-You moved for this show. -Yeah.
-And so it's been five years. Now you fully live in the U.K.
-Yeah. I mean, I thought -- we literally, like, put our stuff
in storage and I told my wife,
"We'll probably be there six months.
They're gonna cancel it immediately."
And then they didn't and now we have been there --
we've had children there.
I mean, we're totally plugged in. Yeah.
-And that's it.
Do you miss it when you come back for something like this?
Do you see things that you miss?
-Uh, no. [ Laughter ]
No, of course, I do. Absolutely.
I mean, sandwiches here are larger, which is important.
I miss the nature.
Like, there's wonderful nature in the U.K.
but it's more rolling hills. It's a gentler nature.
We lived in California where you can get eaten by an earthquake
and killed by a tidal wave.
And I, like -- nature should be able to kill you like that.
That's what I'm used to. [ Laughter ]
And so it's a little softer there,
which sometimes I have difficulty with.
-You've never been to Hampstead Heath, then.
All happening there. In the bushes.
-You grew up in Ireland. -Yes.
-On a turkey farm or adjacent to a turkey farm?
-No, it was -- it wasn't on top of the turkey farm.
-You were plucking. You were plucking.
-Did you pluck? -Yes, yeah, I plucked.
-Wow.
-That's how I got my money for records and sweets.
-Gotcha.
And was it during the plucking that you thought,
"I'm gonna be a writer"?
-It's such a natural route
from poultry farming into comedy writing.
No, I mean, I think it gave me --
Yeah, it definitely affected my personality that I have.
All my brothers and sisters and I have PTSD from that.
-She'll just stare off into the distance
when we're writing sometimes and I'm like, "Is it the turkeys?"
[ Laughter ]
-But it's like, you know, Christmas --
if you farm turkeys for a living,
my dad -- there was five kids.
It was the only time he made money.
Like, we have no Disneyland in Ireland, so there was no --
I mean, we would have been selling legs
left, right and center. [ Laughter ]
-You just had to wait. -Just Christmas. Yeah.
-And were there other --
I mean, obviously you guys are both in marriages.
You both have kids.
So obviously that inspired a lot in the show.
And then were there other things that would happen
that would find their way into the show?
Like, did you -- Once you start going into
season two, three, and four of something like this,
are you just -- your antenna constantly up, hoping for things
to happen to you that you can put in the show?
-Yeah, I mean, one time I came in to write in the morning,
and I said, "Guess what happened to me last night.
I was jogging, and a guy came up to me on a bike
under cover of night and squirted liquid in my face."
And I was like, "Oh, my God!"
Like, I literally -- "It's acid!"
And I was like, "I'm probably starting to go blind."
I was like, "No, wait, oh, it's juice."
[ Laughter ]
And so I told Sharon that.
I was, like, "I was really scared."
And she just was laughing. And she was like --
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah. That's episode three.
-Do you -- I mean, obviously, 132 countries watch this show.
So, obviously, it's a universal topic that you're writing about,
but when you do press, like, is it different to talk about
the show in the U.K. than when you come here
and talk about it in the U.S.?
Do people ask you different questions
about it depending where you are?
-Well, they -- I think the U.S. and the U.K.
kind of view it slightly differently.
Like, an American audience seems to get a little bit more upset
with us when we're mean to each other.
Or if we end on a bad note, like the end of season one was.
We had this horrible fight. -Yeah.
-You called me an ingrate shrew. -Yeah.
-I called you, you know, an American prick.
I can't remember.
And then my water's broke, and then we just ended the show.
[ Laughter ] And, yeah.
-British people are like, "Yes, of course.
Naturally, yes, it's terrible. Yes."
-Terrible things happen. -Terrible things happened.
Whereas American people are like,
"Wait, that's -- no, we have to go back and do it again nice."
[ Laughter ]
But then after four seasons, Americans are like,
"Oh, yeah, I know what they're gonna do."
And they're more used to our misanthropic --
-I feel like at this point you certainly know
what you're signing up for
when you're watching an episode of "Catastrophe."
I'm assuming, as you should be, you're very proud of the show.
Are there scripts earlier in your life?
Are there things you've written that you were less proud of?
I feel like that's very rewarding
for young writers to hear,
that you just don't start at this place.
-Well, for the young writers, yes. Many, many.
I mean, many failed pilots, like Rob.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, I've got them, too.
One time I thought, "You know what?
I really like 'The Wizard of Oz.'
What if I rewrote it?"
And I readapted about half of the book by L. Frank Baum
and then brought it to a production company,
and they were like, "You've got to be --
it's the most beloved -- they did it better than you could.
Go. Get out of here."
So my subpar adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz"
likely won't be seen. -Never got produced.
-Believe it or not.
-One of the first scripts I ever wrote
was about the Irish famine.
-Oh, wow. -Yeah.
-So, me and my writing partner at the time thought
a period of mass starvation in Ireland in 1845
would be ripe for laughs.
-You wrote it as a comedy? -Wrote it as a comedy.
-Oh, wow. -We called it "The Good Blight."
[ Laughter ]
After "The Good Life."
And I think it was, like, a small --
it was an Irish family on a small holding.
And a fun sort of British landlord.
And I'm so glad I can't remember any of the plots
because I would, you know, take myself out.
-Well, sometimes those failures, you learn lessons.
-You need to build -- The palace of success
can only be reached with a pile of failures.
-Yes.
Well, this success is really one that means so much to me
and to so many other people.
Thank you guys so much for being here and congrats on the show.