Social Work

Twitter has certainly led to catastrophe, but never to such good effect.

The site is responsible for Rob Delaney, comedian and superstar Tweeter, meeting Sharon Horgan, co-creator and star of the British series Pulling, which in turn led to their collaboration on Catastrophe. The six-episode first season debuted in the U.S. on Amazon Prime earlier this summer, after premiering on Britain’s Channel 4 to much acclaim.

The romantic comedy follows Rob, an American ad man on business in London, and Sharon, a schoolteacher, who have a six-night hookup. A month later, he gets the call: she’s pregnant.

Delaney and Horgan — creator–executive producers of the comedy in addition to its stars — turn that catastrophic premise into a realistic, funny, messy, entirely original love story. The two recently chatted with emmy contributor Lisa Rosen from London, where they’re working on season two.

Rob, you’re from Boston but moved to L.A. Sharon, you’re a Londoner. How did you two meet?

Delaney: We met because Sharon followed me on Twitter. She was a fantasy target of someone to work with, so I wrote her that I was a massive fan.

We met in person back in 2010, became friendly and would hang out together in each other’s cities. We both have kids and spouses and have the same things we laugh at and are passionate about and are afraid of.

How did you end up working together?

Horgan: I don’t really know how it happened. It’s an odd thing… you click with someone you’ve never met before, and all of a sudden you’re making a ridiculously intimate show together about everything you care about. It’s about as weird as how you find a husband or wife.

That translates into great on-screen chemistry. Your characters clearly like each other.

Horgan: We’re genuinely laughing at each other on screen. He’s like my brother.

The least romantic scene in the show is possibly the most romantic, when Rob cuts Sharon’s toenails because she can’t reach them in her pregnant state. That’s love.

Delaney: I’m very happy you say that. In the series, they don’t say the phrase ‘I love you’ to each other, and we wanted the toenail-clipping scene to say it.

How did you hit on the tone? It’s so unusual — funny, dark and unapologetic on all counts. 

Delaney: We wanted it to feel real. Our job is to make sure the laugh-per-minute ratio is unnaturally high, but also to make it feel natural.

The pain should hurt just as much — and the frustration and the fear — which are things we’re trying to look at, because you don’t do a marriage for any length of time, you don’t bring children into the world with someone else, without there being frustrations. It’s a scary situation.

Did you sit down and ask yourself, ‘How can we subvert every rom-com cliché?’

Horgan: There was no master plan to shine the light on anything. It was more that we’re both easily embarrassed; we have a really low threshold when it comes to anything that might seem insincere.

So if anything sounded clichéd or not real, or if we’d heard it before, it just naturally didn’t go in because we’d both laugh. We didn’t even try for it to be particularly charming or romantic — it just happened. We’re as surprised as anyone.

Even the kids in Sharon’s class feel real. They’re not precious, but they’re not bad seeds either.

Delaney: Sometimes I wonder if kids in sitcoms were written by a writers’ room of 13 recent Ivy League [grads] who don’t know what it’s like to be around kids. Sharon and I are with kids all the time, and they’re complete people — they’re mean, petty, beautiful, curious and fascinating.

Speaking of children, Rob, you recently moved your family to London for the show. How do you juggle work and family?

Delaney: I am very sensitive to that question because I’m married to a woman, I work with a woman who is a mom and I have three kids under five. And I love my kids and my wife more than any script.

They desperately need me right now, and they won’t when they get older and that’ll be awful. But if we’re a success and [the show runs] for years, that would be fun to write about.

But it’s very hard. My life is the tension between work and family. I try not to hate the tension or think I wouldn’t be funny if I weren’t under the stress. I’m measurably funnier now. I became funnier with each kid, because my life became more difficult and my capacity to experience joy increased.

Sharon, is it weird shooting sex scenes with someone who feels like your brother?

Horgan: It is, actually.

Rob appears naked in the show, but Sharon doesn’t. Was that a conscious decision?

Delaney: I definitely [thought] I should be naked, because people will laugh at that.

Horgan: The thing is, we didn’t have the money for a proper [pregnancy] prosthetic. Especially when it got to be eight months, I had this great big plastic thing, like a pregnant corset.

But in a way I felt like it was a great stride forward. [In TV] it’s always the girl with her boobs out.

Delaney: To begin to address the disparity between men and women’s nudity in television, each episode would have to have a close-up of my penis and testicles. So we’re barely putting a dent in it by having me be naked.

Horgan: I quite like that Rob Delaney has his got his bum out. Regularly.