How Sharon Horgan Aims to Make a Global Audience Laugh With ‘Frank of Ireland’

Merman’s first hit was the Emmy-nominated British sitcom “Catastrophe,” which Ms. Horgan co-wrote and starred in with the American actor and comedian Rob Delaney. The Channel 4 show’s popularity attracted the attention of Amazon Prime which streamed it in the U.S. where it also built a following.

Since then Merman has opened offices in Los Angeles and New York, producing shows like “Divorce,” which starred Sarah Jessica Parker in her first repeat role since “Sex and the City.” “A lot of what is brought to us now is from U.S.-based writers,” Ms. Horgan says.

Coming Merman shows include a U.S. remake of Ms. Horgan’s BBC parenting sitcom “Motherland,” which will be co-produced by Paul Feig. There also is “Housebroken,” an animated comedy about neurotic animals in therapy; Ms. Horgan voices an ex-show cat called Tabitha. “Housebroken” premieres May 31 on Fox.

“Frank of Ireland” stars real-life brothers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson as thirty-something best friends who vie with each other in matters of hopelessness. Both still live at home in an Irish suburb with their mothers, can’t drive or hold down a job. What’s more, they like things that way. Ms. Horgan says the script by the Gleeson brothers and their childhood friend Michael Moloney was completely different from everything else she had been making.

Ms. Horgan spoke to the WSJ about producing female talent and making jokes for audiences in the U.S. and U.K. Edited excerpts of the conversation:

Is it any different creating an HBO show like “Divorce” intended for the U.S. market?

I knew that if it was a good idea it would travel, especially with someone like Sarah Jessica Parker, whom American audiences love. They just wanted to see her in something. The only difference between “Divorce” and making a U.K. comedy is that it felt enormous. But that’s something you get used to because you end up with all the same problems anyway. It’s a ridiculous thing to say but there’s never enough money, even when you’re working on something that is literally ten times the budget of a U.K. half-hour. I wrote [and directed] an episode of “Modern Love” for Amazon with Tina Fey and John Slattery in it. I was asking if there was anything they felt was a bit too Irish or English. Tina was like, “No, it’s all fine, though you say ‘a bit’ a lot.” So I just took out all the “she was a bit” bits.

Will the new version of “Motherland” be a beat-by-beat remake of the U.K. version or more like the U.S. version of “The Office,” which became its own thing?

I think it’s about finding the most authentic way to use those characters within a U.S. setting because all the problems and relationships are the same. We kind of knew when we created those characters that you could take them out of “Motherland” and they’d still be funny. What we needed was to find someone who could visualize it in a way that was most authentic for the U.S. market. I think we managed to do that as Julieanne Smolinski (“Grace and Frankie”) has just done an amazing treatment for it.

When you co-founded Merman did you feel there weren’t enough female voices in scripted comedy?

Yeah, there weren’t, even if when we started things were definitely on the change. Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] was just about to have “Fleabag” come out and take the world by storm. But we felt absolutely that female voices in TV were still slightly tokenistic. We felt that there was a huge market there and the only way of doing it without bringing known voices through was to start small. So we started by making these shorts that allowed female directors and writers to get something televised so that the next stage was easier to reach. Being able to say to a writer ‘Trust us, we know what we’re doing,’ is a big thing.

You originally pitched “Catastrophe” to the BBC, which turned it down. Did that make you think that maybe your shows weren’t mainstream and that you’d have to find other avenues for them?

I think certain shows have certain homes and that home ends up being serendipitously the right place to be. Channel 4 became the perfect home for “Catastrophe” so in a lot of ways I’m glad it happened. But not long after that we did “Motherland” for the BBC. The thing is you get turned down a lot. I’ve spent my career being turned down. But we’re like cockroaches. We keep going until we find a place for our ideas and most of the time we’ve been really lucky.

“Frank of Ireland” lives up to its name in its frankly comic depiction of sex and relationships. Would you say it has the stamp of a Merman show?

Yeah, I do feel like Merman shows are quite easy to spot in general. We really try to keep the gag rates super high. “Frank of Ireland” is broader than “Catastrophe,” I suppose, but we don’t like to shy away from stuff. I think comedy should really be allowed to look beautiful. So I think a Merman show has a look to it and a lot of the time we’re very writer/performer driven. It’s truly the voice of the creator that ends up on screen. I guess our responsibility is making sure we do whatever we can to make that happen.

Did you pick up any tips about navigating show business from the late Carrie Fisher, your co-star in “Catastrophe”?

She talked about the business a lot because it was all her life and it was her family and it was her persona in a lot of ways. She was this before-her-time lady because she spoke about what it was like to be a woman in a very male-driven industry. She talked about mental health for the first time as a person of profile and fame. Mainly she talked about the business not being the thing to make you happy. It’s not like I hadn’t thought about it before. But she talked about family and never letting anything get in the way of that.