The co-creator and star on building a despicable husband and writing that big confession.
Vulture and New York TV critic Jen Chaney previously worked for the Washington Post and has bylines at the New York Times and Vanity Fair. She also wrote As If: The Complete Oral History of Clueless.
Photo: Christopher Barr/Apple TV+ Vulture and New York TV critic Jen Chaney previously worked for the Washington Post and has bylines at the New York Times and Vanity Fair. She also wrote As If: The Complete Oral History of Clueless.
This piece will blatantly spoil the conclusion of Bad Sisters. Consider yourself warned.
The Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters traces the plotting of a murder that repeatedly gets foiled. The plotters are the four Garvey sisters — eldest Eva (Sharon Horgan); nurse and unhappily married mom Ursula (Eva Birthistle); Bibi (Sarah Greene), who’s still dealing with the trauma of losing an eye; and Becka (Eve Hewson), the youngest and arguably least responsible member of the family — and they’re determined to kill the despicable John Paul Williams (Claes Bang). The problem? He happens to be married to the fifth Garvey sister, Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), and these women are, to borrow the words of Horgan, a co-creator of this series, “shit at murder.”
Attempts to off the dastardly brother-in-law in a variety of ways — poison, gas leaks, paintball accidents — fail repeatedly. While we know that JP dies, as established from the opening scene of this time-jumping series, only in the finale do we finally learn what killed him and who did it. In the end, it was Grace herself who finally snapped, strangling her husband after learning he’d raped Eva several years prior, then staging things to look like he died in a motorcycle accident — with an assist from her neighbor Roger (Michael Smiley).
While Bad Sisters was inspired by the Flemish series Clan, and some of the plot details remain the same, Horgan wanted to bring an element of realism to the story. “I felt an audience would be even more willing to come along for the journey if they not only relate to the sisters but almost imagine themselves in that situation.”
Just like in the original series, Grace turns out to be the person who kills JP. Did you ever consider deviating from that conclusion?
From the outset, I had a clear idea of how I wanted to do my version of it, but at the same time, I didn’t want to rule anything out. All I said in my pitch to Apple was that I wanted to up the stakes for the sisters emotionally, so that the collateral damage of this terrible thing they’re trying to do affected them more. And that there were less murders.
The original — which I loved, by the way, or I wouldn’t have come onboard to remake it — had a very heightened tone in that there was a high death count. There was a hitman and Chinese mafia, and people ended up in dog food. I wanted to take all that farce-y stuff out. Grace being the perpetrator — I wanted to ground even that in reality. I could never see in the original how she could’ve possibly done it on her own to that giant of a man. I wanted there to be an extra twist. (In the original series, she isn’t helped by Roger.)
Was there a Roger equivalent in the original?
He was an entirely different person — a childlike man who doted on their version of JP, absolutely worshiped him. It made no sense why he was even in their lives. We wanted our Roger to be someone fully invested in Grace. He’s someone who only ever sees the best in people, but he’s onto something. He can smell a rat.
It felt important for her to be the killer. You always want the person being abused to be saved, but the ideal scenario is they save themselves.
It’s really hard to save a drowning woman if she doesn’t want to be saved. She’s just going to kick out at you and cause you to drown too. Getting her to a place where her eyes are opened is the best possible scenario.
What would you say Grace saw in JP initially, and how did she find the gumption to kill him? She summons a lot of anger in the murder scene.
She does it once before, when he’s trying to prevent her from going to Blánaid’s tournament and humiliates her with the vibrator. She’s telling him she needs something. There’s real fury bubbling up in her in that scene.
Grace wasn’t always that sort of timid person. She was part of this gaggle of Garvey girls and may have been the quieter one, but she wasn’t a mouse. JP just bore down on her until her light was almost switched out entirely. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a pilot light there. The thing the sisters say at the beginning is that if they don’t get her out soon, she’ll disappear completely. She’d held onto her strength and her spirit, and like any family that’s as tight and connected as those girls, it was family that brought that out in her.
We’re in this kitchen, which is a set on a stage, and I would find a little corner and just curse myself.It was clearly the situation with Eva that caused the blind rage to appear. Actually, it was Anne-Marie Duff who suggested that she say, “You made me think it was me,” at the very end. Because all the vitriol at that point was that he’d ruined Eva’s life. But to then bring it back to her — that all that time, when she was looking for a crumb of love or something that made her feel like a valued person, he made her think she was nothing.
The scene in which Eva first talks about him raping her and the miscarriage is very dramatic. She is discussing something deeply traumatic for the first time in front of all of her sisters. Are you thinking about the fact that you’ll eventually have to act this out as you’re writing it?
I’ve tied myself up in this kind of a knot before. You get there on the day and you’re like, What the fuck was I doing? And it was another big change from the original. She is raped in the original, but it was shown onscreen. When we got together to break the story our way, we thought it would be so much more powerful if Eva’s painting the picture in front of the sisters, and this happens in the same episode in which we see Grace kill her husband.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written. A show like this — you’re really juggling tones. I spent so long thinking about how to get the balance. I knew it would be more powerful if the sisters all sat around together, but of course, on the day we’re filming it, it was in the middle of a really busy day. We’d come from one scene, we were doing another, then all of a sudden, you’ve got to go to a really, really horrible place and get your brain to live something you haven’t experienced, thank God.
We did this interview about the show, and Anne-Marie Duff said, “Your brain doesn’t know when your body is lying.” The stress you put your body under when you’re emoting like that — you have to make space for it. We’re in this kitchen, which is a set on a stage, and I would find a little corner and just curse myself. Then try and bring up the emotion.
How many times did you film that scene?
More times than you would want to, because you have to do your wide, you have to do your mid — you want to bring it in on every single one, then by the end, you’re like, “For fuck’s sake, did you not get it?” You’re like, I don’t really care what it looks like at this stage. Just please say it’s in the can.
The original show, Clan, came out ten years ago. Was there something about tackling this material right now that spoke to this moment?
Completely. Not that you always have to think like that. Things come along when they come along, and it’s usually down to whether you connect with a project. But it is a strange time in this world, and I’m at an age when I’m not interested in doing something just for the hell of it. There has to be a reason for occupying that space. But I never realized what a fucking metaphor it is for right now until after.
Really?
At that time, domestic abuse had gone through the roof in the U.K., because women and their children were locked up with their abusers. People who should have been apart, people who were already in abusive relationships, people who’d sort of missed their chance to escape were locked in. You could feel it in the atmosphere. I was aware of that when we were putting the show together, but once we finished, everything sort of kicked off: Roe v. Wade, everything happening in Iran — the idea that actually we are stronger when we band together and we don’t have to be subjugated by religious men. John Paul is a righteous man who feels he has God and religion on his side and sees the sisters as immoral. What a metaphor.
Often in shows centered on the “bad guys,” they end up becoming anti-heroes, and viewers are encouraged to find ways to empathize with them. But with John Paul, the more you find out about him, the worse he gets.
You had to stay on the sister’s side. You had to stay invested in the outcome; you had to continue to want him to die. Otherwise, I don’t think people would stay onboard.
I wouldn’t say that he’s completely dehumanized, because it’s very hard to make a character out-and-out evil. It’s why we made sure there were sweet moments with his daughter or softer moments when you see him, Grace, and Blánaid in the family home. It’s almost like a normal family. You have to give layers.
The show is excellent at subverting expectations. Going in, I thought the focus would be on the women trying to keep the murder covered up. Instead, they screw up the murder itself repeatedly. It’s fun and not normally how we’re conditioned to watch “murder shows.”
Someone was writing about it last week and mentioned A Fish Called Wanda — how the Michael Palin character is constantly trying to kill his old lady and killing the dog along the way. There is something cartoony, in a way. Eva even says it in the show — it’s like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. He’s fucking unkillable. That’s what gave us so much of the comedy.
Do you consume a lot of true crime or scripted crime? Do you have particular favorites that inspired Bad Sisters?
In terms of atmosphere and the notion of the outsider, it was the podcast West Cork. I think it’s one of the best ones out there. It was about a French woman whose murderer has never been brought to justice, but there is a suspect who’s still alive. He’s the outsider, and he inspired a portion of John Paul in that he is a very tall, charming man who would’ve been successful if life and his own character hadn’t worked against him. If JP just settled into the family, instead of trying to be the head, the sisters would not have hated him in the same way. There was something about the small town and the idea of everyone knowing each other and this Swede coming along and never quite fitting in.
Apart from that, I watch pretty much every documentary about murder going. It was great, because I was able to call it “research.” In a way, it has made me hate it a bit. I get grossed out by myself for wanting to watch them. It’s porn — nobody likes to catch themselves watching porn.
Way earlier in the season, they kill Grace and JP’s dog — another moment that happened in the original series. Was it something where you asked yourself whether you were going too far?
It kind of pisses me off that people get more upset about animals than they do about humans. I killed a cat in Pulling, my first show, and people were fucking furious. It should have warned me. But that was one of my favorite things about the original, and it’s mainly because of that last line. Grace says, “We buried him in the back garden,” and they’re all like, “What the fuck?” That moment alone was worth killing a dog over.
It was important from a story perspective, because it demonstrated that what they were doing was causing even more harm to their sister.
It did every time. Every time, the sisters fucked up and the murder wasn’t successful. That was part of the reason I wanted them to start turning on each other. The more they fuck up, the more they begin to question what they’re doing. To get to the point in episode ten, when they’re screaming at each other in the kitchen and turning on each other and actually thinking the other one has done something behind their backs — it had to build to that place.
What was different about the writing process of Bad Sisters compared to your other shows?
I’m now all about the thriller. You constantly get to write in cliffhangers, confirm people’s expectations, and take them down alleys. Then they’ve got to turn around and go back. It’s like your story has its own engine running all the time and everything else is character work that enables you to emotionally engage and really commit. No one’s going to do that if they don’t care about those sisters. Fargo was a huge inspiration. You can get deeply involved in what is happening to these characters, but you need to know what’s going to happen next. That feeling of being on edge — I love that.
When Rob Delaney and I wrote Catastrophe, we had it in our minds to leave things slightly on edge enough for you to want to come back and find out. We weren’t just wholly reliant on the story of the week or being around these characters. But Bad Sisters felt so different. The scripts got rewritten quite a lot, then there was even more rewriting and cuts in the edit, because there was much more time spent with the characters. You realize that once they’re on the treadmill for another murder attempt, it’s very hard to go off and have a domestic scene or check how someone’s business is doing.
When you were editing the finale, was there any scene you had to lose for that reason?
We had Ursula come home and have a full breakup scene with Donal. They both performed it beautifully. She had to tell him that she felt like she’d married him all those years ago for safety and maybe not for love. He told her he knew all along what she was doing. He’s not an idiot. He knows her better than he knows himself. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. But at that point, you are galloping toward the end, and it just couldn’t be there.
I’m sure it’s hard to lose those things.
It’s the worst. I sometimes think I’m really hardened and know what I want and what I need to do, but I hate cutting the good work of great actors. I stupidly fight for things until the last minute.
Is it easier to cut your own scenes?
Oh, a million times easier. I’m just like, “You all right with that, Sharon?” “Yeah, I’m fine with that.” Actors in general are fine with it, and it’s par for the course, but I find it really hard doing it to others.
How did you find the weekly rollout on Apple TV+?
I was delighted. You spend two and a half years making something. If someone watches it in a weekend, I’m just like, Fuck you. If something can be watched over eight or ten weeks, I’m like, Yeah, too right. Bad Sisters was made to suit that style of broadcasting. It’s good to wait.
I put everything into the finale, and I hope it’s satisfying for people who’ve been kind enough to stick around, especially since it comes out weekly. It has been years since I’ve had that happen.
I’ve become so accustomed to limited series coming out, then going on to make a second season — is that even a possibility for this?
It was adapted from a limited, so it would have to be a really great story. I’m not saying that story isn’t out there, but you would have to have a really good reason to bring it back. I would never do it just for the sake of it. That would be a real shame.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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