-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.
