Sharon Horgan has made a career out of telling relatable, comedic stories.
The actress stars in Youth, an original HBO comedy she created that was just renewed for season 2. Youth follows a 50-year-old divorcee named Alex who searches for love while also caring for her ailing parents and parenting her should-be grown-up son.
Horgan had been thinking about the characters in Youth years before she made the series, even prior to making her 2022 Apple TV show Bad Sisters.
“Pre-Bad Sisters I was just about hitting 50, and I was just coming out of a divorce and my kids were getting older, and this new phase of life appeared to be happening that I thought had good potential for story,” Horgan said.
The actress decided: “I want a write about being a woman of that age and getting back out onto the sort of scene, as it were, because I found that I was waking up and thinking, ‘I’m gonna die alone.’ And I thought, ‘That’s kind of funny.'”
“Dating is so much harder when you hit this age, because just, it’s different. Your body’s different, your confidence is different. The people who are available to you romantically are different,” Horgan said.
While there are parts of Horgan embedded into everything she makes, the creator feels as though Youth in particular is more personal than her other projects.
“It’s a really odd one, actually. It’s more so than other shows I’ve done. And a lot of the work that I do could be called auto-fiction. I put a lot of myself into the majority of my work. But this feels extra,” Horgan said.
Alex has a son, Horgan has two daughters. They have careers that “couldn’t be more different,” Horgan said. Yet, she feels extremely connected to the character.
“It’s just, I guess, simply that. That I put a lot of myself into the character, and use some of my own very personal experiences and heartache,” Horgan said. “So that feels weird.”
Horgan said including real moments from her life felt like asking Youth‘s audience, “Do you like me?” and “Do you think I’m funny?”
“I think putting anything out is tough, because you’ve been sitting with it for so long. You’ve been making it for usually years, and the only person you’ve had to please, well, outside of the streamer or whatever you’re making it for, is yourself,” Horgan said. “Once it goes out there, it belongs to everyone and everyone decides what it is. And that’s a scary prospect.”
Horgan also hopes people will relate to what Alex goes through, whether it be watching your kid who just left for college immediately decide to come home or what happens to your body when you hit your 50s.
“I think it is really helpful to see someone go through it, especially on a small screen, because it’s so much more relatable when it’s TV, when it is in your home,” Horgan said. “It feels less out of your reach. Less aspirational or something. And so that would be my dream, that people feel like you’re reflecting their lives back at them.”
All eight episodes of Youth season 1 are available to stream on HBO Max.
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