Kari Skogland and the producers of her latest film, Fifty Dead Men Walking, have distanced themselves from the pro-IRA sympathies of co-star Rose McGowan.

McGowan, an American actress whose father is Irish, caused a media firestorm at the recent Toronto International Film Festival when she told the press she would have joined up with the IRA had she lived in Belfast during the 1980s at the height of its civil conflict.

The film’s producers — Future Films, HandMade International and Vancouver’s Brightlight Pictures — in a statement issued Thursday, said they regretted any distress caused ‘to the people of Northern Ireland and particularly those who were victims of or caught up in the shocking events that existed during the conflict.’

Martin McGartland, the former British spy whose life story inspired the Canada/U.K. coproduction, said the unusual move by Skogand and her producers to back away from the remarks is too little, too late.

‘Skogland should never have allowed actors to drink, socialize and hang around the homes of IRA terrorists,’ he told Playback Daily after McGowan told a TIFF press conference that she frequented the Felon’s Club on the Falls Road in Belfast, a popular haunt for former IRA volunteers.

In Fifty Dead Men Walking, McGowan plays a high-ranking IRA operative alongside fellow cast members Jim Sturgess, Kevin Zegers and Ben Kingsley.

The film’s producers went on to say McGowan’s views were entirely her own and ‘are not shared nor endorsed by anybody associated with the production or creative elements of the film.’

In the statement, Skogland added: ‘Our goal was to present an even, non-judgmental point of view so the audience could follow the path of an informer with empathy no matter what the politics.’

But following the festival, evidence has come forward that appears to contradict claims of impartiality on the movie’s Belfast set and on screen.

In a SunTV broadcast now making the rounds online, McGowan told a reporter on the red carpet at Roy Thomson Hall that the film clothed some IRA members in big sweaters to humanize them, even as they used violence for political ends.

‘The thing with how the Irish and the IRA are portrayed in films — and this is something my friends in the IRA told me — is they always have to wear leather coats and look tough,’ she told the TV reporter.

But in Fifty Dead Men Walking, ‘they’re just these guys in dorky sweaters from the 1980s and me in Lycra, and they just happened to do what they did. [Skogland] was really authentic — that was her number one goal,’ McGowan added.

McGartland criticized Skogland for allowing former IRA volunteers to offer security to her Belfast film set, and creative input to the actors.

‘She should have had broader views and she should certainly not have been negotiating with the IRA to be able to film in certain areas of Belfast. And she should never have allowed former IRA terrorists to be on set while filming,’ he charged.

The former IRA infiltrator also criticized the Canadian government for helping fund a film that was made with the help, and support, of an avowed terrorist organization.