RTÉ Entertainment’s John Byrne meets up with Sarah Goldberg and Susan Stanley: creators, writers, stars and producers of the delightfully dysfunctional new dramedy SisterS.
Sarah Goldberg has one of those faces just made for the camera. Explosively expressive, the Canadian actress came into HBO black comedy Barry as Sally, the bit-part, would-be-or-not girlfriend of the central character, Bill Hader's eponymous Barry. One Emmy nomination later, Sally’s got her own story arc. And Sarah’s got her own TV show. Kismet.
[Check out the stunning clip below to see how great Sarah is in Barry.]
Together with Dublin actress Susan Stanley - with whom she’s been besties for almost two decades since they ran into each other at LAMDA drama school in London - she’s formed a professional partnership that’s spawned SisterS.
Before it heads Stateside, SisterS is on Thursday nights on RTÉ One or you can check it out on the RTÉ Player. Either way, it comes highly recommended from this quarter as it’s quite a hoot, while scooting around some serious themes.
The story goes as follows: after the death of her mother, Canadian thirtysomething Sare (Goldberg) decides to travel to Ireland to find her birth father but gets a lot more than she bargained for along the way. Amongst the surprises is her half-sister Sue, played by Stanley.
The two women, born continents and cultures apart being from Canada and Ireland, decide to embark on a road trip together to seek out their alcoholic father. And while there are plenty of laughs along the way, SisterS also explores how the absence of a parent can disrupt adult life - often in unforeseen ways.
The show also features Pat Shortt, Carrie Crowley and Sophie Thompson. We all know what Pat and Carrie can bring (and that's a lot), but Sophie is tremendous as the mammy, Sheryl. Add in Father Ted and Ted Lasso director Declan Lowney doing a similar job here, and you’ve got one hell of a show.
Meeting Sarah and Susan in the confines of an RTÉ waiting room is quite an introduction to the series. They finish each other's sentences, have great fun together, wind each other up - but take what they do very seriously. They’re also two of the warmest people I’ve met.
John Byrne: You guys have know each other for some time . . .
Susan Stanley (SS) and Sarah Goldberg (SG) in unison: 19 years!!!
But it’s one thing being friends, quite another when it comes to working together. Was that something that started early on?
SS: It did. We met at drama school and we were always the two together. You’d have to choose people to do projects with, and we were always together doing projects. So when we left drama school we thought we were going to set up a theatre company. But we didn’t.
SG: We were too busy trying to forge careers and on the hustle so . . .
SS: But we always had a kind-of work relationship as well as a strong friendship. We were always buzzing with ideas. Y’know, that thing where you’re drinking loads of wine . . .
SG: And think you’re brilliant . . .
SS: Fantastic! Then it turns out you’re not.
SG: Turns out it takes a lot of hard work too!
SS: But we always work hard at that dynamic too.
And then came SisterS . . .
SG: This was a whole new thing for us. We were wearing a lot of hats. We were producing, we were writing, we were acting. So we were learning a lot about each as we went along.
Our real win in the whole thing is that we’re still best friends after all that. Sleep-deprived and all, we really muscled on through.
You were totally in control of this project?
SG: So we can’t blame anyone else!
Obviously there are huge negatives to that - the workload and endless off-camera headaches for example - but the artistic and creative positives are obvious . . .
SS: We were so lucky, because we had incredible producers - Angela Squire and Richard Cook, who run Peer Pressure - and they were the first producers to come on board. And they really protected our vision. Now, that’s a huge gamble on new writers.
SG: And Peer Pressure brought Declan Lowney on board six years ago and he stuck with us all these years . . .
SS: Even when he went super famous with Ted Lasso!
SG: And so we were really lucky in that regard that we had this brilliant collaborator from the start, who we couldn’t believe was wanting to make our show. And he helped unlock. A lot. He helped us with a lot of really intelligent questions throughout the years, just in our writing process.
Great having some like that on board. No matter how gifted or talented you or anyone may be, there are ways of doing things that he’d have learned and developed over the years. It’s a craft. He’s a guy who can say ‘That just won’t work visually’.
SG: Exactly. And we really wanted to learn. We were open to learning. Even in post-production, it was our first time doing sound links, our first time doing colour correction. We’d start every session going: ‘Hey guys, we’ve never done this before’ and it was so exciting. We were getting to learn all new kinds of jobs.
SS: We were in very safe hands with Declan because he’s obviously got decades of experience. He really helped us.
SG: He really nurtured the project. He knows what’s funny. He helped elevate the humour, but he was also very protective of our vision. He always said to us: 'Let me be your eyes.' He wanted to facilitate what we were trying to say.
So what was the genesis of the show? Did one of you just say: ‘I’ve got this idea . . .’
SS: From when we met, we always wanted to talk about these two women who were just polar opposites. We wanted to use that as a way into the story because we were so different when we first met.
I was coming from Dublin, I was a bit older than Sarah. I was in this fancy drama school and - let’s face it - she’s Canadian.
SG: We’re not that funny!
SS: And in walks this optimistic, no irony . . . she just didn’t have that self-loathing that we have as Irish people, which is incredibly discombobulating for me.
SG: Don’t worry. Since then Susan’s taught it all to me. It’s rubbed off.
SS: So we had this very deep, subterranean connection, that was actually sparked by a Leonard Cohen song - her countryman - we were both huge fans. From then on it was just about trying to find the right story to fit that and then . . .
SG: We were interested in a few different themes. We were interested in the epigenetics of trauma . . . and chosen family, and we were interested in culture clash humour. We were trying to find a way into hitting on all those themes, and we came up with the idea in 2016.
We passed so many notes before that and nothing stuck, but once we got on to this it really stuck. We knew we were on to something.
SisterS is on RTÉ One on Thursdays at 10.15pm, with all episodes available on the RTÉ Player
