‘Bad Sisters’ Sharon Horgan’s Darkly Hilarious Recipe for the Most Horrendous Human
Producer/director Sharon Horgan may as well be the Anthony Bourdain of character creation with her recipe for the complex, multi-layered character John Paul in her darkly hilarious Apple TV+ series, Bad Sisters.
The series should actually be named Good Sisters because this group of tight-knit siblings ultimately do the world a favor. The 10-part series opens with John Paul’s funeral; the cast looking forlorn and John Paul’s widow Grace heartbroken. But what simmers above the surface is not what is truly happening beneath as each episode peels the onion of the horrors and sadistic crimes John Paul committed against each of Grace’s sisters – especially Grace herself.
John Paul is more complex than the typical monster that goes bump in the night
John Paul, brilliantly played by actor Claes Bang is an adaption from the series Clan. Horgan told The New York Times she kept the perfect “nickname” for the character from Clan for Bad Sisters. Throughout the series, John Paul is typically referred to as “The Prick.” It really says it all.
And while the character in Clan was sloppy and unattractive, Horgan purposefully made John Paul physically appealing. “An attractive abuser,” she referred to him. He seems to be impressed with himself at home, dominating Grace and running his daughter’s life. But he’s not seen as someone with a commanding presence by others. This is something that tickled Horgan.
“I don’t know if it’s Shakespearean,” she said, “But the idiot provides relief. I like that he was someone who was incredibly in control and dangerous, but at times, was also an ineffectual person.”
‘Bad Sisters’ John Paul is a demon hiding in plain sight
Bad Sisters John Paul is also a nod to another attractive abuser, “Perry” in HBO’s Big Little Lies. Perry was someone who used sex as a weapon, which John Paul does to an extent. “It’s not just a straight-up monster that you have to get away from; it’s far more subtle than that,” Horgan said.
Horgan essentially wanted John Paul to be able to hide his rotten soul behind his appearance. “It makes a character more unnerving,” she said, referring to unredeemable characters in Handmaid’s Tale and Game of Thrones. “You see these occasional moments of humanity, so you’ll forgive them — it’s how abusers operate.”
She also sourced other aspects of his character from the MAGA and Trump movements. Horgan said it wasn’t Donald Trump specifically, but John Paul would definitely lean right politically. She took some of Trump’s characteristics, citing how Trump “can appear less dangerous because he’s a clown and so weak and so vain.”
Horgan added, “There are other members of the G.O.P. who would seem a lot more frightening. The ones who are clearly trying to restrict women’s freedom while, at the same time, having morally dubious behavior.”
‘The Prick’ is a ‘street angel and a house devil’
Horgan’s other ingredients included giving John Paul an evil past and animal abuse. In a matter-of-fact way, his mother describes how he would drown frogs in milk when he was a child. He also chases his daughter’s new cat into the street, spraying the animal with a hose. And then stands there emotionless when the cat is hit by a car.
“I like the idea of him being, to a certain extent, a street angel and a house devil,” Horgan said. “These men get away with what they get away with because it’s often happening behind closed doors — they’re not walking around with signs on their head exuding danger. It’s always a shock, isn’t it?”
Episodes of Bad Sisters are currently streaming on Apple TV+.
