Irish comic actor Sharon Horgan says she based her new sitcom on her horrific experience of pregnancy.
The comedienne and mother-of-two referred to her past experiences of child birth when she wrote Channel 4′s new comedy Catastrophe with American funnyman Rob Delaney. The show follows a couple who have to deal with pregnancy after a short affair.
Sharon and Rob play lovers and parents-to-be in Catastrophe (Channel 4)
“It wasn’t just mine that we based (the show) on. We used mine and Rob’s wife’s experiences, we mixed it all in,” she said.
“I got knocked over by my dog and broke my knee. My pelvis parted, so I was on crutches for most of it. My second one, my ribs felt like they were splitting because my baby was so massive.”
She continued: “A lot went wrong – the same with Rob’s wife – which is why we were able to throw that all in there. Any s**t that happened to me we multiplied by two, because we had another pregnancy to steal from as well.
“But you ask any woman who’s been through it. There won’t be too many rosy stories in there. I know there are women out there who loved being pregnant, but that wasn’t my experience.”
Sharon has a fake baby bump (Channel 4)
Sharon had to relive her pregnancy days for the show, with fake baby bumps.
“I had three or four bumps over the series. It was good, because it genuinely felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially the really big one,” she admitted.
“It was really heavy, and it did make me relive it, because my back was f***ed at the end of it, and I remember feeling exactly the same at the end of the pregnancy. But it worked – whenever I needed to be grumpy and fed up in character, I generally was.”
Catastrophe starts on January 19 at 10pm on Channel 4.
