Bad Sisters'Sharon Horgan Had to Stop Using Friends' Experiences to Write TV Shows After It 'Backfired' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Sharon Horganis careful about how much real life she infuses into her writing.

TheBad Sisterscreator and star, 54, is the first to admit that when she was starting out, she was a “magpie for people’s stories” and would pull from the real experiences of those around her to infuse into her writing.

“When I grew [up] some more, I was like, ‘Oh, you can’t do that,'” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I make sure I’m very careful now.”

Part of the evolution was Horgan growing up, yes, but part of her pilfering also came back to haunt her a “couple of times.”

“Not that it backfired horribly, but yeah, I got an email out of the blue from a woman I used to live with,” she recalls. “She was like, ‘Hey, I just watched’ — I can’t remember what it was,Pulling, I think — ‘and I really recognized the story.’ And I mean, she didn’t admonish me. It was more of a catch-up. It was more like, ‘Wow, those [were] heavy days.'”

Sharon Horgan, Rob Delaney and Carrie Fisher in ‘Catastrophe’ season 1 (2015).Amazon

Amazon

While it didn’t go over that badly, “it certainly put me off doing it again,” she admits.

Still, “It’s a great way to get accuracy into your writing,” she defends.

Case in point: while writingHBO’sDivorce, Horgan says she hadn’t been through divorce yet but her friend had. “And so I was like, ‘Look, I’m writing this thing and I just feel like I want it to feel as authentic as possible. Can you talk me through what happened the day you asked her husband for a divorce?'”

Now that she has been through a divorce — she separated from Jeremy Rainbird, with whom she shares daughters Sadhbh, 20, and Amer, 16, in 2019 after 14 years of marriage — Horgan admits she likely would’ve pulled from her own experiences a bit for that series. “That’s my story. It’s 50% my story. I think that’s okay.”

Her daughters, on the other hand, will always be firmly off limits in her writing. “I would never use their experiences because I just feel it’s not my place.”

For more on Sharon Horgan, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

Nearly two decades after her first taste of success with the BBC Three sitcomPulling, Horgan can “worry less about what idea is coming from where next,” but there’s one critic that weighs heavily on her mind these days.

“If I hadn’t represented Ireland and the Irish people accurately or in a way that made them proud… I’d throw in the towel.”

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source: people.com