Sharon Horgan recalls the genuine terror she felt blowing up a house for Bad Sisters
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The Garvey sisters at the center of Bad Sisters earn their name. One could (successfully) argue, though, that the man they're trying to kill — their abusive, belittling, manipulative brother-in-law John Paul (Claes Bang) — is the truly bad one, horrible even.
Their attempt to free their sister, Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), from John Paul's controlling clutches becomes a comedically wicked game reminiscent of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote as Eva (Sharon Horgan), Bibi (Sarah Greene), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), and Becka (Eve Hewson) fail not once or twice but five times over the course of the 10-episode Apple TV+ series.
"The hardest one was the first kill attempt because at that point you're not so fully ingrained in the world or the sisters, so you had to see him do something really bad to understand why someone like Eva would get behind it," series co-creator and star Horgan says on EW's The Awardist podcast. "She hates him, but she's not a killer. That was the tricky thing: Is an audience going to believe that these women would do that?"
Christopher Barr/Apple TV+. Anne-Marie Duff, Saise Quinn, Sharon Horgan, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene, and Eve Hewson in 'Bad Sisters'
Making that first attempt even harder was the fact that Eva and Bibi were trying to take out John Paul in a big way, by blowing up his and Grace's vacation cabin while he's there on a hiking trip. After secretly scoping out the home, the sisters figure out a way to make it look like an accidental gas leak. Unfortunately for them, John Paul isn't inside when it explodes — which was all done live and practically, no special effects.
"That was our one go at that cabin. We were s---ting our pants," Horgan recalls, laughing. "The guys who we'd employed to do the explosion, they were so laid back... they were taking their sweet time and I was sweating buckets because I was so sure it was going to go wrong — we were going to blow this house up to smithereens and something would go wrong and we'd have to build a new house or whatever. But it worked, and when it exploded, the terror that myself and Sarah Green were feeling was genuine because it was loud and it was hot."
Check out the full episode below (or the video above) for more from Horgan, who also explains the thought that went into which actress was best for which sister, the show's many twists, the abusive dynamic between John Paul and all of the Garvey women, and more.
Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights leading up to all the major award shows.
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