Fans can’t wait to check out the upcoming Boyzone docuseries: No Matter What, but there’s some nerves when it comes to its release from some of its members, especially Ronan Keating.
Ronan revealed to EVOKE that he had more fear after watching it than stress making it and when he asked wife Storm if he comes across badly in it, she surprisingly agreed with him!
He explained: ‘It had to be [as raw and open]. We had to tell the truth otherwise… what’s the point? You know, it’s just sugar coated and interviews… that’s all. We had to dig deep.
‘It was a very emotional time, hours and hours and hours of sitting in front of the camera, being grilled and questions being asked that we’d never been asked before, answers being given that we’d never given before, and a lot of home truths where we had to dissect our own thoughts and think about, “Well, maybe we got it wrong. Maybe we approached that wrong.”
‘There’s times where I watched it and I come out of it and go, “Why did I do this documentary?” When people talk about how ambitious I was, and, ruthless, and I think I wasn’t ambitious and ruthless, but then I look back and go, “Maybe I was.”
‘Honest to God. You have no idea the amount of times I went up, I’d finished the three episodes, and I went, “I don’t want this to go out. I don’t want this to be seen.” I was scared, genuinely scared.
‘And my wife [Storm], she’s like, “Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty heavy”, you know, she’s even agreeing with me! So I’m thinking, “I’m not wrong. What am I doing?” But it has to [go out], you have to tell the truth and… oh what’s that phrase? “You gotta go there to come back”.
‘I’m not proud of some of the decisions I made, but I think, I guess I can stand back now and, like you say, hold my hands up and go, “Yeah, I got it wrong”.
‘But, I’ve still got three great friends. I still call them my friends. I can still call them at any moment. So, yeah, we’re doing okay. We’re doing all right.’
While he might be nervous for fans to see the series, he still wanted to make sure it was as authentic as possible, and gives a little teaser as to what people can expect from the documentary.
‘It was a lot, it was very emotional, very tough… but I wanted the truth to be told. I wanted a film that was honest,’ he explained. ‘People don’t make these sort of documentaries about a band like Boyzone, so it’s pretty intense.
‘I think it’s a hard watch at times, you know, the ups and the downs, the losses, the fallouts in the band that people didn’t know about. It’s heartbreaking because, when you put a band on a pedestal and you look up to them, you want them to be perfect.
‘You want them all to be getting all along, and you know, they talk about the brotherhood and the friendships, and you want it to be like that, but the harsh reality is, it’s never like that.
‘And, you know, we just told the truth. I love these boys to the moon and back where, you know, we’re forever brothers. And there’s times where we we just, we rub each other up the wrong way.’
Someone that Ronan is definitely not in contact though is Louis Walsh, who is unashamed in how he managed the group, especially when it comes to the moment Stephen Gately was outed in the press.
There’s a moment in the series when they’re shown the cover of the newspaper on the day Stephen was outed as gay, and while Ronan had a clear emotional reaction to it, Louis seemed delighted, noting how it was great that ‘he got the front page’.
When Ronan was asked by Extra.ie how he felt seeing that back, he said: ‘I have watched this documentary, many, many times, and it’s phenomenal… It’s phenomenal how honest people come across when the camera’s on and there’s no one else in the room, and they just tell the truth.
‘This is why we made this [docuseries]. This is why we, and everyone else, needs to see and know our truth. There’s nothing like it out there. It’s very harsh, it’s very difficult watch.’
It wasn’t just Ronan who was feeling the pressure of making the documentary, with Keith Duffy adding that he felt stressed making it as it was so intense.
Speaking to Geek Ireland, Keith shared: ‘Yeah, it was quite intense, and we tried to give as honest an answer or as our perception as you can and it was stressful.
‘The days that we did the interviews, it was an eight-hour interview. You’re sitting there and you’re trying to be honest, but at the same time, you’re aware that it’s entertainment, as a documentary.
‘But until we actually saw it, I was a bit stressed as to “I hope this comes across Okay”. It was intense, but having watched it now, there’s parts of it that is cringe for me, but it’s honest so, you have to give the light with the dark.
‘Nothing is perfect in life and this documentary gives it a full rounded account of how we feel and how we think about it.’
Shane added: ‘I learned a lot about the boys watching them speak about themselves and their journey in the whole thing. You know, we are like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, biblical prophecies that were all in the same time period, but it’s told differently because of each individual walks their own steps.
‘And you know, I loved listening to the boys and learn… I never knew Duffy felt like that. I never knew Ro was there. I never knew… and although we were always together, there’s so much I still never knew about the boys. So it’s a pleasure to learn more.’