Sharon Horgan: ‘I hate that my daughters are seeing worryingly skinny bodies on screen’

Sharon Horgan is one of this generation’s greatest TV writers, with a catalogue of back-to-back hits. Her latest series Youth has just added another to that number.

When the 56-year-old Irish screenwriter, comedian and actress started her TV career in the early 2000s, there was ‘no grand plan’ to showcase the stages of her life on screen over the next two decades – yet things have a funny way of working out.

Her breakout sitcom came with Pulling, a semi-autobiographical comedy series about a woman entering her 30s in the big city, with nothing working out how she thought it would.

‘My 20s had been disappointing, and my 30s were going the same way, living in shared accommodation, in a disappointing relationship, with a job I didn’t like,’ she tells Metro about that time.

Fast forward a decade, Sharon was mum to two young daughters and facing the trials and tribulations of motherhood head-on. This spawned two of her greatest shows: Catastrophe (co-starring Rob Delaney) and Motherland.

Both offer raw depictions of the messiness of raising children and ‘just trying to survive’.

After Pulling and Catastrophe, we have Youth (Picture: Channel 4) It’s the third instalment of her life chronicles (Picture: HBO)

Hit the forward button once more, and the Bad Sisters creator and star is sat in a hotel in Soho, promoting the latest snapshot of her life as she embraces her 50s – and everything that comes with that.

‘I don’t think there’s anything like the experience of being 50 and having kids that you still have to go after, with ageing parents, when your body is failing, and you’re hitting menopause. It’s a lot, and it comes at you,’ she reflects.

The main character, Alex (portrayed by Sharon), is trapped in a friends-with-benefits situationship with the ‘institutionally single’ 40-something Patrick (Rupert Friend).

She’s dipping her toe in the dating pool, resulting in sometimes steamy, sometimes not-so-steamy results. She’s trying to prove her savvy at work at a literary agency where her best friend Sam (Sharlene Whyte) is also her boss.

In the words of Sharlene, it was ‘an absolute gift of a script’ with some brilliant moments like when Damian Lewis storms in as a cocky and insufferable alter-ego of himself.

We touch on friendship, sex and family – all staples of a Sharon Horgan show (Picture: Colin Hutton)

‘To see him just actually take the mick out of himself, it was a breath of fresh air. It really was. It was a lot of fun,’ she teases about that scene.

Meanwhile, her 18-year-old son Ruari (Aran Murphy) is about to start university, if he can work through his existential crisis about his own life in time. Oh, and she’s got jaw arthritis out of nowhere. In short, a lot to contend with.

As Sharon explains, some scenes are inspired by her and her friends’ lives, others couldn’t be further from her truth and some she’s ‘lifted literally verbatim from [her] life].

Can she give an example, I ask.

‘Patrick is a mixture of a few different people who’ve been in my life. A lot of the scenarios with Patrick are lifted, if not verbatim, then pretty, pretty, pretty damn close,’ she shares, although she doesn’t seem in a hurry to shed any more light on that.

She wrote the role with Rupert in mind, and he was on board from the get-go, completely trusting in Sharon’s vision.

‘He thought it was a perspective he hadn’t seen for a male character. Someone who is self-declared institutionally single, but is still having to figure out: “Should they be having a baby? Should they be having a family?”’ she says.

Now I’ll go in and have as many treatments as I need to make myself look like a human woman on TV.

Elsewhere, she’s worked closely with Aran as her TV son, and real-life son to Oscar-winning star Cillian Murphy.

Talking about whether growing up with a father who was also on film and TV sets inspired the acting bug, he said being surrounded by that atmosphere ‘probably did’ influence his career trajectory a little bit.

He continued: ‘Just from a young age, I’d always loved performing and acting in school plays, or just messing around with my friends.

‘Then I did a play when I was 11, and that was my first professional thing.’

What was the play? A version of Hamnet before Maggie O’Farrell’s novel. It also became the moment he knew this was his future.

‘It was a contemporary take on the story, and it was really cool, an awesome thing for an 11-year-old to be doing, being up on stage. At that point I was like: “Yeah, this is what I love.”‘

He’d never met Sharon before starring in Youth but has a lot of love for his fictional mu, saying it was ‘inspiring to watch her work’ with so many different hats as the lead star, writer and producer on the show.

Among the many threads running in this show is Alex’s turbulent relationship with her changing body, something Sharon says is ‘very normal’, then quips: ‘ Things are dropping and sliding and appearing out of nowhere.’

In an age where we seem to be turning back the dial on the types of bodies we see in Hollywood and on our screens, is the mother-of-two worried about the backslide?

‘There was a short period of time when there was excitement about body positivity and representation of older people on screen and diversity of shapes and sizes.

‘It’s so easy to just slip back, and I think it affects all of us. There’s an awful lot targeted at women because the beauty and ageing industry is such a huge [one]. It’s shoved down our throats,’ she shares.

The actress shares she worries about the media her daughters are consuming (Picture: Getty)

Then adds that ‘the skinniest of bodies I’ve ever seen [are] showing up at the moment.

‘I find it really worrying, and I hate that my daughters are seeing it, and for it to be normalised by the media. It’s a worrying trend.’

As for her relationship with cosmetic treatments, she shares that it’s only in recent years she’s ‘spent any time on herself’.

‘I didn’t have any decent products until I hit 50. Now I’ll go in and have as many treatments as I need to make myself look like a human woman on TV. In terms of anything drastic, that gives me the heebie-jeebies,’ she jests.

‘I’m doing it for the women because I’ve had so many gorgeous messages saying that what I write relates to them and their lives…

Over the years, the industry legend, who some might call the ‘undisputed queen of TV’ has cultivated a loyal fanbase with a deep admiration for her and her work.

‘I feel like a very, very lucky girl,’ she acknowledges. Although she adds that it hasn’t come easy.

‘I don’t stop too much and that’s fine because I like what I do, and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t working. What would I do? I’d be on my phone,’ she jokes.

Then adds: ‘Having Youth picked up was one of the rare occasions that I didn’t have to try too hard, but for the most part, everything is a slog.

Motherland and Amandland have been megahits – but no other spinoffs are brewing for now (Picture: BBC/Merman/Scott Kershaw)

‘The reason why I keep wanting to make stuff and working hard on it is because there is a really gorgeous female fan base out there.

‘I’m doing it for the women because I’ve had so many gorgeous messages saying that what I write relates to them and their lives, and so you try and keep that up. I’d hate to let them down.’

With the mammoth success of her Motherland spin-off, Amandaland, she admits it has gone ‘beyond what we could have dreamt of’. It also means any other spin-offs in this universe are taking a backseat.

And as the creative genius behind so many beloved universes, would she consider stepping back into any of them?

‘No,’ she says with a content smile. ‘I feel like they happened at that time for that reason, and there’s lots and lots of stories out there that I want to tell.’

Youth debuts on HBO Max in the UK and Ireland on September 21.

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