‘Bad Sisters’ creator Sharon Horgan on US writers’ strike & “ridiculous, short-sighted” situation

Bad Sisters

Bad Sisters creator Sharon Horgan has hit out at the “short-sighted” treatment of writers in the US and admitted she feels “kind of guilty” that she is still working on the second season of the Apple TV+ hit.

Horgan, speaking on the last day of the Banff World Media Festival, has “put down tools” on all her US projects but is able to work on the second season of Bad Sisters – produced by her prodco Merman – because it is based out of the UK.

“Success should breed success, we’re in a ridiculous situation where you can have an enormously successful show and somebody is doing well out of all that,” she said.

Horgan described issues around residuals as being a “massive thing” and said the increased use of mini-rooms would result in a diminished industry over the next five years.

“Writers rooms are really important as a breeding ground for new writers, it is where we learn. If you just have mini-rooms staffed with upper level writers there is an onus on them to do an enormous amount of work and that seems all out of whack.

Catastrophe

“It is really short-sighted because what will happen two, three or five years from now is that you won’t have younger talent who have learned what it is to run a show or to co-EP a show.”

AI impact & Catastrophe reboot

Horgan said the UK was also “pretty messed up” with issues around getting new talent onto screen with “a lot of the same problems”, adding that AI – another of the major issues in the US strike – “is very scary.”

“We don’t know where it will all end up or how fast it will move. [The studios] are saying a conversation will be had to address that along the way but that’s not enough, it is a very scary world.

“We should all be scared of it, not just writers and actors – it affects the whole industry. It’s not just writers wanting more, it is about how continuing down this route might render all the people in TV and film unnecessary. It is massive.”

Horgan has previously been behind shows including Pulling and Motherland. A US remake of the latter had been in the works but was recently passed on by ABC, something horgan attributed to the Disney-owned network “playing it safe”.

“I think because of the current climate they just weren’t ready to take a chance on launching a new comedy. But you know, it’s their loss,” she added.

Horgan also quashed any chance that Catastrophe – the Channel 4 comedy created with Rob Delaney – would return in any way, saying it “would be too scary, in case we fucked it up.”

“So no [to Catastrophe], but I’d love to work with Rob again, it was a special thing we had.”