Waiting For Season Three Of 'Bad Sisters'? Sharon Horgan Has Some News For You
Dark comedy is a notoriously tricky genre to master, but it's one that Sharon Horgan has crafted a career out of. The Irish writer, actor and creator of award-winning series, Catastrophe, Motherland and Pulling, is in the middle of the whirlwind international press tour for the second season of Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters. Wet-haired, witty and honest, over Zoom, she tells ELLE UK about the 'nerve-wracking' experience of creating this darker second season of her own conception (alongside Dave Finkel and Brett Baer), after the first was inspired by the Belgian series’ Clan.
'I always said to Apple, if I can't think of a good enough story, I'm not doing it,' she says, 'I was really interested in showing what happens next and great characters don't come along every day.'
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Series one introduced audiences to the five close-knit, Dublin-based Garvey sisters fronted by Horgan as the eldest sister Eva, alongside Eva Birthistle as Ursula, Sarah Greene as Bibi, Anne-Marie Duff as Grace and Eve Hewson as Becka.
Tormented by their brother-in-law, John Paul (played to disgusting levels of perfection by Claes Bang) the sisters throughout the first series tried and failed – several times – to save Grace from her abusive husband. From the start, we knew that 'The Prick' was dead, but it wasn’t until the explosive finale that audiences discovered that it was Grace who killed him with his favourite pyjama bottoms.
Outrageously funny, savage and direct, the sister's unfiltered personalities ('they're brutal') and steadfast love for each other is what audiences responded to. Not to mention, their appetite for revenge.
'We're so conditioned to see a certain version of women on-screen and that's because they were always written by men until relatively recently,' Horgan says. 'I couldn't believe that I was given the opportunity to show that dynamic on screen, especially through sisters who have that license to be awful to each other. Even physically. It was almost a safety net, as you could get away with more. It was such a gift.'
Despite the evident audience for a show centred around sisterly love (and loathing), many shows written, directed or produced by women, especially those with 'more truthful' versions of women, still have pushback in the industry.
'You would get notes back from executives not wanting them to be unlikable,' Horgan says of series written or directed by women. 'I've had it about my own characters. The hilarious thing is I've been told where there's a male and a female within the same show and the male is being awful, the notes are always for the woman to be more likable.'
Naturally there were many reasons to return for a second season of Bad Sisters, notably those gaps in the narrative of the first season that needed resolving.
'Secrets are really tricky things and Grace is so vulnerable,' she adds. 'I was researching a lot, as I was interested in what happens to a woman in Grace’s position. Even women who end up in court and who end up serving time for killing abusive partners, they certainly don't just go back to life like nothing's happened. After years of being isolated and forced to keep secrets, what would a woman in that position do if they found themselves in trouble again?'
By the end of the second episode of the second season, Grace has distanced herself from her sisters and her new husband, Ian (Owen McDonnell) has left without a trace. She is consumed by panic and then the series does the unthinkable: Grace dies in a fatal car accident.
'It did seem very brutal, but at the same time it’s very honest,' Horgan says. 'Could we continue the tone of Bad Sisters when one of them died? It was a tough decision and there were various versions of it over the course of the writer’s room, before we realised that we were never going to be able to do a season two if we didn't.'
Life is unfortunately full of unexpected tragedy and irony, which Horgan was reminded of when her father died mid-way through filming the second season.
'It was one of those strange situations where I'd just been at a TV funeral and then later my own dad's,' she shares. 'But what I did find was I've got this five of us, five siblings in my family. If we hadn't had each other and if we hadn't had laughter and the dark places you go within your humour to get through it, I wouldn't have been able to write it.'
Deliciously morbid, but not morose, the second season weaves in the absurdity of death and grief without taking too long to 'wallow in it' as the sisters are determined to find out 'what the f*** happened' to Grace.
'Sometimes it seemed like, "that's a weird place to put a laugh", it's a funeral,' she admits. 'But terribly funny things happen in funerals. I heard so many stories. It was almost like "which one do I pick?"'
'Horribly and awfully, life does go on, but grief is always there. It comes and it goes, and you’ve got to do the shopping, and you’ve got to take your kid to school and grief harbours in the background.'
Yet, Horgan is well seasoned in balancing the contrast of heartache and the humour that eternally co-exist in life, whether it’s through the lens of romantic relationships in Divorce, parenting in Motherland or siblings in Bad Sisters. If it ever veers too drastically one way or the other, she irons it out in the edit.
'You have to go with what your instincts tell you on the day,' she says. 'But the edit is an amazing place to see it all together and decide where you're going to pull back or when to get back on with the storytelling.'
She hopes, more than anything, that this season resonates with the audience's own experience of loss so they can 'feel at one with the sisters' and find comfort in the knowledge 'that they still have family' even after an incomprehensible loss.
Horgan's life was interwoven into this season in other ways too, such as her own character’s early-fifties reformation. 'There was so much of me in this Eva,' she says, 'The menopausal experience, the getting fit and giving up drink. I wanted her to be in charge of her life at the start so there’s this real journey for her.'
After curating a winning formula for an award-winning TV show, goodbyes are always difficult, but Horgan often anticipates them and perhaps even embraces them. 'Great characters don't come along every day,' she says. 'I think that's why it's hard to say goodbye to things. Even with Catastrophe, we did four seasons and it was still really hard to say goodbye, because they felt like one in a million characters.'
Would she return for a third season? 'Well, I don't know,' she smiles. 'You've watched episode eight — it feels like an end.'
No need to despair, though. Horgan adds: 'It’ll be something else. Something else will come along.' We have no doubt about it.
Stream Bad Sisters on Apple TV+ now.
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