-Our next guest is a talented actress, comedienne and writer
you know her from her work on "Catastrophe"
and "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent."
The season finale of her show "Bad Sisters" is streaming
this Friday, October 14th, on Apple TV+.
Let's take a look.
-We can't just kill our brother-in-law.
Bibi, do I wish he was dead?
Yeah. He is a piece of [bleep].
But that is not how -- you know, that's not how life --
society works. Okay?
You can't just explode a man.
-Please welcome back to the show
our friend Sharon Horgan, everybody.
♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
I am so happy to have you here in person.
-I'm so happy to be here. I just met Pierce Brosnan.
-Was it exciting for you? [ Cheers and applause ]
-Oh, my God, yeah.
Well, it was annoying at first 'cause he looks younger than me.
-Yeah. -But he's from Drogheda.
He's from the same place in Ireland as me.
-That's a really -- That must be a big deal, right?
-It is a big deal. I mean, it's a bit of a one-horse town.
It's mainly famous for -- well, it's got -- in its main church
in the city, it has the head of a Saint, Oliver Plunkett,
who was hung, drawn, and quartered.
And you used to get taken to see this head
when you were a youngster on a little school trip.
-Is it in a glass case? -Of course. Yeah.
-Don't "of course." We don't have our --
[ Laughter ]
We don't leave our heads out here.
-Well, we just love a bit of gore, I guess.
But yeah, it was lovely to meet him.
He was like, "What the hell?" But I was like, "I'm coming in."
-Is it hard? Because obviously,
you've been incredibly successful.
Is it hard that in your hometown, they're like,
"Well, you're not quite Pierce Brosnan, are you?"
[ Laughter ]
-In my own family, you know, I'm number two.
[ Laughter ] My brother is an international,
or was an international rugby-playing superstar.
-Oh, really? You're not even the number-one Horgan?
-I mean, I'm not even number two, if I'm honest.
[ Laughter ]
My other brother is doing really well for himself.
-Do you think you could help us book one of them?
[ Laughter ]
-I would love that. You'd really like them.
-So, this is -- actually, since we're talking about your family,
this is a show about
five sisters who are incredibly close.
I think the clip gives away to some degree they're trying
to figure out what to do about one of their brother-in-laws.
But you know, it's about a family that's very close.
Does your family watch it? How do your siblings feel about it?
-They love it, actually. They hadn't seen any of it.
So they're kind of watching it as it goes out.
So, I'm from a family of five. So, I mean, that's part of
the reason why it was so much fun to write,
just to put that, you know, that joyous thing of just
being an instant tribe when you have a big family.
But yeah, they love it. They're really supportive.
-This was a Belgian show that you adapted.
How did you first become aware of it?
-Well, I've been looking for a Belgian show
to adapt for a long time. [ Laughter ]
Finally.
-Every day, you call your agent, you're like, "Anything?"
-Anything Flemish.
So, two American writers, Brett Baer and Dave Finkel,
they had got the rights for it.
And I was looking for something post-catastrophe,
sort of, you know, was tinkering around with a few ideas.
And the lady who's head of Apple in the U.K., Jay Hunt,
she said, "I think I've got something for you."
And I watched one episode and I was in.
I mean, it's such a crazy premise.
These sisters, one of them is married to a really odious,
terrible, racist, sexist misogynist, and also a prick,
you know. Just a really awful man.
-You listed the first one,
but also, putting his good qualities aside.
[ Laughter ] -He's just a real prick.
-Yeah, he's a real prick. Was it hard to write?
It's one of the more haunting pricks I've seen on television.
-Yeah. Well, thank you. -Yeah, you're welcome.
-A lot of that is down to Claes Bang.
-He's really spectacular. -I love him.
He was our casting lady's idea.
And he's Danish, really good at playing pricks.
[ Laughter ] Actor. And yeah.
But it was hard to write just because we had to --
there's an abusive domestic relationship at the heart of it.
And you want to -- that's a lot of responsibility, you know,
to tell a story like that and to make it truthful and show
the, you know, brutality of it.
But at the same time, it's a comedy/drama.
And he's a clown and a fool.
And so it was hard but fun and a lot of responsibility.
But you know. I think we got it in the end.
-Obviously, you're an actor and you're a writer on it.
You're also an E.P., and sometimes when E.P.s
have to make the kind of decisions that other people
might not understand, the sort of day-to-day choices you make,
including -- Well, you explain the photo real quick.
And then we'll let you read the caption.
What's going on there?
-Okay. So, that --
that's actually from the first day of filming.
And it's the opening scene of a show.
And that's Claes Bang there in the coffin.
-He'll be really happy this is the picture we're using.
-He will 'cause he looks great in flannel.
So, when you -- the opening scene of a show, you have to --
you know, you're trying to bring an audience in.
And you want them to feel confident
that they've chosen the right show.
So of course, I thought, give a corpse a boner.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-And then people will feel like, "Okay, they've got this."
[ Laughter ]
They know what they're doing.
-And you wrote out a lot of the, you know,
the sort of decisions you were making.
Too small and you can't see it.
Too large and it just upstages the corpse.
-Yeah, also an issue --
slope needed to balance the wedding photo.
[ Laughter ]
It needed a sort of gradient. -Yeah.
-Because his widow panics when she sees that he has,
technical term, postmortem priapism.
-Yeah. -And so she has to cover it.
And she tries the flowers first and then she uses their wedding
photo, and then it just keeps sort of just sliding off.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-Just -- It was -- -I will say, I was watching,
and I go, "That's a really believable dead boner.
I'm going to stick with this show."
-Thank you so much. [ Laughter ]
-We've talked about your daughters in the past.
The last time we Zoom interviewed, you were saying
how hard they are on you and how honest they are with criticisms.
I believe one of them told you
your eyes are too close together.
-Oh, yeah. I mean, they are clearly.
[ Laughter ]
That was only when she was really angry at me.
-Okay, gotcha. -And I was shouting at her.
And probably my eyes did look too close together.
-Well, I will say when you yell, they do get a little --
[ Laughter ] -They do narrow in.
No, they're great.
I've got an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old.
The 18-year-old is, you know, I kind of rely on her a lot
to tell me what she thinks of the shows
I'm working on at the time because I feel like you need
someone what can really sort of break your creative confidence
at the beginning. [ Laughter ]
When I show her stuff, I show her really early in the edit
'cause her response is always,
"It's not going to stay like that, is it?"
[ Laughter ] And then you're like, "No, no.
Why? What's wrong with it?"
And then, my 14-year-old is too much of a legend
to watch anything. -Oh, yeah.
-If I ask her why she hasn't watched it she goes,
"Well, you know, I haven't got the log-in number for Apple TV"
or something like that. There's always like --
-She used that excuse? -Yeah.
-It's never just, "I don't want to watch it"?
-Yeah. And then it's my fault 'cause they are convinced
that I don't know how to work the house.
[ Laughter ] Since I became a single parent,
they just think I don't know how to make the house work.
-So basically, you can write, produce and star in
an Apple show but you can't log into Apple on the TV.
-Yeah, yeah. [ Laughter ]
I mean, that is true. [ Laughter ]
But then I'll just send them a little review
that I got from something. -That's nice.
-And it makes no difference.
-Isn't it really funny how needy we get with our kids?
-Oh, my God. I honest to God sent them one
like 10 minutes before I came on.
I sent this review, and I just sent it with a little
sort of "uh" emoji, and they're like, "Good one, Mum."
[ Laughter ] That's it.
-Well, it is a good one.
It is always lovely to see you.
Thanks so much for being here.
You guys, that's Sharon Horgan.
The season finale of "Bad Sisters" is streaming
this Friday on Apple TV+.
We'll be right back with music
from Craig Finn and the Uptown Controllers.