Sharon Horgan’s ‘Youth’ Finds the Humor in Growing Older

During a recent HBO press conference for Youth, Sharon Horgan discussed her new series, which she created, wrote, executive produced as well as stars in as Alex. The series continues a conversation Horgan has been having throughout her career through the series she creates about women and relationships.

It started with the 2009 BBC comedy series Pulling telling the story of a trio of 30-somethings, and was followed by Catastrophe (co-starring Rob Delaney) about the aftermath of one-night stand that turns into much, much more after an unexpected pregnancy. While not narratively connected, Youth thematically continues her trilogy (to this point) as it combines comedy and the realities of life while maturing naturally along with her.

Horgan said the idea for the series began with a very personal feeling.

“I think I just woke up one morning and I just had this overriding feeling that I was gonna die alone. And then I thought, oh maybe there’s something in that. I don’t know, I mean, because I started writing it pre-Bad Sisters, sort of even a bit pre-menopause-y. Certain things were going on in my life. So I kind of came up with the characters then, and then Bad Sisters came along, and then things had sort of gotten worse in my life. But I had perspective. I had kids who were leaving home and parents who were getting older, and I wanted to write about that, someone in her 50s out there looking for love and everything just being really, really difficult, just life conspiring against her.”

For Youth Horgan wanted to return to the half-hour format, but with the experience of everything she had done since Catastrophe.

“I wanted to go back to that, the half hour format. I wanted it to be funny, and I think with Catastrophe and Pulling it was as much about the tragedy of being at those various points in life as it was about the humor of it. But with this, it was like those shows on steroids because you have HBO behind you, allowing you to shoot in Frankfurt, it just felt like we could go further and make it bigger and, and the tone thing is all about, it’s in the writing, but it’s also in the directing and it’s in the casting of it and the choices you make in the edit after that. You’re kind of figuring out tone along the way.”

Her perspective on aging is the core of Youth, especially as Alex finds herself caught in between several generations, with her son Ruari (Aran Murphy) quickly growing up, parents getting older and her own sense of time becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

“I don’t know whether that’s just over time I’ve come to terms with it a bit more or just I’ve had more perspective or you realize how important it is to make the most of every moment and I don’t know that I’ve always been like that. I’ve always had an eye on what’s coming, whereas now I sort of… I’m just more aware of trying to find happiness in the moment. I still think about it, but I used to wake up in the middle of the night. I would freeze in the middle of a conversation, because it would just be always on my mind. You know, how close I am to 70. That would just be on my mind a lot, that’s so scary, but now I just don’t think about it as much or not in the same way.”

For Horgan, writing stories about women her age is partially because there is a drought of content when it comes to such representation. She was thankful and inspired when seeing another actress/show creator doing the same.

“It just feels like a huge privilege and also needed and necessary because I need those stories. When I watch TV and film, that’s what I want to see reflected back at me. It’s important, it’s really important. Like Pamela Adlon, Better Things. When I watched that show, I was like, thank God someone else is talking about what it is to be the mother of teenage girls. I met her, and I welled up because I was really grateful that she sort of normalized it, so I could see someone parenting like me and not think I was a monster, you know.”

What makes Youth feel like a natural continuation of Horgan’s work, even if the characters are not the same, is finding humor in the absurdity of life, but also in the things that become much harder to ignore with age..

As Horgan explained when asked about the show’s title, Youth is not simply about the character age at its center or her son Ruari. It is also about the idea of youth itself, and the pressure to keep chasing it.

“It comes from the saying that 50 is the youth of old age. I guess that thing that we are told that we should be chasing, women especially.”

New episodes of Youth premiere Sundays on HBO Max.