'We always had a fire in our belly': Meet the friends behind RTÉ's dark comedy SisterS

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sharon Horgan and Michaela Cole have paved the way to tell women’s truth on screen. Irish and Canadian friends Susan Stanley and Sarah Goldberg have taken up the mantle with new series, SisterS. By Esther McCarthy

Sun, 26 Mar, 2023 - 18:03

They first met at drama school and forged a friendship through a shared sense of black humour, storytelling, and the music of Leonard Cohen.

Now Irish and Canadian pals Susan Stanley and Sarah Goldberg are ready for their close-ups as two very different women who discover they’re half-sisters.

Filmed on location in Ireland, edgy new series SisterS stars Goldberg as Sare, a woman who discovers a huge family secret on the death of her mother. The dad she knew as dad isn’t her biological father after all - that would be an Irish busker her mother had a fling with decades earlier.

Seeking to trace him, there’s an even greater shock when Sare discovers she has a half-sister, Suze (Stanley) - a straight-talking thirtysomething at the centre of some drama of her own.

Inspired by other storytellers like Sharon Horgan and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the friends co-created the show out of a desire to play real and complicated women. It was partly driven in the early days of their careers, they say, by frustration at a dearth of strong stories - so they set about creating their own.

“I think as we were on the hustle for our acting careers, we were inspired by Phoebe Waller bridge, Michaela Cole, and all of these women who were out there telling those stories,” says Sarah.

“We were often feeling frustrated by either work environments we were in or roles we were playing, where the things we wanted to articulate and the stories we wanted to tell weren’t necessarily on the page. So I think some of it was born out of frustration and need.

“I think that what both of us had in common in our performance style is that we’re incredibly story-driven people. I know an egoless actor is an oxymoron. But I like to think that we live in that terrain, where we care more about the story than our own vanity.”

Both keen writers, the two women started to discuss creating a project together. The result is SisterS - a dark new comedy shot on location in Ireland.

“The collective focus of storytelling is the thing that drew us both to wanting to do this with our lives,” says Sarah. “Sometimes when you’re playing wife number seven - with three lines - behind the seven blokes, you feel an existential puncture to the soul. A pile of those, and the frustration can really yield good work.”

A LONG TIME COOKING

Even before it debuts on RTÉ, SisterS is already growing legs internationally. A co-production between Ireland and Canada, it already has broadcasters on board in several countries including the United States.

But success does not come easily, and the friends spent six years developing, writing, and filming the show. They collaborated with and supported each other through a connection that was first forged in the prestigious drama school - The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art - where they met almost two decades ago. They have fond memories of when their friendship began.

“It’s been a long time cooking,” smiles Susan. “Sarah and I met 19 years ago at drama school in London. When we met, I was a bit older than Sarah - Sarah was 19, I was 24.

“I came from Dublin and I got to LAMDA and I was a bit…I was obviously deeply insecure and in over my head,” she laughs at the memory of her college days. “But I had this cool attitude, smoking fags, going ‘I’ve seen it all’.

“And then this bright-eyed 19-year-old optimistic Canadian walked in (“She’s washed it all off me since then!” adds her friend). She also had zero self-loathing, which was really discombobulating for me. Very soon after that, we bonded over Leonard Cohen and I couldn’t believe that this woman who seemed so bright was a real fan of Leonard Cohen, her countryman. From then on, our relationship was forged in fire and we sort of fell in love.”

Sarah Goldberg & Susan Stanley: dedicated friends and collaborators across two decades

Sarah, too, has vivid memories of first encountering Susan when new students were asked to entertain the class with a real-life anecdote.

The Dubliner’s story involved a wedding she had to attend in borrowed clothes because she’d forgotten to bring her dress. “She got up and she had this big mane of curly hair. And I listened to her story, and I just thought: ‘I want to be best friends with that girl’. She was so cool.”

Susan and Sarah’s quirky, offbeat, and often macabre sense of humour feeds into SisterS, a series that they created, wrote, star in, and co-produce. There was, they say, a commonality to what they wanted to achieve in their careers even from those early days.

“We were really interested in writing our own work,” says Sarah. “We always had an ambition to do that. We both started theatre companies before we went to LAMDA and we’d had that in common. Back when we were in theatre school, there wasn’t a huge amount of emphasis on creating your own work as there is now.

“That mould wasn’t set, there was a huge emphasis on fitting the mould. And as two foreigners in London, you know, it was about changing our accents and changing our posture. That didn’t really connect for us and so we were writing our own projects. I think we saw ourselves as Sarah Kane wannabes,” she adds, referring to the cutting-edge English playwright and director.

“We wrote a lot of projects with bathtubs full of blood, that sort of thing - your typical drama school pretension.”

FIRE IN THE BELLY

On leaving drama school, Sarah and Susan toyed with the idea of setting up a theatre company. They dreamed big but also had to manage the realities of forging an acting career while trying to pay the rent. It took a long time, they say, to have the confidence and the time to invest in creating their own work. Even a generation ago, young actors would have worked odd jobs while waiting for the casting agents’ phones to ring.

But that has changed, and it’s now common to see them create and produce their own work as part of a career push. Finding the right story was another matter, and by now living in different continents, the two women would encourage and motivate each other as they developed concepts and ideas.

“Sarah and I always had a fire in our belly that sort of wouldn’t go out, even through all the years of coming up with ideas, but them not coming to fruition,” says Susan. “And then with this one, we really hit on something that stuck.”

“Also we’d come into a time in the last couple of years where women’s stories are really valued and they are heard, adds her friend, who was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her role in another dark comedy, Barry.

“Sharon Horgan paved the way of course, and the women before her, but with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michaela Cole, with Billie Piper, there is now an appetite to hear these stories, which is really exciting. It seems like there was a vacuum before. Now we’re in a thrilling time, and we wanted to be part of it.”

Sarah Goldberg & Susan Stanley in SisterS: a labour of love

Directed by Declan Lowney (Ted Lasso) and Alicia MacDonald (The Outlaws), SisterS is often hilariously funny, but it has an edge and a darkness that reveals itself at various points in the series.

“I think for us, we never wanted to make a straight comedy,” says Susan. “What we were always interested in, all the challenges we’ve had in our lives and what’s helped us cope with them is this macabre humour that comes out of that.”

The series - which is set on the west coast - was shot on location in Wicklow, Greystones, Bray and Galway, with the eastern locations standing in for the west. The women are up for another series and are waiting to see whether that will happen. But the storytelling continues regardless - they are developing both a feature film and another unnamed TV series, this one set in the west of Ireland in the 1980s.

“I think our life’s work is going to be trying to push those boundaries as far as they can go and dig down for some of these truths that we didn’t feel were articulated when we were fans of television, when we were leaving school,” says Sarah. “We’re trying to add our voices to a conversation that’s ongoing.”