Sharon Horgan Was Still Angry, So She Made More Bad Sisters

The last time I spoke to Sharon Horgan, the first season of Bad Sisters had just concluded and the creator, writer, and actress was hesitant to discuss the possibility of a second. “You would have to have a really good reason to bring it back,” she said in 2022. “I would never do it just for the sake of it.” Cut to two years later, and once again, I’m on a Zoom call with Horgan to talk about Bad Sisters, which she found plenty of good reasons to bring back for season two. The narrative kicks into gear at the end of the second episode, when Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) — the most vulnerable Garvey sister, who murdered her abusive husband in season one — dies in a car accident. Did the newest characters in the sisters’ orbit, Grace’s charming new husband, Ian (Owen McDonnell), or her annoying new friend, Angelica (Fiona Shaw) — have something to do with the tragedy?

After a season of pratfalls, break-ins, and quite a lot of grieving, the finale reveals all. Right before her death, Grace confessed to Ian that she killed her first husband. In turn, her new husband — who’s been a gambling-addicted con man the whole time — blackmails her, agitating Grace so much that she ultimately runs her car off the road. When Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene), and Becka (Eve Hewson) gather to confront him, Angelica, ever in the wrong place at the wrong time, nearly bludgeons him to death with a golf club. A series of hilarious near calamities ensue: the sisters attempting to dispose of Ian’s body; Ian somehow falling off a cliff, then somehow surviving that fall; Detective Houlihan (Thaddea Graham) discovering the Garveys’ involvement in Ian’s injuries, then colluding with former detective Loftus (Barry Ward) to threaten Ian, himself a former officer, in a way that ensures he will never mess with the Garveys again. The season ends on yet another decisive note, with all the sisters and their partners together as a family, spreading Grace’s ashes in a scene that suggests they are starting to move on, even as they hold their sister close in their memory. Let’s see what Horgan has to say this time.

When you and I talked after the first-season finale, you indicated there could maybe be a season two. At what point did you start seriously thinking about what that could look like?
They started talking about season two as we were editing season one. I actually had an idea for season two as we were filming, but it wasn’t something I thought we would do at all. Then Apple was really keen to do more. I said to Apple, “I’ll do a writers’ room.” I knew I had an idea for a portion of it, and I’ll see if it feels like we can capture the tone of the original and actually say something worth saying.

The idea being?
The idea I had filming season one was, What if lightning struck twice to a woman who has been so isolated for so long and full of shame and had kept a secret from her sisters for so long about what she was going through? Would she be able to ask for help? And would her sisters believe her?

When I was researching season one and looking into women who’ve been in those desperate situations and terrible, abusive relationships, if they’ve come out the other side, they don’t always meet Mr. Right. They’re damaged and vulnerable and open to someone taking advantage. The idea was that, if it happened again, how would she cope and what would she do and how would the family react?

There was so much stuff I was still angry about that I have an opportunity to talk about and explore through these characters, like the sexist institution that is the police and how they deal with people like Grace. That old boys’ club contains so many bad, bad people. The show is a good vehicle for subject matter that feels really, horribly, constantly timely. In the first season, it was like, Oh, fucking hell, it’s come along at this time where we get to have some sort of group catharsis. Then the second season came along when the bad choices of bad men are impacting our lives. Here we have a group of women who just won’t put up with that.

Was there a specific moment in the writers’ room when you realized this was going to work?
There were probably a few points where that happened. You get excited about story all the time but then you lose confidence.

We were scared about the Grace story line. It was something we went back and forth on a bit: Can you continue to have the tone of the show when one of the main characters dies?

Did you know Grace would die going into the writers’ room or was that something you figured out in there? 
That was something we figured out pretty early on. In fact, someone suggested it and I was like “no.” Then the more we talked about how it could continue for a season, taking it to such a brutal place felt like what it needed to operate in the way the show needs to operate. But it was when we decided on Ian and Eva getting together — that’s when I thought, I think this is going to work. That didn’t mean it wasn’t scary. Someone who’s as strong, as smart, and as on it as Eva — how could a woman like that find herself in that situation?

I’ll tell you what, in looking into those kinds of narcissists who wheedle their way into multiple women’s lives, they’re not stupid women. The idea of Eva in her grief becoming almost as vulnerable as Grace at that point when he targeted her, I got excited about that because Eva was always looking for love. In her grief for Grace, in order to fill that terrible hole in her heart, this man comes along and offers her protection and love and to shoulder the burden.

Oh, and the second one was Angelica — making her, you know, almost a heroine in the end.

When you were developing Angelica as a character, did you have Fiona Shaw in mind?
Yeah. It’s much easier to write when you have someone who not only feels like the character, but that you know is gonna bring it on so many different levels. You have other potentials because you bring in casting quite early and they send you lists. Also, you don’t know if you’re gonna get her. I mean I was sure we weren’t gonna get her, but she was a fan of the show.

Angelica developed even more once Fiona came onboard because this is how it is with great actors: They’re not just great on the screen; they do an awful lot of headwork for you. They get to know their characters really well, and they also have opinions on why they are who they are.

I found that character so fascinating, not only because of the way Fiona Shaw plays her but because the Garvey sisters are so judgmental of her because she is judgmental. You realize ultimately that, aside from the fact that she almost killed someone with a cricket bat, she’s generally harmless.
A hundred percent. The only thing I’ll correct you on is camogi stick. It’s an Irish sport called hurling, but the girls’ version of it is called camogi. It is fucking dangerous. I played it as a youngster, and my sister lost her tooth. The fact that it ends up becoming the murder weapon is one of my favorite things.

Angelica’s 100 percent the decoy villain. She had to be someone who is full of hurt and anger and uses the Grace information really badly and gets carried away with it. In their grief, the Garvey sisters are looking for a place to be angry. It gets out of control, and they’re paranoid and afraid.

After Angelica hits Ian over the head, she doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of what she’s just done. Her explanation is, “I just didn’t like what he was saying about Grace.” What is it about Grace that captivates her?
There’s so much we cut out that answers that. It’s here and there, you know. She talks about how “we spent hours making an unholy amount of lasagna together.” They did the whole Meals on Wheels thing. In Grace, she found a confidante and someone who actually listened for the first time. When women get to that age, they are invisible. This is such an obvious thing that’s been said a million times, but no one gives a shit about what they have to say about anything. Grace did, and listened to her, and talked to her and then it got to be too much. It was suffocating. That’s exactly around the time Ian came onto the scene and swept her off her feet and she fell in love and nothing else mattered. Initially, when Angelica finds out what Grace did to JP, she wants to help her and she wants to protect her, but she also wants to use it to be that friend who is everything. She just takes it too far.

It’s very funny when Angelica throws herself at the mercy of the police and is like, “Take me, because God will forgive me. He’s not gonna forgive the Garveys.” It’s self-sacrifice that has all this terrible judgment baked into it.
How funny is Fiona Shaw, though? When we were filming it she was cracking us all up. On the day, I was like, We have to have her fuck it up even more for them. I was like, “Ask the police if it’s still going to be attempted murder.”

That wasn’t in the original script?
No, no. It was just something we thought of on the day. And oh my God, she is, like, hurling herself to the ground. You do those takes time after time after time, and it was just no bother to her. She got it and she was all in and she couldn’t have had more of a blast.

She’s very Method, right? But not in a Method way that you associate with Pacino or De Niro. In episode two, she cycles up to the house and she’s looking in the window. This is post her finding out that Grace murdered her husband. So she’s looking in this window and it’s like she’s seeing everything for the first time and everything she thought about Grace has been turned on its head. Dearbhla Walsh, who is our series director, goes, “Do you think Angelica’s been here before?” And Fiona’s like, “No, I don’t think she’s been here before. I don’t think she’s ever had so much as a cup of tea in this house.” She’ll fully commit to the story of the character within the scene, and talks it through with you as Angelica. It’s fascinating.

I want to talk about the almost-murder sequence where Ian has gotten hit, and then there’s a knock at the door, and then it turns out to be the police.  That’s what the show does so well: escalate, escalate, escalate. Was that all written already or were you discovering some things on the day?
I was on edge the whole day because there was so much to do. There’s stunts and there’s black eyes to put on and blood to figure out. Everything was worked out and choreographed before and rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed to get all those moments right. That is the kind of stuff I love. I find that stuff easier to write than, I don’t know what you’d call it — traditional thriller moments. I like the escalation of panic. And I like hearing people say stupid things at the wrong time. Like when they’re trying to figure out if it’s a delivery and Eva’s like, “Oh, could be bath towels.” There was so much in the scene we couldn’t really end up showing because you have to get so tight in the edit in the end. But what they put down to cover up the blood, there was a welcome mat and some ridiculous things. But all of it, very heavily written and plotted.

It’s funny that when the blood pours out of Ian’s wound, it only goes in the grout between the tiles on the kitchen floor, which is the most impossible thing to clean. And of course a woman’s going to have to do it eventually. Was that in the script? 
No, it wasn’t. It was a beautiful accident. It was our second go and it just did that. We were really disappointed with how the blood dispersed in the first one. Then the second one — I found it so hard to stay in character because I was watching the river, and was like, Oh my God, it almost looks like a cross. We were just like, “Thank you to the special-effects gods.”

You mentioned that you had to cut some scenes. Which ones were you particularly heartbroken to lose?
Episode ones are really tricky because you’ve got to get to the meat of the story. As much as I love the sisters just being sisters together, we need to introduce Angelica, we need to pull that suitcase with JP’s dad’s remains in it out of the water, we need to get the story moving. But oh my God, we had like a fucking 300-minute cut of that wedding.

There was this scene with Joe and Becka, you know when they wake up in the bunk bed? He’s saying, “They like me though, don’t they, your sisters?” They have that little bounce and he pulls her back into bed and we cut there. There’s this beautiful bit of dialogue between them after that. Becka says to him — you know, he’s so into her — “Have you never had good sex before?” He has this mini-monologue where he’s like. “I’m the only lad from my village without an underbite. So I got plenty of action, let me tell you that.” Then he goes into this whole spiel about what it means to be with someone you’re mad about. It was so beautiful. It was such a moment to introduce this non-Matt man. But you know, fuck it. He made his presence felt — you get little glimpses of him. He’s so great and funny. But I felt really sad about that cause they were so beautiful together.

By killing off Grace so early, you remove her from much of the season, too. How did you break that news to Anne-Marie Duff and how did she respond? 
Oh, Anne-Marie knew from the off. She was completely involved and loved the story line. She also loved that, in episode eight, we get to see what happened that night. Obviously you think it’s possibly Angelica on that phone, blackmailing her, but you don’t know. The thing is she told me that when she was watching season one, she always felt quite isolated from all of us because 90 percent of her scenes were with Claes Bang. It used to feel kind of weird that we were all over there doing something else. Then she watched the show and she felt the presence of Grace constantly. Like the scene in episode one of season one, when we’re sitting at the Forty Foot and we look and there is a space and she’s not there. I mean, she’d read the scripts but hadn’t realized how felt her absence was to those sisters. I think it’s the same in season two. She’s constantly there.

I was really nervous about the portrayal of grief. One, because I didn’t want to turn it into a tear fest where everyone’s just depressed all the time, because that’s not going to work. Two, because I wanted it to be authentic and I didn’t want to brush over it. The fact that they’re trying to find out what happened for her memory is the thing that sort of drives them. But they couldn’t be breaking down and crying all the time. There’s so many moments where that happened organically, like in that sauna. Having experienced grief really recently myself — my dad died mid-filming of the season — that is how grief works. You hate yourself for getting on with life, but life just moves you along and then all of a sudden you’re slapped across the face with it. It felt like an easier thing to write and perform and work through because I felt like, “no, this is how you do it.” You still laugh with your brothers and sisters. I mean, at the worst possible times, me and my brothers and sisters were laughing, and then destroyed, and then back laughing again, because there’s no other way through it.

Narratively, it seems like a great tool in a way. As you know, when you’re grieving, you’re not in your right mind all the time.
Exactly, yes! That’s the thing. That’s why I feel like we get away with so much of the Angelica stuff, because that’s exactly what it is. They’ve lost their minds. Grief has fucked with their reasoning. And the same with Ian and Eva. It’s ruined her ability to think straight. That’s something she would never have done if she wasn’t going through that.

It also struck me in the finale that it’s the women who help each other, ultimately. Una, the female cop, is the one who really presses to protect the Garvey sisters from Ian.  Angelica is willing to throw herself at God’s mercy for them.
Absolutely, they are looking out for each other. I thought about Blánaid throughout — my daughters were so angry with me that I did that to her. But we gave hints of it in season one. We never wanted to blatantly show her seeing anything terrible, but we wanted to hint that she may have heard a lot more than we showed. The fact that she knew her father was a bad man and that her mother’s legacy is the great young woman she will be — when they are all together at the end, I hope that it feels like they are a family. They’re still a strong and protective family and nothing’s gonna change that.

Your daughters were mad at you? For what specifically?
For leaving Blánaid without parents. They were really upset about that.

How did you calm them down?
I didn’t, really. They didn’t talk to me for a while. I just said, “Look, you just have to keep watching. I think everything will be okay.” I mean, it’s never gonna be okay, but — ah, they’ll get over it. You try writing a bloody series, see how you get on.

Is there room for a season three? Because, you know, Ian’s not dead. 
[Laughs] That’s so funny. He’s not dead. When I was thinking about the potential, that was the thing that I thought, His situation with his wife and is there anything there? But I just feel like I was so happy with the ending. I felt so at peace with where they were. I feel like it’s done.

What if Apple’s like, “Please, Sharon, make a season three?” What would you say?
[Long pause.]

You’re not sure.
I don’t know, I’m so tired. I mean, that’s my problem. I thought it would be easier this time. I was like, I’ll do it again, but I’m not gonna do ten episodes. I’ll do eight. I come from the U.K. world of six half-hours. You shoot it over seven weeks, you know? But this is like, when you’re writing it, and showrunning it, and in it, and then you’re in the edit, it is two and a half years of your life or something like that. Eight didn’t make it any easier. Somehow it was almost the same.

We were talking earlier about the perpetual timeliness of a story like this. But especially right now to watch the end of this season and watch a man actually face consequences for what he’s done — certainly in America at the moment, it feels like that just doesn’t happen. I don’t know if you’ve thought about it in that context since you made it, but is there something cathartic about watching it now? 
When we did our premiere in New York, I felt incredibly emotional because you’re showing it to people for the first time, but also it was not long after the election results. It is a wish fulfillment thing. In a way, that’s what I was trying to do with this. I was trying to hold people to account and to show that good people can affect change.

With the police element, you’re holding a system to account, not just one person.
It was such a swing and you never know if people will even recognize it or see it or get onboard with it. When you asked earlier about, were there moments within the room where you thought, I think we’ve got something here. It was the Eva-Ian thing, and it was a few other moments. But I remember leaving the writers’ room and going home and calling executive producer Faye Dorn and saying, “It’s the cops. It’s that institution.” There are bigger things we all need to get angry about. Let’s do that through these characters.