Despite the fact that Apple TV+ series “Bad Sisters” follows four of the Garvey sisters as they spend almost ten episodes trying to kill a (somewhat) innocent man, Eva, Bibi, Ursula and Becka have captured viewers’ imaginations. The Ireland-based adaptation of Belgian limited series “Clan” has become something of a sleeper hit, gathering an increasing number of fans cheering the Garvey girls on as the show races to its inevitable conclusion.
Hours after the finale episode hit Apple on Friday (Oct. 14), Variety talked to writer, executive producer and star Sharon Horgan (“Catastrophe,” “Motherland”), who plays would-be matriarch Eva, to discuss the reaction to the show, as Claes Bang’s casting as villain John Paul (JP) and whether the Garvey sisters might ever make a return to the small screen.
What has the reaction been like to the series and the finale?
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I haven’t managed to delve in as much as I’d like to online but I’ve been absolutely delighted. I mean, people seem very involved, they seem to have really got on board. There’s so much great TV out there and you never know what’s going to capture people’s imaginations in a way that you hope it would. You spend that long making something – like two and a half years – and you’re sort of isolated a little bit. So when you put it out in the world, you are just keeping your fingers crossed. And oh, my God, it’s been amazing. I mean, I’ve been in New York and LA the last seven days and the response has been nuts.
How did you first come across the Belgian series and decide to adapt it?
I had no idea that this was what I wanted to do. It was post “Catastrophe” and I was doing some films and taking my time about figuring out what it was I wanted to write next. And then [Apple TV+ Europe boss] Jay Hunt had moved from Channel Four to Apple. She was my boss when we were doing “Catastrophe” there, she just took me for lunch and said, “What do you want to do?” I was mentioning a few things that I had up my sleeve and she went, “Oh what about this – it’s an adaptation of a Belgian series.” I can’t tell you how little I was in the market for adaptations of Belgian series. And certainly not an hour-long thriller, it was just completely out of my comfort zone. She said, “Just watch it.” And I honest to God watched the first episode, and I kind of knew I was gonna do it. As soon as I figured that I had something to say with the adaptation, that I could do it my way, I was on board. It’s good to do things where you take yourself out of your comfort zone. I was getting into a real half-hour sitcom groove and I love what I do, but writing about relationships, writing about parenthood, writing about family, and, I mean, this is kind of all that, but wrapped up in in genre, and I learned so much from it. And also just getting to make something of this scale, through [Horgan’s production company] Merman, getting to pull off a production like that was an enormous opportunity and God, we relished it.
Many elements of “Bad Sisters” are very faithful to the original, even down to some of the Garvey sisters’ names, but there are also some substantial changes, like JP almost drowning after he’s been drugged instead of being hanged in his garage. How did you choose what elements to keep and which to change?
My take on adapting anything is never change something for the sake of it, only change it if you’ve got a way of making it better or have a specific take on it. So I clung on to anything that I loved, but at the same time, tonally I wanted it to be completely different. The original is a murder attempt every episode. There’s a high body count and there’s all sorts of Chinese mafia and hitmen. I wanted to find a reality in each of those situations, and then the murder attempts that I kept I just wanted to do our way. So anything that was just great and really fun, and even specific lines I’ve kept in here and there, anything that was great, because why would you change it for the sake of it? I feel like the most important thing about adopting something is to have a new perspective and a new take on it. And if you have that, then it’s definitely worth doing. If you feel like you can add something to it and improve it, I suppose, in a way.
There are a lot of characters, especially the five sisters at the center of the story. Was it difficult giving each of them space to connect with the audience and tell their story?
It was really difficult. In fact, we ended up cutting a lot out that we had filmed. At the script stage, I fell in love with all the sisters and each have their own personal situations. In the scripting stage, we spent a lot more time in their domestic situations. But then when it comes down to it, you’re writing something that has such a driving force in it, which is the cat and mouse of the Claffins trying to discover foul play and then the murder attempts themselves. It’s often you find that you don’t want to go off into a more domestic, character-based tangent. So we cut out a lot at script stage and we cut out an awful lot at edit stage, which I think is par for the course. You find your story in the edit quite often.
Was it hard to keep the audience rooting for the sisters while they try to kill off JP, especially given the collateral damage in terms of Minna, the paint-balling instructor and of course, poor Oscar the dog?
Yeah, it was. I mean, the main thing that kept an audience on side is the odiousness of the villain and I think as watchable as he is, and at times as funny as his performance was, he’s a despicable man. And over the course of each episode, especially when you have the episodes that focus on each of the sisters’ own personal reason for wanting to kill them, as soon as that started piling up, I think, then I was less worried about an audience staying on board. I knew the stories were going to get more complex and more would be revealed as it went on. So I knew if we got that right, an audience would keep up. The longer you spent with sisters, even the snipiness or shiftiness, all of that just makes them more relatable, more human, so you’re more on side. And of course, Grace’s situation at the heart of it, just seeing her personality being stripped further and further, I feel like we kept the audience on board.
Absolutely – JP was like toxic masculinity personified. Speaking of which, how did Claes Bang end up in the role – was that an obvious choice for you?
Not at all. It was [casting director] Nina Gold’s idea. I had been a fan of his, but it would never have occurred to me. And in actual fact, as soon as we cast him I was like, this is going to give us so much because he is not an Irish man, because he is an outsider. That added to the character and added to his kind of anger in a way that he’s never quite gonna feel part of that family or even part of Ireland. I’m so grateful to her because even though he was someone I’d sort of admired I just wouldn’t have put him in that role.
Obviously, it’s a limited series, it has a very definite ending, but people really are asking to see more of the Garvey sisters. Is there any possibility for bringing them back?
Well, it’s a really weird one, because it absolutely ended where it ended. The original series was a limited series and I approached it in that way entirely and felt like the ending was satisfying. But it’s been mad, the response, especially to the to the sisters, especially to that family. It’s a tricky thing to come up with characters that an audience love and so – I don’t know. If I came up with a brilliant idea, if I thought of something that I thought was worthy, then maybe.
And finally, that last scene where the sisters jump into the Forty Foot [a bathing pool at the edge of the Irish Sea]. It’s a beautiful scene but how cold was it?
Oh, it was Baltic. It was absolutely Baltic. I mean, we all got varying levels of hypothermia. There’s old ladies and men and youngsters just jumping in and out and getting on with their day and we’re like, sitting around shivering under foil towels and being handed hot water bottles. Our bodies weren’t used to it. I was genuinely nervous, not even for myself as much as I was like, what if something happens to one of the cast members? We did a bit of cold water swimming leading up to it, but not enough to get your body read. But it was worth it, right? Because it’s such a beautiful thing to see and putting the Forty Foot on screen, I feel like it was something I haven’t seen before. It really added something.