They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and Sharon Horgan made sure hers was particularly frosty when she cast a woman her ex cheated on her with in one of her TV shows.
The Bad Sisters creator and star, who can currently been seen in her HBO series Youth, opened up about the incident in a new interview, as she revealed that an unnamed ex-boyfriend of hers “got in touch” after realising what she’d done.
“It was a bit awkward... I cast one of the girls he had been with while he was with me as an extra,” she told The Daily Mail.
The Irish actor, 56, said casting the woman had been “the best fun for me”, explaining: “And so he got in touch about seeing this girl. But she was in on it. She was really fine about it.” She did not reveal the identity of her ex, or the girl she cast to spite him.
With her two daughters – Sadhbh and Amer – now young adults, Horgan split from her husband of 14 years, TV producer Jeremy Rainbird, in 2019.
Reflecting on their divorce last year, Horgan admitted that she was “angry” at herself for not realising her marriage was over sooner and revealed that she is raising her children alone, without help from her ex-husband.
“There came a point where it was so clear that it wasn’t right for either of us,” she said on the How To Fail podcast. It’s an odd one because I’ve never been happier but I’m angry at myself.
“Not for the failure of the marriage but for not figuring it out earlier. It’s so destructive, I think. You get one life and that’s an awful lot of time to spend on something that’s not working.”
Written by Horgan, Youth is her post-divorce comedy; Horgan plays Alex, a recently divorced literary agent in her fifties who is re-evaluating her life choices as 60 creeps closer.
Speaking about her divorce while promoting the show, the Catastrophe star said that she “genuinely thought I’d be alone forever” and “didn’t even know if I’d ever have sex again”.
“There’s that extreme fear of being alone and being lonely. But at the same time, you think you have a freedom as well,” she told The Guardian. “You do suddenly think: ‘My kids have finished school, I’ve got some time to try and get this right.’”
Horgan is now in a relationship with Irish actor Barry Ward, the star of Save Me and The Capture who appeared in her Apple TV+ drama Bad Sisters.
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