225 | Actor/Showrunner Sharon Horgan (Bad Sisters/Catastrophe) On Revealing Character

Despite the BAFTA wins, Peabody Awards, and IFTA nominations, Sharon Horgan didn't really begin her writing career until her mid-30s, but her previous professional experiences have given her valuable ammo to write interesting, nuanced characters. Today we discuss how she reveals that nuance as she writes. Season two of Bad Sisters is available on Apple TV+ now.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life, I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna, and today we're excited to welcome multi BAFTA winning actor, writer, director, and producer Sharon Horgan. She is the executive producer, co writer, and star of Bad Sisters, which is on Apple TV. It has received four BAFTA \ , four Primetime Emmy nominations, four IFTA awards, and the Peabody Award for Entertainment, among many other accolades. And Season 2 just premiered on Apple TV.

Meg: Bad Sisters is just one of seven shows on which Sharon has creator credit. Outside of her impressive career in TV, Sharon has starred in a long list of features, from indie gems like Dating Amber to big studio hits like Game Night and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Meg: Her work is celebrated for its honest, authentic, and often hilarious depictions of women across many life experiences. Hi, Sharon. Hi. Good early evening. All right. We can't wait to chat with Sharon about her incredible career. But before we do, we're going to be talking about our weeks or what we like to call adventures in screenwriting. All right, Lorien, you start us off.

Lorien: My week this week was about managing the unexpected and trying to not let everything emotionally dysregulate me because things were big. And so it felt Oh my God, crisis, I'm going to die. Everything's going to explode and the world's going to end. And then I realized, but that doesn't mean I don't have to still be present and manage whatever that crisis is.

Lorien: So I've been very in that and trying to still get my work done because I have a deadline in six days. Not that I'm counting. I have a script due and I am not done with it yet. So I've had to figure out, again, I always find myself in this situation. It's very close to a very important deadline. My life falls into a pile of crap.

Lorien: So I'm trying to figure out how to like, Let that be and fix what I can or not fix what I can. What's a better way to describe that? Exist? Manage? Manage? Manage it so that I can still feel okay about coming downstairs to my office and writing. And then figuring out how to turn off all that.

Lorien: chaos to be able to focus on the chaos of my script. It is fueling me in the way because my characters are a little bit angry right now where I'm writing and at two. So it's helping, but at the same time it's been disruptive more so than usual. So I'm working on not totally falling apart this week. I think I'm doing okay. I'm here. I made it. I exist. I've survived. So objectively my week was great because I survived. Sharon, what's your week?

Sharon Horgan: My week? I get the emotional, what'd you call it? Deregulation?

Lorien: Oh, dysregulation? I'm totally dysregulated.

Sharon Horgan: Let's go with that. We're writers. We can make up our own words if we want. Yeah it's mad. It's fam, family life and work life. And then the sort of, even the sort of business side of being a writer, which can often get in the way of the actual writing. Yeah, it's been one of those weeks, but what have I been doing? I've been Yeah, in the, in post on a new show.

Sharon Horgan: And so that's fun, the edit bit where you get to make something better or completely change as much as possible. Just working on a new idea with a writer I've admired for a long time. That's exciting. I feel like this week has been getting excited about other people's writing more than my own. My own has just been a bit businessy, I have to say. And I know what you mean about using what's going on in your life for your scripts. I always find that Very helpful, to get it all out there on, on the page,

Lorien: Yes, touching it, but not letting it set me on fire so that I can use whatever it is. Use it in the script, but not literally. That's, I think that's the trick and finding that magic river that Meg talks about, the river.

Sharon Horgan: That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's how it's using the germ and deciding how much of your actual life you're gonna use without. Throwing anyone under the bus, I find.

Lorien: Although the bus left a long time ago and it's been running people over for a while, so I feel like we're out of that, we're, I've moved out of that fear.

Meg: My week is super easy because I'm just tired. That's how it is. I don't know. I'm really looking forward to the holiday here in America because I could use the time off. And I'm still feeling a little grumpy because I haven't been able to write. I'm so busy doing other things around writing. There's the awards run right now.

Meg: And you're, which is all fun, don't get me wrong, but you don't write for a while. And then I get a little grumpy and I'm like, why am I feeling so uncomfortable? And Oh, it's because I haven't written in Months because I'm so busy doing other things. Yeah business of it Yes, so my dreamer self is a bit annoyed with me.

Meg: I think well and by the way, I'm terrible at resting. I'm just terrible at it. I might you know I'm gonna take a nap and then I lay there and think about a million things so I don't have to get better at It I have to get better at it.

Lorien: So Sharon, welcome to the show. She's grumpy and tired and I am a total emotional disaster. So I hope you feel really secure and special .

Sharon Horgan: So at home, I cannot tell you being with two women who are emotionally all over the place, tired and not afraid to say it. That's wonderful.

Meg: Hey everyone, we wanted to let you know about a special holiday deal for TSL workshops, our membership community. From now until January 1st, we're offering a 5 day free trial plus 50 percent off your first 3 months of TSL workshops using the code HOLIDAY24, H O L I D A Y 24. If you didn't know,

Lorien: TSL Workshops is a community that offers twice a month live workshops with us.

Lorien: In addition to a series of premium workshops with some of our favorite industry experts like story consultant, Pat Verducci and producer, Sheila Hanahan Taylor. We want to meet you. So come on over by clicking the link in the description below and using the discount code holiday 24. We'll see you soon. Happy holidays.

Meg: And we should say, I'm just a little bit starstruck because I'm such a huge fan of yours, and both as an actress and a writer. I'm just so thrilled to be able to talk to you about your work and dig into your brain. And I don't know, it just came into my mind, we're talking about how to touch on the personal things and yet not let it set us on fire. What was for you the personal end to Bad Sisters, which I'm just a rabid fan of this show. What, This idea comes what for you makes it yours,

Sharon Horgan: I think it started out as being very much not mine because it was a Belgian series that we adapted Bad Sisters from a Belgian series called Clan but my way in was really clear, which is, I come from a large, Irish family who would kill for each other. And I think, having not written Thriller Previous to this and really not having written even an hour long. It all felt slightly out of my comfort zone, but I I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm more attracted to that as I get older. Like you, you cut your own groove for so long and then you're like let's try something new.

Sharon Horgan: So I, it was knowing that I could access that feeling of being in a large family that, that, that felt like what I could take for my own life. That would be helpful. But outside of that, it was a bit of a jump into the unknown, which I relished.

Lorien: With the, what I really loved about the show, I just have one sister. But what I loved watching the sisters in the show is their comfort and discomfort with each other existed to stay the same, just always out there in some way. And there's still secrets and, all the things, but that exists in that really sisterly way that they're in, even in the writing and the directing that there is You manage having so many characters on screen at the same time, having so many different conversations and levels of conversation, it was really inspiring because that's hard, I'm great with two characters on screen, bring another person in sometimes I'm like what's going on now? Now I have to manage all three of them. And then wait, another person comes on. So I was really inspired to watch the mechanics of that.

Sharon Horgan: And especially I think from a directing point of view they're always the hardest scenes to direct, to manage the time that you have in the day to get your coverage even, but I think, to get the sort of secret language that exists. In the smaller groups, in a large family, a lot of the time you operate like with my family is like a five headed beast, but then there's all these sort of smaller relationships within that, like my elder sister, my youngest brother, it's very maternal, then my two brothers have their own sort of, bromance thing.

Sharon Horgan: And then, the middle child just trying to find her place. And so writing all that, like I knew the sort of mechanics of that having lived it, but finding, not just a very clear voice for each of the sisters, but sometimes a reason to exist in a scene that isn't about them.

Sharon Horgan: And, the way we approached the season which felt like practical, but also quite an attractive way to do it was to really just focus on one sister's story as the main story per episode and have that point of view be quite explicit. And then, Deciding what sort of secondary story is gonna take place around that.

Sharon Horgan: So there's always a reason for someone to be in the scene and it's not just as a line feeder, but I feel like that's something that happens in the rewriting a lot, do you know what I mean? You start out with your sort of very clear trajectory for the scene and then as you rewrite you, you realize, no, this character really needs to set up what's going to be happening in three scenes time.

Sharon Horgan: And this relationship needs to start finding its foundations here. And, but what I feel can be a little frustrating in something that is thriller driven is. Often you find that lots of gorgeous character stuff kind of gets jettisoned along the way because you're being slapped into Getting that trailer you know firing on all cylinders as soon as possible straight out the gate, and I resist that as much as I can but then I always feel like I I'm quite, a bit, in the eye of the storm or a bit little, a little too close to it all to really be as objective as I need to be.

Sharon Horgan: So by, by the time we come to the script that gets to the filming stage it's honed, and it's tight. And then by the time we get to the bit that everyone else sees, it's. It's a real slim Jim. So

Lorien: You talked about how comfortable you are in the half hour space, right? Catastrophe is one of my favorite shows. And a half hour, right? It's so hard now to watch TV. Cause I'm like, is this a half hour? It's 22 minutes. It's 46 minutes. What's happening now?

Sharon Horgan: Yeah. No, definitely half hour comedy.

Lorien: And then moving toward the hour space and the thriller space. Did you consider doing it as a half hour? Cause you talked about what a challenge it was moving over, cause I'm in that space right now where I'm so comfortable in the half hour space and I have a show that I'm working on that I'm refusing to go into hour space and I'm wondering why, so maybe you can help me, it needs to be an hour because it's a murder mystery, but I'm resisting it.

Lorien: No, I never thought for a second that it would be a half hour. There was so much story and so many characters and, especially the first season, there were two timelines and it never felt like half hour. I think certainly Rob and I on Catastrophe would write sometimes like 45, 50 page scripts because we would get so caught up in their dialogue, and be having so much fun.

Lorien: And so I'm used to writing long but It's more than that. It's like it's the pace, isn't it? I find it's the pace and how much an audience will remember in minute one that is discussed in minute 52, or, I feel like it's the same with feature scripts.

Lorien: I think that's the hardest bit is this sort of parsing out of story and getting used to just telling it in a different way. And I think with half hour with comedy there's all of the kind of trickiness that comes with writing a story that, that, that has, a plot, acts and a payoff and all that but then you need to have X amount of laughs every page.

Lorien: There's definitely laughs in Bad Sisters and I go after them sometimes, but it's different. It's a different sort of,, I find half what I'm saying is I find half hour just as challenging because of the, how the jokes have to land.

Meg: Now, I love that, changing genres. And on one, you have jokes that might be bumping into the story or the story bumping into the jokes. And then now in this, the murder mystery, not the mystery, but the murder, catch a killer or kill, kill someone, what do we call it? What is the genre? You created your own genre, actually. It's like How done it?

Meg: I don't know how to do it. Let's do it. Let's call it a let's do it. What I love is that you also have to help you with this horrible man who you have to align us as the audience to think. Yeah, kill him. Let, please, can we kill him so that we can align with the sisters? Can you talk about that in terms of, he still has to be a human being, he still has to be a character, and yet he gets to be awful.

Meg: Can you just talk about writing him as a character, especially then as that aligns to all the work you're doing to set up that 'get him' genre?

Sharon Horgan: Yeah, you're absolutely right. He has to be awful. But he can't be a cartoon villain or who cares, I think one of the trickiest things was that he was a father. You're killing the father of a child and you're asking an audience to, to get behind that, we wanted him to be certainly complex, there were moments where we even wanted an audience to feel for him he's someone who just couldn't bear not being able to control his, his home life.

Sharon Horgan: His wife and eventually his daughter as well. And, he's an outsider looking in, which is another thing that people can relate to, he's a he just couldn't find his way into this family and he has a terrible personality to boot. And but, definitely a tricky childhood. We didn't want to dwell on it too much, but we wanted to certainly give an audience. An idea of why he was who he was. On top of that, we had to just love these sisters and we had to make sure that An audience felt like for them, there was no other option, that that their sister was, they were not only going to lose her but worse.

Sharon Horgan: And then I think along the way, over the course of the season, we had to give an audience more and more things to hate. Finding out. What each of the sisters went through at his hands in the past and then what they are going through currently, the idea of having Becca not even hating him at the start, but her, but, watching him in real time just cruelly choose to mess with her. If we felt we kept giving the audience things to, to hate, they would stay on that journey. Absolutely.

Meg: And it worked. It worked.

Lorien: There was a moment in the pilot of the finale of season one where Grace confesses and tells the story of what really happened. And after it, they're all sitting there and Eva leans over and apologizes for what happened. No one acknowledges that she murdered her husband. It's about the potential to break the bond that is the center of the story. And that gutted me that it wasn't about, it was about repairing the sisterhood rather than I can't believe you did that. And great job. There was just it wasn't about that.

Lorien: So in a way we hate him and we need him to die, but it was never really about him. Really? it's about these sisters and that something was tearing them apart. So I thought the way that moment was handled was really beautiful and subtle. So thank you for that in terms of your writing.

Sharon Horgan: It was actually a big decision to put it there in that scene to have either to have the audience find out about the rape as well.

Sharon Horgan: We were worried that it would be, that it would split the story too much and, but in actual fact, you're right. It really brought it together and it made it about all the secrets and everything that sort of was potentially tearing apart. All of it is then just on the table and there's so much Relief there as well as the pain and it's those moments of where they're going to be okay.

Sharon Horgan: This terrible thing is coming down, down, down the pike though. So you hope it's going to be okay. You still feel like it could all get blown up, but it's those tender moments that I think are important in a thriller of that kind.

Meg: You have all of the sisters each having their own arcs, you have episode arcs, you have the season arc, and then you have actually the relationships all arcing and shifting. Did you, what was your process as a writer to track all that? Did you break it, how did you break the series, or what's your process in terms of, that just, to me it's just like a miracle.

Meg: It's all pulled off, it's all emotional, it's all entertaining, and there's so many balls in the air. Just wondering about your process.

Sharon Horgan: I think we try and try and break as much as possible in, in the first room. We do two rooms and in the first room, it's just more kind of broader strokes where we work out what part of the story is going to be in which episode.

Sharon Horgan: And there's an enormous amount of balls in the air. In both seasons, a lot of a lot of characters, a lot of storyline that has to compliment the other. And a lot of story that impacts on decisions that characters make and a lot of stuff that sort of isn't there at all just comes at the next stage of writing.

Sharon Horgan: So it's like a more of a skeleton for the story foundations, and then we put it into some sort of, I generally to do a lot of the outlining myself, and when I say myself, I work really closely with like Faye Dorn, who's our head of scripted in the UK and, with various writers along the way.

Sharon Horgan: But, I feel like getting a sort of bird's eye view on it, seeing it myself and then putting together another room where then it's a lot more detailed. And that's when the really, that's when the fun stuff happens. That's when and also by the way, in between you're doing lots of recce ing and stuff and stuff along the way.

Sharon Horgan: I don't really want to give away too much with the second season but one of the houses that we recced they had a tortoise house at the front and they kept tortoises. And so I was like, just assuming that was what we'll get rid of that tortoise house.

Sharon Horgan: And then I was like, suddenly thinking no, how can we use it? And just wanting to think of visuals as well, like wanting to, like with the first season, we had great visuals because there were a lot of attempted murders and houses blowing up and, the 40 foot and all that kind of stuff.

Sharon Horgan: That becomes part of the tone of the show and caper is an important part of the show. So really, you're not just thinking about story. You're thinking about how we recreate the tone? What's the caper of this one? Lots of things happen at different stages.

Sharon Horgan: For me anyway, and then you go back and you plow it all in there. And then when the writer is I start by doing the first two and then, writers do the middle block and I usually do the last two and then it's a constant rewriting process. That was just something that I don't know about you, but realize was by far the most important bit, just to keep going never to be satisfied really. That seems like a horrible sort of purgatory, but never being satisfied is great because you keep pushing it.

Lorien: Totally. When you were writing season one, did you know you were going to have a season two?

Sharon Horgan: No.

Lorien: But you were still having to work on setting things up in case there is a season two, or you were just like, we're doing these many episodes.

Lorien: That's it. And then when you get season two, then what happens?

Sharon Horgan: I think the thing is even though the series had, very specific ending, like quite, quite a bow on the. We always wanted to leave things you always want the audience asking questions, right? Because otherwise then what?

Sharon Horgan: They just like something, just stop thinking about it. I like it, I loved the idea that the sisters didn't know that Roger was involved, whether they went on to have it, I love that there were still secrets, you think it's going to be okay, but you don't know. And also specifically, with a character like Grace.

Sharon Horgan: Who, who's been abused for so long and is such a vulnerable person and, had to keep secrets from her family for so long and carry that shame. That certainly wasn't me setting things up for season two, but God, that's really great stuff to have for season two.

Sharon Horgan: And so there were so many sorts of secrets there just in. naturally within the course of the story, the prick and his getting rid of his dad. And, I realized. That there was a lot there and I also did have quite a gem of an idea of what a second season could be as I was making, as we were filming season one.

Sharon Horgan: I didn't know that we would do it, but I remember specifically having an idea on set and just going around to the tent where everyone was keeping warm while I was freezing in a bathing suit.

Lorien: But you don't hold a grudge or anything. You don't hold a grudge. Everything's fine. You just sit there in your little tent, right, with little cozy feet warmers. It's fine. I'll just be out here in the cold.

Sharon Horgan: Yeah. Can I get you a tea? Yeah. Yeah. I remember just going, look, this is, This could work if it went again, this could work. There was a lot going on this season, it was a gorgeous thing. I loved making it. We got so lucky with our cast and crew and, the weather fucked us, but it always does if you're filming in Ireland, but, there was a huge amount to do.

Sharon Horgan: We had a couple of storylines when we were writing season two that didn't pan out the way we want, we had to go back a bit. And so it took maybe a month out of our writing schedule, which is a lot. And so I was still writing. Quite a lot of seven and eight as we were going, they were very specifically outlined and seven was pretty much finished, but eight needed a lot of work.

Sharon Horgan: So I was very, I, my, my dad died while we were filming and, emotionally I couldn't cope with anything. We stopped filming for a week, actually, because I was incapable. And there were so many balls to keep in the air. So yeah, I was just glad I was keeping the thing on the rails, at all.

Sharon Horgan: And certainly I knew what my final scene was in episode eight. And to me, That was my ending, that was, that's how I wanted it.

Meg: Which must help, at least, as you're keeping on the rails, what direction you're headed and what you're headed for. And, I'd love to talk to you, like, how was it?

Meg: You had so many hats to wear. Acting, and the writing, and the showrunner, and, how, even on set, are you the writer, or are you showing up as the actor, or are you showing up as a showrunner? How did you parse it? I

Sharon Horgan: You just have to, there's some hilarious pictures of me in full costume, sitting at a bar, i. e. a location, with my laptop, I'm, With someone showing me pictures of, what tomorrow's costume is gonna be. It's just it's, you just get used to it. It's, sometimes it stresses me out and sometimes I wanna have that thing that at the end of the day when people are making plans to go for a drink, and I know I've gotta go home and either watch a, an edit of, and the sort of early acts that's being put together or.

Sharon Horgan: Or I'm rewriting or just writing. It's tough. I think that's why we had to shut down for that week, Because if I was just doing the acting, I might have been able to keep together, but it was just, there's just too much. I, this isn't a complaint by the way. That's me.

Sharon Horgan: I put myself in that situation. I wanted to play Eva. Like I love collaborating really closely with the director and the costume designer and the costume designer. I feel like. It's my job to be all over it, but it's also my choice, it's tough, but I'm so used to it now, like I, it's just the only thing I wasn't used to was like the length it takes to film dramas, like Catastrophe, we would film in seven weeks, and Bad Sisters is, 10 months. And it's very different.

Jeff: Sure that the coverage was felt so different too, with big ensemble scenes versus

Sharon Horgan: Yes, yeah, really it's such a long, tiring process, you end up with something that you know is going to give people really meaty amounts of entertainment. Like I, I like that there's good chunky amounts of entertainment.

Lorien: Yeah. I want to, we want to talk about casting before that. I have. I hope it's a quick question. So you're doing everything, right? You're running the show and you're acting and all the things and you're working at night. How do you get and keep enough energy so that you don't collapse unexpectedly? Because I ran a show and I ran myself right into the ground because I was writing on set all day, and writing at home, and writing in my head, and making decisions, and so by the end of the shoot, I was I don't even know what happened, I had to, I couldn't even sleep, I was so tired, so I, the lesson for me was, how do I not Do that because I wanted it to be so excellent. Like it was never good enough. So I was hurting myself in a way. Yes. How do you avoid that since you're the expert at this?

Sharon Horgan: I said I was used to it. But what I wasn't used to was those long stretches of filming that you do on a drama. For 10 hours or so, I got full mouth ulcers, tongue ulcers. Like I was riddled.

Lorien: Pretty On camera. I bet.

Sharon Horgan: We had to cancel this sort of a love scene with Assad Bouad who played Gabriel in the first season. I was like, damn it. But yeah, it was, I was destroyed by them. And it was ridiculous. I was IV drips and all that malarkey. Next season I just got my fitness in order. Do you know what I mean? Like I was just going, I was running, I was just trying to

Lorien: Oh no. You're giving me an actual solution that I can put into practice?

Sharon Horgan: Yes I am! How dare you! I'm not saying No, I reject it. Listen to me, I'm not saying it wasn't still hard, but I have, I had energy like I'd store stores of energy, I got my hormones sorted out a lot of lines and I would just be careful not to, I just look after myself. Still, it's still not enough sleep, still tired. So I can't give you all the stations because I can't lie and say that I wasn't still

Lorien: Fine, exercise, get my hormones in order. Take care of my whatever. Yeah. Ugh. Ugh, this is the worst advice ever.

Sharon Horgan: I feel terrible. I feel terrible.

Lorien: Yikes. I took a shower this morning. I feel good. I feel ahead of the game. Okay?

Meg: I wanted to ask about casting because the actors, Both seasons are just stellar. I just love watching them work and find their characters and the subtlety, the secrets, and how they're playing multiple levels. And then with this season two, Fiona Shaw coming in, do you take an approach to casting or talk about Fiona Shaw? I just love the casting of this show.

Sharon Horgan: Yeah I love it too. I have always felt that, oh God, this is like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs or whatever. It's writing first and then it's casting, right? And everything else comes after that. And so even when my first show Pulling, which was my first sitcom, which I wrote with Dennis Kelly we'd never, written anything, before that was like, like a sitcom that would end up on TV and had no power or, previous, but we were like such pains in the arts about casting the smallest, tiny part.

Sharon Horgan: We had one guy who just had to be looking at Dogging or something like that online, like a pervert. He had two lines and we were like no. I wish I could remember the name of the actor. Because he's really famous. Now we've found this guy like, that's the guy we're waiting for.

Sharon Horgan: And I remember at the time, like casting being so angry with us. So it's just two lines. And we're like, no, he's not right. And we were bullshitting about it from the off and I've stayed like that all the way through. Nina Gold on, who's our casting director on Bad Sisters is just great.

Sharon Horgan: Just is so passionate about what she does and is like someone who always gets out there and watches the right shows and goes to all the theater shows and will always present you with someone sort of new and young and interesting. But with someone like Fiona Shaw, for example, she was someone who was in our heads, but we just didn't think of her.

Sharon Horgan: But then the great thing about having done the first season is there were people who were fans of the show and she was a genuine fan of the show. So it was with Fiona, it was like, up to us to fuck that up, by doing a bad job of explaining the show to her. So we just met her, me and Devla Wall.

Sharon Horgan: She's our series director and tried to charm her. And thankfully. We did at that point. I had not written very much. She had episode one to read, which I felt was a great introduction to the character, but certainly, it doesn't give you the full story.

Sharon Horgan: All I had apart from that was like my outlines and, It's hard to describe a show over a coffee to someone you're intimidated by. It's you, it's a real worry and I didn't do a great job if I'm honest. And we left that meeting going, Darryl was saying to me, I've never seen you nervous before.

Sharon Horgan: And I was like I've never seen you nervous before. I went home and I did an email to her and I hope explained it in a slightly more measured way. And. But also said, you've got, we'd love you to do it. Come on the ride with us and take a bit of a leap of faith.

Sharon Horgan: Cause I know what I'm doing. I just don't know exactly what I'm doing right now. And luckily she did, but with Owen who plays Ian and Barry Ward who plays Loftus and Thalia Graham, Who plays Houlihan. They were, Barry was, had been in the first season, but just like the small part, but I always knew he was great.

Sharon Horgan: And Thaddeus was Nina's idea completely. And in actual fact, we went quite a different way with the character because of Thaddeus and what she brought to it. Oh, and I'd worked with before, but it was Nina's idea to bring him in for Ian and but yeah it's, we're led by a great casting director, but we are very heavily casting driven. It's you know, we are, we push and we push until we get the right person. I forgot about Peter Clough, and he's another great new actor in the show. Yeah.

Meg: And that you're, as the actors are, Partaking and showing you things like you said that you rewrote a part, you started to move it towards, which is also so great that you can do as the writer on, though I guess that makes it harder on you, but it must be fun to, to allow that to happen.

Sharon Horgan: Yeah. It's so collaborative, Durvler and the whole team what, every, or everything people put into the show ends up making it different and better, there's new things that are found, when we're just blocking, when we're just rehearsing and even through costume, costume ends up.

Sharon Horgan: taking Houlihan's character in a completely different direction, it was like that we ended up writing that into what her costume ended up being, her clothes ended up being a bugbear for her superior. Like he wound him up so much because Camille, the costume designer had, taken it in a certain direction and which we loved, but we felt we had to address in some way.

Sharon Horgan: And then it just becomes part of the character's thing or it becomes something that her mother buys her clothes or, and it's glorious because it's just like beautiful texture that I completely welcome because it makes me look better. It's

Lorien: I loved in the pilot of season two Gracie is like just fully in red. Just like owning it like, Hints of red in season one were delicious, and like this red sweater when he's digging through the trash and everything, And yeah, yes. So you talked about at your first show and you're like, micromanaging, could I say micromanaging of casting is that what you And probably fair.

Lorien: Yeah. Passionate. And you learned, you could say passionate, detail oriented or detail oriented. Yes. I like that.

Sharon Horgan: Yeah.

Lorien: And then, learning and growing that maybe that, that, that doesn't need to happen. Right. What other kinds of crafty sort of things have you learned along the way in terms of how you're approaching a show or.

Lorien: Even how you're approaching a project when you have an idea. Like, when you first came up with the idea for that first show, what was that like versus coming up with a show now and how do you process it and execute it? A very small question I'm asking you.

Sharon Horgan: The difference is that I don't get I don't paralyze myself with everything having to be perfect.

Sharon Horgan: I feel like I've learned over the years that, that it's much better just To, to make a start, just to get going like I, I used to, when I started out, just be so nervous of writing something that was below par that I, it would just stop me from writing. And I think that's the same throughout, across, everything that it takes to make a show.

Sharon Horgan: I still feel like there's loads of stuff I haven't learned, that there's stuff that I'm still impatient with, that I want to be right way too soon that I don't trust the process as much as I should, considering I expect people to trust my process, so, yeah, I it's, the interesting thing is that you never stop.

Sharon Horgan: learning how to be better, not just at doing it, but at working with people. And, I feel like now I I, I like to have people on board as soon as physically possible, so that the things on the wall, so I can see locations and that I can, get very involved in, The very early days of recce ing, because I do find that, when you're recce ing somewhere like Ireland, where it just it washes over you, that the place itself, it all ends up informing story in somewhere or another.

Sharon Horgan: And so I feel like it's much more holistic now, like that, the whole thing, right. I used to be much more about me and the laptop and a room and I'm trying to get it perfect. And now I'm, it's, it feels I'm much more open to, to a sort of a more of a piecemeal approach.

Lorien: Scary though, still every time.

Sharon Horgan: It's always absolutely terrifying. It's terrifying starting anything. It's terrifying midway through and it gets scary at the end. Yeah it's an exciting job, isn't it? There's no two ways about it. It's exciting.

Lorien: Exciting is such a good word because it can mean so many things. Depending on your tone of voice. I,

Sharon Horgan: , it's terrifying as well. Sometimes I feel like all I do is complain and then, and so I feel like I also have to make time to talk about how great it is, because we all I remember Rob and I, we never just stopped for a minute to appreciate each other.

Sharon Horgan: Yeah. what we had, we were just always like moving on to the next thing, we never ever got a chance to just celebrate that we did good, and I think we all need to do that a bit more, but it's horrible because someone's always throwing a deadline at you or telling you to, get something done. And then there's the whole, like we were saying at the start, like the business of it, like, how can you stop and enjoy what you've done when someone's just, pushing you constantly to, yeah. So we should try and appreciate it more.

Lorien: Okay. So what is recceing? Is that like location scouting?

Sharon Horgan: Oh yeah. Yeah. Going out and looking for your Reconnaissance. Yeah.

Lorien: Oh, I like that so much more than location scouting.

Sharon Horgan: Yeah.

Meg: It's cooler.

Lorien: Recon. it. We're gonna go do some recon. I love it.

Meg: We always ask, we're starting to ask our guests the same two craft questions because we just want to hear how different people approach things. So we'd love to ask you about character introductions and how you as a writer approach character introductions.

Sharon Horgan: You mean when I'm introducing them to the person who's going to be paying to make my show or when I introduce them to the audience? On the page.

Lorien: You mean your coffee, your wonderful coffee meetings?

Meg: No, on the page. On the page. No, on the page. So you've got to introduce Fiona Shaw's character or you have to introduce a character to the audience. Here she is. Do you approach that in any particular way or thought?

Sharon Horgan: I, yeah, I do. I always feel that stuff gets scaled back a lot. I, I love to get fairly descriptive, like something about how they look, something about their character, and then sometimes something funny, I feel like I like to, in, in my stage directions as I like to introduce something that's, a physical thing that they do that might tell you who they are, how they walk, something like that.

Sharon Horgan: Luckily with with our bad sisters characters, we got to introduce some of them in a different way, which is to, call them the prick or the wagon, so in a way you get to tell an audience just that little bit more you tell them how important they are by giving a stage direction that their name will appear on screen or a lot of that happens in posts, but like some of it is not some of it is like a choice, although I was talking to a writer today and he said a really interesting thing.

Sharon Horgan: He is Roddy Doyle. He said, I don't like to give character, bio is character description because if someone asked me to write a character description myself, I wouldn't know where to start. I was like, Oh, that's so brilliant. And so insightful because I feel exactly the same.

Sharon Horgan: How would I describe myself? I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know what to put down, in two lines or three words or whatever. I think. The best possible thing you can do is to immediately find their character in a gorgeous piece of dialogue that tells you who they are, that way. Yeah, I love that. I'm the same character descriptions.

Meg: I'm just like, but look what they're doing. Look what they're saying. This is who they are. Yeah.

Lorien: It's too hard for me. So I was just like, work around. They do something. They say something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Too hard.

Meg: The other question we have is what do you do when you get stuck?

Sharon Horgan: I work on another project. I open up another folder. I so relate. Get into that. I also. I'm a very eager sort of early shower of my work. I've always been like that. I like to be told I'm on the right path. And I sometimes like a little pat on the back, so if I get stuck, I talk to someone, I call up my producer or I, some of my execs at Apple sometimes even, another writer, I feel like it's always just great to to talk it out, and be prepared to to give that service back, to whoever you got the help from, Lovely.

Lorien: All right, so at the end of every interview, because I guess that's where we are now, because we could talk to you forever, but we asked the same three questions of our guests. And the first one is, what brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing?

Lorien: And for show running, acting, whichever one you, but you know.

Sharon Horgan: I think a good ending that moves me, I love a good ending. I feel like you can get away with a lot if you've got, if you've got a good ending. So if I feel like, we're all guilty of being moved by our writing at times and it's almost embarrassing, but if you can If you feel like you've given a satisfying goodbye to some characters you've spent a lot of time with, I get a real buzz out of that.

Sharon Horgan: I get a buzz out of all of it, if I'm honest, but that's a good one. I love that.

Meg: Alright, so what pisses you off about writing?

Sharon Horgan: What pisses me off about writing? This is what pisses me off, but sometimes it's a good thing to have, but there's this thing of people only have a certain attention span now, so an episode has to be X amount of minutes, and there's no sort of leeway for that, because they're going to move on to something else, they're going to switch over, they're going to You know, you're going to lose them.

Sharon Horgan: And I just feel like I, I find that so frustrating sometimes because what's an extra 30 seconds between friends?,

Jeff: The last question we always ask our guests is if you could go back and have a coffee, I guess you're Irish. So if you could go back and have a tea with your younger self, what advice would you give to that Sharon? A nice simple question.

Sharon Horgan: God. Yeah. I think it just don't leave it so long. It took me so long to get the confidence together to do this. And I, it upsets me thinking about it, because I was a writer from such a young age, and I remember and I didn't either think it was a possibility, or, didn't trust myself, or didn't have the confidence, and I think I would just, They just just get going sooner.

Sharon Horgan: That's so relatable. Don't go and work in a job center for six and a half years.

Jeff: I think so many of our listeners feel that way. Sharon can you point to anything that helped you finally? Feel the courage to take that leap because I just know that half of our audience listening right now is resonating with that So I'm curious.

Sharon Horgan: You know an actual fact it was my family It was noticing that my family who were all from the same Circumstances me weren't scared of doing extraordinary things and you know it was also like Dennis Kelly like Dennis writing his first play like That was an amazing, a massive thing to me.

Sharon Horgan: I, just the fact that he just gave up his job and did that. Not soon after I did the same thing. I quit my job and started, but I think it was just it didn't mean that it didn't stay scary for a while or that I didn't, I had to fake it a lot. It was definitely seeing other people pull it off who I felt were, Similar to me, it didn't feel such a far away, scary thing. It felt like a real possibility.

Jeff: That's lovely.

Lorien: Yes. I share that wish that I'd gotten my shit together a lot. Oh, man. Yeah. I would get it together and then bail and then get it together and then bail and then

Meg: But I sometimes think you guys wouldn't be the writers you are if you didn't have that life experience.

Sharon Horgan: I 100 percent agree. It's a, swings and roundabouts that definitely the fact that I lived a life, and which is why part of the reason why I'm I feel so lucky all the time, because, right up until my sort of, thirties, I was not doing this job. I was doing lots of other much less fun jobs,

Lorien: But now you can write characters with those jobs. So exactly. And so specifically, right? It's beautiful. Yes.

Meg: Thank you so much for being on the show. It was a real, honestly, a super treat. It was just,

Sharon Horgan: Oh, I really enjoyed it. Great fun. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Meg: Thanks so much to Sharon for coming on the show. Season two of Bad Sisters is now on Apple.

Lorien: And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.