Sharon Horgan on Her Daring New Comedy, Youth

In her new series, the Catastrophe showrunner stars as a 50-something literary agent plunged back onto the dating scene – here, she opens up about the mysteries of on-screen chemistry and mastering her self-doubt

By turns tender and sardonic, Youth has all the rapier wit that’s become writer and actress Sharon Horgan’s signature over the years. Premiering on HBO Max this week, the show stars Horgan as Alex, a 50-year-old divorcee seeking love and adventure while having to take care of her ageing parents and a troubled son. She’s also a literary agent based in London – the kind of job you can’t leave at the door of your office, even if you’ve already planned a date with a stranger. 

Horgan says she’s proud to put a middle-aged woman in a “kind of love story” like this one. “I think we’re showing all sides of what it means to be a woman of that age, how you deal with it and the challenges that come from that,” the star tells AnOther at Karlovy Film Festival, where she’s co-hosting a panel on storytelling in the streaming age with The Sopranos creator David Chase. “I’ve always been interested in what people do when they’re not at home. Ultimately, work is a huge part of our lives. I haven’t done anything like Youth before.”

Youth is an ensemble comedy drama with Alex the first among equals, and Horgan gave careful attention to its casting, which she says has always been a huge part of her work as a showrunner: “Whenever I have a specific idea in my head, it doesn’t mean that this is a person we are going to offer a role to. It’s a process, and you never know where – or with whom – you are going to end up. While working on casting for Youth, I was searching for someone who was not only perfect for the tone of the show, which is one thing, but also comedically and dramatically brilliant. Sometimes you make an offer straight away, but mostly there are auditions to go through.”

It often comes down to a question of chemistry: “I’ve seen actors who couldn’t stand each other, and on screen they were electric,” Horgan says. “It’s so hard to quantify or even define what chemistry really is. But once it appears, you feel it, and it affects you throughout the whole scene.” The right script certainly helps. “You can write chemistry, trust me on this one. Take, for instance, mine and Rob Delaney’s characters from Catastrophe. Initially, we wrote them as perfect sparring partners, and it worked. With the characters in Youth, I tried to do something quite similar.”

Ultimately, Horgan says, she knew that Youth’s success would hinge on more than purely romantic pairings. “Here, we have two female heroines, Alex and her friend, played by Sharlene Whyte, so they need friendship chemistry. But we also have a mother-son relationship, and their rapport requires something much more familial.” The romantic element of the chemistry meanwhile is where Rupert Friend enters the conversation. Horgan says it was one of her best decisions to invite Friend, an ensemble player in Wes Anderson’s films, to play Patrick, Alex’s potential love interest. “He can do everything,” she says. “He is comedically exceptional. I call him a master of accents. He can be so many different things, play various people and always stay incredibly truthful. He was very easy to have chemistry with, because we like each other as people, and I could also see how much he cared about our show. 

Following the likes of Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, this is Horgan’s ninth show: “Every time you finish one show and start another, you wonder, ‘How did I do it the last time?’ You sort of forget everything, and you need a while to find the right direction.” Youth, though, is tonally different from her other projects. “I guess that in a way I’m scared of it going out, but I’m also interested in whether people agree with me. I hope that women will feel that I tried to make it quite authentic,” she says. “Or maybe they’ll say it’s just like my other sitcoms?”  

After the massive success of Bad Sisters, one might ask if Horgan is finally at ease with her impostor syndrome, which kept her up at night in recent years. “I wouldn’t say it haunts me any more,” she says after giving it some thought. “Everyone gets it to a certain extent, but I think I’ve elevated my work to a good standard so many times that I’m not scared of it. I feel like I deserve to be in the room.” Now, says Horgan, her biggest problem is letting go of the characters she creates once they are released into the world: “They start as a scribble on a page, and then they become this fully fledged thing that I’ve fallen in love with. When it’s fun, you suddenly ask yourself, ‘What if I never do it again? What if I never create a great character again?’ I’m still going through all these questions flying around my head. We’ll see what comes next.”

Youth is available to watch now on HBO Max.