Fiona Shaw joins 'Bad Sisters' Season 2 as a curious busybody: 'Very easy to hate a woman of a certain age'

Bad Sisters showrunner Sharon Horgan proves why she's one of the best, taking the Apple TV+ show into Season 2 in a way that is equally, if not more, thrilling and addictive than its first season. Starting two years after the death of Grace's (Anne-Marie Duff) abusive husband, JP "The Prick" (Claes Bang), the Garvey sisters face an even more terrifying nightmare.

The season begins with the dismembered body of JP’s father being found, with Grace having to face questions from detectives once again. Grace is also a newlywed, marrying Owen McDonnell's character Ian. The hope is that this is the romantic partnership Grace deserves.

Also new to the cast is the brilliant Fiona Shaw as Angelica, living with her brother, Roger (Michael Smiley), another one of JP's victims. After Season 1 we know that Roger is aware of the circumstances surrounded JP's death, including Grace's involvement, but the pressure of holding that information, especially with detectives snooping around, is a lot for him to manage.

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'She just feels she has a right to the family'

Shaw's character is a particularly intriguing addition to this story, a character whose intentions are hard to really figure out, making for compelling storytelling. Angelica is a meddling Catholic woman who completely oversteps by trying to insert herself into the lives of the Garvey sisters in quite an uncomfortable and questionable way.

"I was really interested in the ambiguity, because I know everybody will be watching [saying], 'Where's the prick? Who's the prick? Who's the villain with the capital V?'" executive producer and director, Dearbhla Walsh, told Yahoo Canada. "I think it's very easy to hate a woman of a certain age and a woman who has any association with anything to do with the church, and I know lots of those women, and so I really was interested in ... how do we keep her real and how do we feel for her."

"And so to keep that ambiguity going, and going, ... 'Can a busybody really be dangerous?' Because she seems kind of harmless, more annoying, and obviously she becomes such a threat to the girls. But ultimately, at the heart of her, she's got a vulnerability, and she's lonely and she wants to be one of the cool girls. So it was fantastic playing with her and constantly trying to bring new dimensions to the character."

Shaw highlighted that she was particularly "charmed" by her character, Angelica.

"It's very clever writing where you can both be very annoying and yet very charming, and we had great fun sort of working on that," she said. "I'm very charmed by Angelica. I think she's a delightful character"

"She's too knowledgeable about other people and I know people who are just too knowledgeable about you. ... She doesn't know she's unwelcome. I mean, that's the comedy of it is that she assumes that she's liked by everybody because she's smiling and she just doesn't get boundaries. And maybe in that way it's quite a nice thing to observe, is that you see someone who has no boundaries crashing into other people's private conversations and assuming she has a position, because she likes them. She just assumes she's welcome and has a kind of ownership. ... She just feels she has a right to the family."

The famed actor was also delighted to see that her character goes on a real journey throughout the season, and our perception of Angelica certainly shifts in different moments in the story as we're trying to evaluate how much of a threat she is to the Garvey sisters.

"I didn't know where Angelica was going to go, at the beginning I thought, 'I hope she's not just this busybody,' but she so isn't," Shaw said.

"After Episode 4 you've got a completely different story and that's really good writing too, ... it's not a static character, that something completely different happens and that Angelica doesn't lie down and accept whatever happens to her, she's up and at it."

'She writes families with such authenticity'

Both Walsh and Shaw praised Horgan's work on the series, both as showrunner and star of the show.

"I don't know what animal she is, but if she were I'd say she's two animals, she's an eagle, because her eye is so brilliant, ... both acting and keeping an eye on everything, and she's a sort of spider weaving this amazing web. So she is multi-gifted," Shaw said. "Sharon is ... absolutely focused on her work, but also full of fun and chatting, but she normally has a laptop near her and she's usually re-writing and fixing things."

Walsh highlighted that Horgan is "very particular" about tone as a writer, while also giving a beautifully "naturalistic" performance as an actor.

"She writes about the human condition, about being a woman at a certain age. She writes relationships with such authenticity. She writes families with such authenticity, and the Irish experience," Walsh said. "And they're all things I connect with. My gender, my age, my family, my community, my nationality. So I think we were born to work together, and thankfully it's a marriage that is really effective."

"I think we both keep each other really honest. I don't want to write, so I love to direct and work with the actors and to honour the writing. So there's never any issue there. And I think Sharon trusts me and Sharon never takes the easy way out of anything. Her work ethic is extraordinary. I really admire her and ... admire the truths in her storytelling."