2012 and they wanted to see how it affects a person afterwards. So I wanted to show people that you can move on past it and once you have friends and family around you’ll be fine. But also to show people that if they felt suicidal and down, to show how the person left behind is feeling after it. Because I still had my hard times on camera in the show,” she said.
Did she find the confessional part of the experience helpful?
“Yeah. It’s weird because you almost think of the camera as a person. I think all the women in the show felt like that, like it was a friend you could talk to, but then you felt a bit silly after because after you know the producer is going to see it after.”
So how did her friends and boyfriend react?
“A few of them didn’t want to do it at all and didn’t take part, but my housemates and other close friends were excited. If they didn’t want to do it there probably would have been nothing in the show,” she laughed.
“My boyfriend Aaron got a bit of flak. A lot of people didn’t like him because I asked him where he saw our relationship in a year’s time and he said ‘I don’t know’, which I got annoyed with at the time. What the TV show didn’t air was that he immediately asked me the same question and also said I don’t know,” she said.
Alanna said that despite being on our TV screens twice a week for two months she’s hardly in Kim Kardashian fame territory.
“I got a few twitter followers and a few people mentioned it to me in town, but that’s it.”
So what of the future?
“I suffer from back pain so work isn’t easy right now. I like the whole blogging thing and making YouTube videos so we’ll see what happens,” she said.
