Doing it for themselves
Following the launch of season two of SisterS, stars and real-life best friends Sarah Goldberg and Susan Stanley tell DQ about making this dark Irish-Canadian comedy, stepping into writing for the first time and how they based the show on their own experiences.
The launch of dark Irish-Canadian comedy SisterS in 2023 saw real-life best friends Sarah Goldberg and Susan Stanley star in a series they also wrote and executive produced, with a storyline modelled somewhat on their own lives and experiences.
It introduced Canadian Sare (Goldberg), who discovers her dad wasn’t her biological father, who was in fact an Irish busker her mother met 30 years earlier. She then decides to travel to Ireland in the hope of tracking him down – and discovers she has a half-sister, Suze (Stanley). Polar opposites in personality, they embark on a road trip to find their alcoholic father, searching for a parent but finding each other instead.
Season two, which debuted earlier this year, picks up 18 months later, after Sare had abandoned Suze, with no contact between the two women. Suze has since embarked on a fertility journey to become a solo mum. Then, when she receives an invitation to Sare and her fiancé Steve’s wedding, she and her mum, Sheryl, head across the Atlantic but find Sare’s picture-perfect life is not what it seems.
A co-commission from RTÉ in Ireland and IFC and AMC+ in the US, it is produced by Peer Pressure (Ireland) and Shaftesbury (Canada) in association with Mermade and Crave, which airs the series in Canada. Fremantle is the international distributor.
Here, Goldberg and Stanley tell DQ about the origins of the project, their creative partnership and how they juggled multiple roles – and new babies – making the series.
How did you come together to develop the project – and why was this a story you wanted to tell?
Sarah Goldberg: Susan and I met over 20 years ago at theatre school. We couldn’t have been more different – me, the wide-eyed Canadian and she, the cool girl from Dublin in her leather jacket and baggy jeans, smoking rollies. I took one look at her and was like, ‘I want that girl to be my best friend.’ Needless to say, the feeling was not immediately mutual. But we soon bonded over a Leonard Cohen song, Famous Blue Raincoat, in a Hammersmith Wetherspoons. The connection was rooted in shared childhood trauma, and although we had very different veneers, we found a deep bond based on shared experience.
We always wanted to write about how childhood trauma affects a person in their adult life. SisterS was a way to explore our lived experience thematically while having fun with fictional narrative creatively.
Susan Stanley: I came from gritty Dublin and I had a lot of attitude, and Sarah was this bright-eyed, optimistic Canadian from Vancouver. We just couldn’t be more different. But we soon discovered that we had this incredibly deep connection. We realised pretty fast we had a lot in common, even though we were raised on opposite sides of the world and in very different environments. We bonded because we had this childhood trauma in common. We were both raised by a single parent and there was all kinds of addiction and darkness in our wider families that drew us together. I guess it was like a trauma bond.
Then, about 10 years ago, I went to visit Sarah in Brooklyn, and we started writing SisterS. We wanted to tell this story about chosen family and these women who were polar opposites in every way you can imagine, but who had this deep, subterranean bond that they couldn’t escape. That’s where the idea was born.
What are your reflections on making season one, and how did you want to take the story forward?
Goldberg: Season one had a clear narrative arc – SisterS set out in broken-down ice-cream truck to find their alcoholic father. Season two was more open-ended, which gave us a lot of room to explore various themes, from motherhood to addiction. Season one focused on how trauma affects our choices (but with jokes!) and season two is really more about chosen family and finding a way to live life on your own terms.
Stanley: Season one was really a baptism of fire for us, because we took six years to write the season in a very organic way. There were a lot of late nights and red wine drunk, and we wrote all the scripts ourselves. We always had two seasons in mind, because season one we knew was going to be in Suze’s world in Ireland, and Ireland was going to be a character in the show, and we were going to meet all these really interesting, wild Irish characters.
When we found out that our producers and the audience wanted a season two, we had just both had tiny babies, so we were new mothers and they wanted to shoot in six months. So it was like, ‘Oh, this is great news,’ and then, ‘Oh, what the hell. How are we going to make this work?’ But we were able to put a village together and we had a writers’ room in London. It was a very different experience.
Sarah and I were very clear that we wanted it in Canada to see Sare’s world. We wanted to subvert the notion that Canada is all mountains and waterfalls like it is on the west coast, and we wanted it to be a bit grimmer than that. We actually shot in a place called Hamilton, which is an hour from Toronto, and were sometimes shooting in -20º with snow, so we wanted to also use that as a bit of a character in the show. Yael Staav directed all six eps [following S1 directors Declan Lowney and Alicia McDonalds].
Season one marked your writing debuts. What lessons did you take into S2?
Goldberg: We learned so much writing season one. Things we took away from it were: how do we say more with less? How do we get to the crux of what this scene is about or what this character needs quicker in order to drive the story forward? We love to collaborate and both seasons had an element of improvising and spontaneity. You always want your hymn sheet so you feel prepared, but within that, it’s good to make space for some surprises. Many of our Canadian cast were seasoned improvisers so we were lucky they were able to elevate the humour. The main challenge was keeping a straight face.
Stanley: By the time we got to season two, we were able to write pretty quickly, which was good, because we needed to. But it was wonderful to be able to not be so precious about every word and to divvy up the work with the other writers. We weren’t precious about anything. It was a really good lesson in sitting back a little bit and giving power to other brilliant creatives in the room and in the scripts.
The show is described as a dark comedy. Where do you find the humour in the story?
Goldberg: We’ve both always used humour as a coping mechanism. Sometimes when you can’t cry, all you can do is laugh. We have historically found ourselves in the most macabre of situations where the only option is hysterical laughter. We wanted to source the humour out of the darkness. As Leonard Cohen would say, ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’ We find humour in the mundanity and the daily clumsiness of life.
Stanley: The show is definitely a dark comedy. What drew us together is we would be talking about these really horrific experiences we’ve had, or mad people in our family – and it’s always fucking funny. Trauma is hilarious, but you should be crying and laughing at the same time, and that’s why we knew we were real sisters, because we would just piss ourselves laughing at these incredibly dark things that had happened. Not everybody would do that. People with a more regulated nervous system might not find it that funny, but if you’ve kind of come from that place, you just really get it. So we always wanted to have dark themes but tell them through humour as much as we possibly could.
How does starring in the series influence or inform the way you write the series?
Goldberg: Well, we can certainly keep our tits out of it! A lot of this was born out of frustration over a lack of dynamic and complex female roles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read some version of the line, ‘But babe I’m just so worried about you.’ I’ve literally received, ‘Looks great in a bikini’ in a casting breakdown. We wanted to write roles we wanted to play, lines we wanted to say, with our clothes on! We also found a lot of joy in writing for each other as we know our rhythms so well. We always tried to focus on what was right for the story and the characters, even if it meant humiliating ourselves.
Stanley: For season two, I’ve been on this gruelling fertility journey myself through IVF, and it was successful in my case. But when I came into the writers’ room, I had a six-month-old daughter. The process was still very clear in my mind, and I hadn’t really seen it so much on TV about a woman trying to become a solo parent, so of course my own personal story informed the season and I knew I was going to be playing it. There’s a real authenticity and truthfulness in that performance. I guess we’re lucky in that we get to just create these versions of ourselves that we want to explore without having to actually fuck up our lives.
How do you balance acting with your role as executive producers on set?
Goldberg: I enjoyed writing and acting together as the two can inform each other. Producing and acting is a completely different story. It’s incredibly challenging and I admire anyone who does it. Switching those hats rapidly can make your head spin. One minute you’re hearing that you’ve lost tomorrow’s location, an actor has Covid and several words in the script have not passed clearance, the next you’re running on to set having to burst into tears over the death of your mother. I suppose there’s a thrill to flying by the seat of your pants, but simultaneously being on the inside of something and the outside of something poses its challenges for sure. At least you don’t have time to overthink the acting… because the catering truck is on fire!
Stanley: Production was challenging because we shot it like an indie movie, so we didn’t have very many days and we were doing a lot of pages every day. Once we were on set, we were pretty much having to just focus on acting. Because we were moving on from scene to scene so quickly, at lunch and in the evening and on the weekends and in the make-up chair and in the hair chair, we were thinking like producers and putting fires out, because that’s what it is to make a TV show at any level. It was hard, though, for us to not put on the producer hat while we were acting. It was a real challenge. But Sarah and I worked hard at encouraging each other to turn off the producer brain while we were on set and figure out everything either at lunch or later that evening and put out the fires then, if the whole place has not burned down.
What challenges have you faced making season two?
Goldberg: Our main challenge was the budget because it limited our shooting time and our locations. But within those limitations, you can find some creative freedom. Yael was particularly good at that. There are choices in the show that were made out of necessity, but ended up being an improvement from the original idea.
Stanley: We were mothers of young babies, for starters, and we had to turn around [the scripts] quite soon. We were lucky that we did have a writers’ room and we had other writers shouldering the responsibility and sharing the load, but it was incredibly challenging to do it so quickly. Also it’s a tough business right now, and the budget was a small budget and we didn’t have that many days to shoot. We were lucky that we had an incredible team in Canada.
What can viewers look forward to?
Goldberg: As we get older, we just want to work with people we love. The thing that keeps viewers coming back is great chemistry. We’ve been lucky enough to work with such wonderful people, and I think the chemistry jumps off the screen.
Stanley: It’s a very exciting season for people who are fans of the show, because we did leave season one on a real cliffhanger. If you like the show, you’re going to love the women, and you’re going to want to see them back together. Then throwing Suze and Sheryl into this whole new landscape and world of these wealthy Canadians is going to be a wild ride. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
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tagged in: AMC, Canada, IFC, Ireland, RTÉ, Sarah Goldberg, Sisters, Susan Stanley