Bad Sisters creator and star Sharon Horgan appeared on The Late Late Show on Friday where she attributed her massive success to "constantly hustling".
The second season of her acclaimed Bafta-winning black comedy is currently airing and Horgan told host Patrick Kielty that she was "just happy to get it out there" after working on it for so long, although she admitted she was "nervous about the reaction, especially from an Irish audience".
The first season, in which Horgan stars alongside Anne-Marie Duff, Eve Hewson, Eva Birthistle and Sarah Greene as the Garvey sisters, was adapted from the superb Flemish series Clan.
The Co Meath-raised actress, writer and producer said that writing the second season was "hard" in some ways as she had to "think of the whole thing myself" but that other aspects came more easily.
"In terms of the characters in writing it, I knew all those girls, they all kind of entered me as I was writing it," she said with a laugh. "I found it easier, I knew all their voices and I sort of knew what I was doing. The tone of the show was already established."
Without giving too much away, Kielty said there was a "shocker" in store for audiences this season.
"We do a terrible thing at the end of the second episode," Horgan informed the studio audience, before continuing: "It was really difficult [to write] and we went back and forth on whether we were actually gonna do it or not.
"It was really important to me to be really brutally honest about what can happen when you're in a terrible, abusive relationship like that.
"I love the end of the first season, but it's kind of like a perfect ending. Life isn't really like that. I found that I was really interested in telling the story of what the reality is of a woman like that, who is vulnerable and mistreated for so many years, who's been very isolated by that relationship.
"And what happens when she finds herself in a terrible situation and she can't reach out to her family."
As well as Bad Sisters, Horgan is also known for the excellent TV series Pulling, Catastrophe, Divorce and Motherland, as well as starring in films such as Game Night, Dating Amber and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
When asked by Kielty if she recognises the breadth of her success, Horgan said: "I mean, a little bit now. You know yourself, especially if you were brought up in a turkey farm, you never really expect things to work out for you in the media.
"For a long time, I felt like I got lucky. I met Dennis Kelly and wrote Pulling with him, I was 36 when it came out, that's a late start getting into this business. I met Rob Delaney, did Catastrophe, thought that was really lucky. I felt like I'd had a lot of lucky breaks.
"I wasn't quite prepared to go, you know, 'Well done me'. But it turns out, if you do it long enough and you create a few shows that are bona fide hits, it feels good."
"But you know, it never stops being hard," she added. "It's not like anything is ever handed to you just because you've made some good stuff in the past. It's always a slog, you have to constantly hustle.
"I'm a hustler. That's why I’m always making stuff."
Horgan was noncommittal when pressed by Kielty about the potential for a third run of Bad Sisters.
"I'm so tired, I don't know. Watch it, and then ask me," she said. "I don't know!"
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