Emmys spotlight: ‘Bad Sisters’ cast talk straddling comedy and drama, show's real-life impact

In Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters, a group of four siblings decide to take extreme action to save their sister from her abusive marriage — leading to several botched murder attempts. Based on Belgian series Clan (whose creator Malin-Sarah Gozin executive produces), this comedy-drama was developed by Irish multi-hyphenate Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe), along with Dave Finkel and Brett Baer, as part of her production company Merman’s first-look deal with the streamer. Horgan also takes the role of eldest Garvey sister Eva, with Anne-­Marie Duff (Shameless) playing Grace, who refuses to admit the abuse she is suffering at the hands of her husband John Paul (Claes Bang). Rounding out the clan are Eva Birthistle as middle sister Ursula, Sarah Greene as Bibi and Eve Hewson as Becka, the youngest — all of whom have their own particular reasons to want John Paul dead.

First airing in August 2022, Bad Sisters has won three Bafta TV Awards, including best drama and best supporting actress for Duff, and four Irish Film & Television Awards. With a second series in the works — shooting begins “hopefully in a few months”, says Horgan — Screen International sat down with Horgan, Duff, Birthistle, Greene and Hewson to discuss the importance of presenting an authentic portrayal of domestic abuse, the challenges of balancing comedy and drama, and why a happy ending is far from guaranteed.

Screen: Bad Sisters is based on the Belgian series Clan. Sharon, what was it about that show that initially gripped you?

Sharon Horgan: It was the sisters. I come from a big family, and I thought, “I know how to do a version of that.” Aside from that, it was the opportunity to try something new. I was in sitcom land for a long time and I loved it, but the thought of doing a drama-thriller felt like a complete step out of my comfort zone. I got excited by that.

Were Apple on board from the beginning?

Horgan: Completely. The whole pitch was we were going to focus on what having a sister in an abusive relationship means for the rest of the family. And that with all their attempts at murdering [John Paul], there was going to be emotional collateral damage. That’s the amazing thing, we got away with so much madness and the audience still went to the really dark places with us and allowed us to play it 100% truthfully.

That’s the crux of why the show works, that even faced with the worst of circumstances, people are still people. It must have been appealing for all of you to embody characters who behaved like normal women, albeit in an extreme situation?

Eva Birthistle: It was immediately relatable, you understood the dynamics of the sisters. They felt like very real relationships, in that certain siblings may be closer, others may have a more sparky relationship. All those shades made it so much fun to play.

Anne-Marie Duff: This felt like having five female leading characters, which is fantastically rare.

Sarah Greene: Sharon’s writing made them all different, but really complex. No one sister is just one thing. Bibi has the spikiness, but she’s massively vulnerable, hurt and angry.

Sarah, you got to wear the eye patch. Did you do that method thing of staying in character by wearing it all the time?

Greene: It was up on my head for most of the day. I only had one eye of make-up done as well…

Eve Hewson: She had her eye patch on, one eye of makeup, a cup of tea in her hand and a cigarette in the other.

Eve, along with Grace, Becka has the most intense emotional arc. She starts off as such an innocent, and these actions take their toll. How was that to play?

Hewson: Becka is still discovering who she is. She’s very much the baby with her sisters, but with Matt [Becka’s love interest, played by Daryl McCormack] she’s a little bit sexy, a little bit wild. And then with Minna [John Paul’s mother, played by Nina Norén] she’s got this mother-daughter relationship going on. But what she ends up doing to Minna [Becka believes she is responsible for Minna perishing in a walk-in freezer] is heartbreaking and makes her feel what her sisters are saying is true: she can’t handle it, she can’t take on any responsibility. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that breaks her spirit about who she is and who she is going to become.

Becka shows that revenge is not necessarily always sweet, but every sister pays a price. Was that important, that the sisters’ behaviour is portrayed in shades of grey?

Horgan: It was a tricky thing to make sure an audience was staying on board for that many murder attempts, because, no matter how much fun it is, you have still got to believe in it and you still have to want [John Paul] to die. So the level of his awfulness had to ramp up over the series, and also each of the sisters’ connection to him becomes obvious.

We couldn’t make it a triumphant thing, really, but these women are not very good at murder, and that’s the fun of it. We punished them all in different ways. There’s a moment at the end, where Grace is back with her sisters at the 40 Foot [Dublin’s famous sea-swimming location] but there is so much pain in her face. You don’t think this is a woman who is going to dust herself off and get back on Tinder.

Grace suffers a slow drip of coercive abuse that we don’t often see portrayed on screen. Anne-­Marie, did you feel a responsibility in playing this character?

Duff: The jig would be up if you didn’t warm to Grace as an audience member and cheer the girls on in their attempts to kill John Paul. It’s important they feel for her profoundly. Coercion is a relatively new conversation, and we’re only properly examining it now, so I felt a responsibility to be very serious about it.

At the same time, I felt that Grace had to have a hummingbird energy of false gaiety, that she doesn’t acknow­ledge her own pain. The irony is that, quite often women who go into these relationships are quite strong, and they are eroded slowly. Ultimately, their sense of self, their identity is so translucent. Reality becomes very confused, it’s that weird fuzz you get in between radio stations. I could feel the weight of that, the judgment of others who can’t understand how the hell she let it happen. I wanted her to be a kind of walking bruise.

But Grace is in no way a cypher, she doesn’t speak for all abused women. Similarly, the sisters handle the situation in their own ways. How did you all put yourself in the mindset of this situation?

Birthistle: It was an ongoing conversation around knowing people who had a partner like that, and how your relationship can change with the person that you do love. I think we’ve all known somebody [suffering abuse] at some stage, or realised they had a partner who was a negative force. It’s a difficult position you’re in, as the friend or as the sister, because as long as that person says they’re happy, everyone is reserved in talking about the severity of the situation. You go along with it in a weird, complicit way, knowing you’ll be there to pick up the pieces when it all falls apart — which you’re hoping it will.

There was clearly a balance to be struck at every single stage between these dark truths and the comedy elements. Was that difficult?

Greene: We were all conscious of the responsibility of a storyline like this, at its core it is a story of domestic violence. Before each scene we would chat about how far to push the comedy, and make sure we were being respectful. It was amazing to have Sharon on set with us because it felt very collaborative. It is a respectful straddling of genres.

Birthistle: It wasn’t like, “This is the comedy scene, now this is the serious moment.” It was that one scene often had all the flavours and tones. It’s so rare to get scripts that are challenging in lots of ways. We all wanted to be respectful and aware, but also hit the comedy notes.

Hewson: I found the bouncing back and forth between the genres probably the hardest to get into. That was like a rhythm you have to learn. The first few months I found that quite difficult to do, especially when I had to do all the heavy emotional stuff and jokes at the same time.

Greene: The main thing is to be truthful. If you’re trying to play for laughs, that’s never going to be funny. It’s trying to always find the truth in it and be as real as possible. I think Bibi is not trying to be funny, she just is.

Duff: For me, the challenge was I could never give anything away. I had to be always completely innocent-­seeming. Sometimes I wouldn’t even be meaning to leak anything [to the audience], but a director would say I was. I was always having to keep a sort of wide-eyed energy.

Anne-Marie, Grace spends most of the series isolated from her sisters. Did you feel that during shooting?

Duff: I did feel a bit lonely. I would see the girls go by to film scenes, and I would wave them off. It wasn’t until I watched the episodes that I could really see the loss of Grace. Watching the first episode and seeing the girls at the 40 Foot, talking about Grace… I hadn’t been inside that moment on set, but when I watched it I really felt like one of the sisters. It was manifesting as if I were on the shore, and they were sailing away.

Greene: In every scene we spoke about Grace. Their entire objective was to save her.

That motivation is so pure, and we are rooting for them because John Paul is so horrible and manipulative. He is played so well by Claes Bang, who is so outwardly charming. Was it important to have a nuanced villain?

Horgan: I didn’t want him to be some kind of ogre. I liked the idea that, on the outside, he’s an upstanding member of the community, a religious man with a responsible position at work. He’s also beautiful. You can imagine, back in the day, Grace falling head over heels in love with him. But he’s racked with self-doubt, and that’s part of his problem. He knows his limit, knows he’s seen as a bit of a fool by the sisters, and that fuels him. He had to be physically intimidating but also kind of ridiculous, to be the butt of the joke and feel like an outsider but also to be an extreme bully. He also had to be extremely watch­able over 10 episodes, to be someone that you love to hate — otherwise it just wouldn’t have worked.

It’s so interesting because John Paul is religious, he sees himself as a moral crusader, yet he is utterly dismantling Grace’s rights — which is the catalyst for the sisters taking back the power. That chimes with what’s happening in the wider world.

Horgan: Just as our show was going out, there were a lot of angry women. When we did our premiere in New York, it was around the time when Roe v. Wade was overturned and the female journalists in the room were angry. There was a lot of catharsis in watching us on screen, chasing this religious right-wing moralistic man around, trying to kill him.

Did it feel when you were making the show that it was like a call-to-arms narrative?

Birthistle: We were definitely aware of that. But I think, first and foremost, it’s very rare you get a story with five strong female leads. And also with our female directors, and a lot of strong women at the helm, it felt like this is what we’ve been fighting towards. The wider debate then helped fuel the momentum.

What feedback have you received?

Duff: You expect women to come up to you. But I was out for a walk on Hampstead Heath and a group of middle-aged men stopped to talk to me about coercion, and how they all knew a man who they thought might be behaving that way with their wife. It wasn’t until they watched the show that they felt they could properly articulate what he was doing.

Horgan: I’ve had loads of heartbreaking messages from women in Grace’s situation, and sisters of those women. There’s frustration that they can’t take the law into their own hands, but also a relief about seeing a story like this on screen. There are people who just enjoy the show for the show, but there’s a whole other level where it can start to have a real impact.

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