Sharon Horgan’s “Catastrophe” character can occasionally be harsh, but the actress says that’s how she was envisioned from the beginning.
“The Sharon character is cynical and she is a pessimist,” said Horgan, who also serves as co-creator and executive producer on the Amazon comedy alongside Rob Delaney. “She’s kind of hard on herself, and she’s hard on Rob. And that was kind of the plan, because we wanted to turn the male-female stereotype on its head a bit.”
Even still, sometimes the character’s cynicism needs to be toned down a bit after the first draft of the script is completed.
“When we get to the end of our scripts, we always do an ‘asshole pass’ on Rob to make him a little bit of an asshole, and then we do a ‘nice pass’ on Sharon to make her a little bit nicer,” Horgan said.
Horgan and Delaney have co-written every episode of the series, about a couple who begin a relationship after their brief fling results in an unexpected pregnancy, and the duo was recently nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.
“I’m with him every day for months before we film,” Horgan says of her working partner. “And apart from his hardcore body odor, he’s a really nice person to hang around with.”
Watch the interview above.