Sharon Horgan's comedy magic in Youth, and an American is headlining the Grey Cup's halftime show

Hey there candidates me, Gavin Crawford, host of the CBC podcast Because News. Each week I quiz some of Canada's brightest talents on the news stories that held our attention. This week we'll be checking in to the defrosted fridges of Europe, exploring Dictionary.com's Word of the Year, and also check out a new Brian Adams song that has some feeling patriotic and some just cringe. Joining me this week are comedians Christy Deke, Carly Thorn, and from the hit television show "Yaga, no a read!" Subscribe to Because News now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else free. This is a CBC podcast. Man, I love shows that make me laugh about something that should not be funny at all. Like I think one of the best people doing this, and making something dark really funny is the Irish actor and showrunner Sharon Horgan, she's given a show like Pulling and Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, and now she's got a brand new show at HBO. It's called Youth. I'm Elimine Abdul-Mahmoud, and this is commotion, Catherine Vendere, and I can see her. Eva Berries here, and we're going to talk about all the things that make Sharon Horgan special. Hello to both of you. Hello. Hi. It's nice to have you here. Listen, before we get into youth, I just want to take a moment and maybe set the table if you don't mind. Catherine, we're going to get to youth. We will, I promise. I want to get into the entire show, but what's the thing that has made Sharon Horgan such a distinctive voice, you think? Yeah. There are not many showrunners and TV writers who have the relationship with the medium that Sharon Horgan does. I can't really think of anyone else, actually. What I mean by that is that she has had this extended engagement with television over many phases of her career and her life where she creates what are essentially autofictional shows. Not exactly memoiristic, they're not her saying like, here is a legitimate thing that happened to me, but they are very clearly engaging with and inspired by wherever she has been. And so her one of her early shows was Pulling, which is about being a 30 something and a sort of the friend group and the challenges of that period of adulthood. She then had a show on Amazon Prime several years later called Catastrophe, which is I think how many many audiences came to know her, which is about getting unexpectedly pregnant, and that one's a two-hander with her and actor Rob Delaney. And so her new show also is this kind of autofictional project. There's a delight to me in watching someone who's unabashedly autofictional, and I feel like there's something really enjoyable about that because some people maybe feel a little bit too bashful about sort of letting themselves do that, and I want to get to that in a moment. Yeah, if I let me ask you a similar question, just in terms of this idea of when you think about the thread that runs through Pulling, Catastrophe, Bad Sisters, I've heard Sharon Horgan say, "Listen, men are allowed to watch my shows, in fact, they are encouraged to, but I specifically make shows that are about women because she's pulling so much from her experience. What's a thread you think? What's the thing that makes it a Sharon Horgan show?" Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. One big thing is humor, she just has humor as this, particularly Irish humor, as this massive part for Arsenal. And I think she also, like Catherine says, minds from her real life. So she brings you these real life situations, and you have this realism, but you have a little bit of escapism in how she kind of amps up what happens to the characters. So it's not always purely realistic. And I think she tends to have, with her storylines and her characters, the idea that we don't live in a benign world, you know, that the world isn't always going to be very nice to you. You're not going to have like, have it all ever, you're going to have something, you're going to have nothing as she says in this series in youth. So it's how do you cope with the fact that you're going to have all of these things thrown at you? And she often does that through humor, through self-deprecating humor. And I think people just feel really seen, and I think she's followed her own life through from her 30s to her 50s in a really generous way. And we see ourselves in her, and I think Irish women, in particular, are really proud of the fact that we can see ourselves in her work. So we're kind of grateful, I think, for her doing that and being so honest and generous with how she brings her stories, I think, to the screen. So with that in mind, let's give people a little bit, a little bit of taste of youth. Youth follows Sharon Horgan plays Alex. She's a divorce literary agent. She's got a navigating all of this chaos of midlife, you know, her son who was off to college is suddenly, oh, no, he's back at home, the parents are aging. And also there are too many situations to navigate. And here's a little bit of the trailer. Why don't you just stop being fun. In four years, I've not had a man in my bed. I need to meet someone now. I think I've got like 10 years left as a sexual person. Talk. What are you doing here? You messaged me. Huh? You spelled "Honey Wrong." Yeah, then what's going on here? Like set the show up for us a little bit. Yeah, so Alex is at this really interesting and rich and yet under depicted period in life for a lot of people and particularly women. She is divorced. She is just at the moment when her only kid is going away to university and she has a career that she has been building for many years. And the show opens with this montage of famous women who are 50 plus and it's like, look how free you are, look how you don't suddenly, you don't have to have any of the things that have been holding you down anymore. And the show is like, yes, that is true in some ways, except also her phone is just constantly, it's her son, it's her ex, it's this guy she wants to go up with, it's her parents, it's her boss. And so she is inundated with all of these things that are very much not allowing her to feel the freedom of this period of her life. Yeah, it's the tension between me, like I was promised freedom and I've arrived here and this sucks. And there's a degree, there's a degree of like, okay, these are the places where I can find that freedom and also the places where you can find these sort of exact opposite. If in your review, you use the word revolutionary to describe what Sharon Horgan is doing here. Tell me about what it is that they feel so radical about watching a show like you. Yeah, so like I really specifically wrote in the Sunday Times about the menstrual blood that is shown on screen. You know, she writes this story, you know, she writes some of the episodes, Alva Kogan writes other ones, she's an amazing writer as well. She writes and depicts this character who is Perry Menopausal, who's waiting for a year for her period, presumes it's gone and that she's menopausal. And it appears when she's in Frankfurt for work on a trip and she's sharing a bed with her son at that time, her teenage son. And you actually see the menstrual blood. You see her reaction to it, which is like, this is really annoying. And you also see how she gets on with her life. And I just thought that was so radical because it was presented in a way that feels so real to me and my friends and to be like, she's kind of a little bit of a generation above me, but it still feels very, very real to us, I think. And it's just done with that humor, that deadpan sense of Murphy's Law. Like I think she has this Irish concept of Murphy's Law of something bad's going to happen. It could happen, it will happen. And that does happen to her with that. And I think she's bringing the discussion about women's bodies to a new level, beyond the kind of puberty discussions, beyond the, you know, kind of 30s, era 20s discussions. Now she's bringing it into what's it like to be a woman in your 50s who's approaching menopause and who feels vital and sexy and wants to date people, wants to have a good life, but also is dealing with a body that's like refusing to be nice to you in any shape of form. And I think that's so, so deeply in relation to them. Yeah. Episode three is the one that you're talking about. Episode three is the one that takes place at the Frankfurt Book Fair. And Catherine, I feel like I've seen a lot of reaction from people in the publishing world because that particular, like Frankfurt Book Fair is an annual event. It takes place every year. And book professionals are like, we don't really get to see this part of our life depicted very often. What are you, what are you seeing from like people in the publishing world about the fact that a whole episode sets, you know, is actually set at the Frankfurt Book Fair? Yeah. I think there is as with any fictionalized version of an industry, a combination of this is so real, I've never seen it before. And also I can see all of the ways this is wrong, right? This conversation would never happen this way. What are they talking about? This is a reduction. For me, and now I have the good fortune that it is not set at a magazine. I am sure that if it were, I would be yelling at my screen all the time. But instead, it is this industry that I also know some about, but not that much about. And so I get to live and enjoy the, and I have heard a lot of publishing people say, it's closer, it's closer than a lot of things have gotten. The other thing is that it is autofictional. And so for me, I come to it and what I see her is doing, is using the book space as a metaphor for her thoughts and feelings about working in TV for so long. Yeah. And so it does not bother me that these people are sort of sketchy approximations of a kind of person. Because you're like, yeah, I know that kind of person. I didn't need them to like have the exact email that they would need to have, you know? It's also worth noting that the Frankfurt Book Fair is happening this week. So there's something about that episode landing, and then as that episode is landing, people are like, I'm going to this book fair right now and it doesn't feel exactly as depicted as this thing. If I'm curious about the reaction to the show in general, like, what are the general reactions of people are having to the show? There's such a hugely positive reaction. I've talked to so many friends, you know, they'll be texting, saying, are you watching youth? I'm just about to start it. Or, you know, I really loved it. Or I binge it last night. So I was at a screening. People in the industry are talking about it. [BLANK_AUDIO] at last night and some TV people were talking about how well it's doing. And people just really love it. I think there's a real hunger for the story she's telling. The episodes are 30 minutes long, so it's really easy to fit it into your life, you know. And I think she has just beautiful characters that are quite easy to make fun of, which she doesn't punch down too far. You know, she's got like the odious middle aged author of Romanticie fiction that's really terrible, goblin seed. I would not want to read that book. I mean, a middle back torture. She calls them a middle back torture. And I think a lot of people recognize those kind of characters, you know. And then you also have the son and you have the ex who she has, I can't don't even think I can say what she calls them in her phone. And you know, how she describes him, father-ish at best. So people are loving all of these depictions. And you know, I think again, there's that Irish pride, I think, of like look at what she's achieving on an international level and how she's reflecting people's lives across the world, not just her own individual experience. If I love hearing the best specific dimension of the reaction, this idea that like there's a certain Irishness to Sharon Horgan's work that is showing up in the humor, even if it's not necessarily set in Ireland, tell me a little bit more about that Irishness that you see in her work. Well, there's definitely the sardonic Irishness, you know, I think that in Ireland we're quite suspicious of anything that's too positive or too happy. We're always like, I don't think that's the case, you know, so we, you know, so she really leads into that kind of sardonic sense that kind of life could be out to get you and she'll always get its self-deprecating joke in there against herself, you know, to try and diffuse the situation. And there's also an Irish concept of a person who's a dose as in DOSE and a dose is an annoying person and you can be like a bit of a dose or like a total dose or a complete dose and she has different layers of doses throughout this show. I'm going to borrow that phrase by the way. So I think she introduces people to the idea of that of like the son can be a bit of a dose. She herself is a bit of a dose sometimes. She can be a bit vain and self-absorbed, but then you have the complete doses who are kind of ruining her life in the industry. And I think that she has that sense of like she's sometimes suspicious of life and she's she's kind of because she's looking around the place kind of not always expecting happiness. I think the baseline for her character Alex is like okay I can cope with what life's been thrown at me as opposed to I'm going to have a wonderful life. And I think that feels to me very Irish. We often have extremely happy days at awake or after a funeral when we remember all our memories of someone and laugh at all the dark things that happened. And I think she gets that that sense through her work as well too. But I'll tell you what I love about Sharon Horgan's work catheter is like to me like the thing that I love about her work the most is that she's very good at crafting characters who have good intentions most of the time. And who regardless of their good intention just very naturally end up in circumstances where they do the bad thing anyway. And I think like that's a really lovely and kind of complicated way of looking at people and I think it's also like a very realistic like I know a lot of people in my life are like I see how you meant well. And also I see how you ended up in a place where maybe this is not the place that you wanted to end up at. And like that's such a hard thing to do without trivializing the stuff that the people are going through or that punching down on them or being like here's a bad person you know like she's she's very good at saying you can you can track the good intentions the whole time you know through their actions. And also while you're watching and going like oh no this is exactly the place you don't want to go. So I just when it comes to like her style of humor and I see that in bad systems I see that in this show. Do you see anybody else doing that because I actually think that's a really hard thing to pull off. It is really really hard to pull off. And TV has been in this place for the last several years and I'm thinking of shows going back to girls and transparent and then also running through something like Barry or the bear where we have these things that we call comedies and we're not sure if they are comedies and where is the line where they became not a comedy. And one of the things that I admire most about Horgon's work is that is not a discussion anyone's going to have. It's it's a comedy. It's very it is very intentionally structurally on a line by line joke per pound level a comedy. Yeah. And it is able to hold this kind of darkness and intensity and sexiness. There's a scene later in the show where she has an estrogen patch that somebody that she's in bed with is like. And I just think that this is this is there are very very few people who can do that kind of balance of tone and have it feel lived in and also meaningful. Yeah I think that's like to me like it's it's working at a level of skill but it's like I don't think we see at the rest of television and there's something also about the idea that she's made all these TV shows and then you get to the show and you go this is actually should be the show that people know her for you know like like I'm I'm excited and ready for people to know Sharon Horgon a little bit more I think like that's a reaction that I'm having here yeah yeah absolutely and I think it's also we get to live with her for so long we've had so many of these relations yeah it's very different from any other TV creators sort of TV trajectory. I'm delighted to be in the Sharon Horgon Imperial era if I last word to you what do you want to see from Sharon Horgon next you think? I would love her to make a horror film set in Ireland the features women from midlife onwards because I feel like if you know something horrifying to happen to me I would like for God's sake you mean I have to deal with this now and I think that she would really capture that really well in a way that other horror films wouldn't so please do that Sharon. I'm on board with that that sounds delightful thank you guys so much for your time I really appreciate it it's been a great hang thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Of course good to talk to you. If a Barry's a freelance culture writer she's in Dublin you can find her latest date on Sharon Horgon in the Irish Times on Sunday and Catherine Viderandock is a Vultures TV critic she's in New York. In a world where the news feels bigger louder and harder to make sense of Canadians need more than headlines. Hi I'm Karen C. Olin news reporter and host of the big story podcast from world shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate my team and I will explain what matters and why it matters to you we're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations trusted Canadian focused curious listen to the big story wherever you get your podcasts. Hi my name is Abdul Mahmoud and this is commotion look there has been a lot of conversation about this next artist have a listen to this that is just a bit of worse way by Riley green and look if you're not too steep in the world of country music I'm going to tell you that Riley is an American country artist who's been having a pretty solid couple of years it's just been getting bigger and bigger but the thing is the CFL announced that he's going to be headlining the great cup half-time show and look it raises a bunch of questions it raises some questions about what Riley green represents given some of the things that he said and done but also raises some other questions about why the CFL would choose an American artist I bet this really pivotal moment in Canadian culture Stacey Easton is here Morgan Campbell's here we're going to get into it hello to both of you Stacey great to meet you and I'll mean I'm pleasure as always nice to have you listen Stacey I'm gonna start with you you're seeing Morgan you you you're right about country music Stacey uh what did you think when you heard that Riley green shall be that the Bud Light great cup half-time show next month um you know it's Calgary so they want to touch the music star but I can think of a dozen of so Canadian musicians that would be more interesting but then I understand he's having a moment and he comes from Alabama there's a huge football culture and he played football when he was a kid and so from that perspective it makes sense and so I love his last couple of singles as well but he strikes me as sort of quiet in intimate songs so if the CFL went with someone giant and big I think it would have been more interesting someone who have been able to capture a room maybe really strikes me that there's this weird relationship in Canadian country music and Canadian sports where we are anxious about our talent and our own skills I remember the sort of catastrophe through the CFL um trying to get into like Vegas for a while there also it would have been nice to have a Canadian or an Indigenous representation or a woman or a queer person yeah I think there's a degree of like people sort of looking at the choice of Riley green saying that I can see why this would fit but also there's a whole bunch of other performers that might work better for this particular spot I actually mentioned Sarah McLaughlin was going to be performing the national anthem and then also Blue Rodeo and James Barker band both Canadians of course are going to be doing the pre-game performances but Morgan what do you make of this like we've we've had this conversation you and I before the CFL sort of choosing an American to headline the halftime show but again like it to me it feels different because of the conversations we've been having in this country does it feel that different to you a couple of things yeah let me and Stacey first of all I am so glad that you all added Stacey to this conversation because when the producers were calling me asking me about Riley green the first thing I thought when I heard Riley green I thought it was the swimmer and I was like wait a minute they're giving out fifth place trophies at the day break up now and then I thought it was the Riley green that plays out feel for the Detroit Tigers saw as Texan my man Corey Erdman big Detroit Tigers fan I was like hey man great cups huge for you this year these they're one of those Riley and I started to say this I don't listen to a lot of country music and these choices for halftime performance are very deliberate and you take a chance that like a large proportion of your audience will not have heard of this person and then the flip side of it is that there's another huge proportion of the population that adores this person. Now what we don't know about this particular agreement is when it was struck so we don't know when in the trade war timeline that the grey cup decided to bring in Riley Green and we'll get to the specifics of Riley Green later but the idea that an American performs at the halftime show isn't super outrageous. The thing to remember about this CFL too is that for a long time it's been a pan North American lead like about 50% of every roster is made up of Americans and there was that era in the 90s when they had a bunch of franchises in the US and I think CFL stakeholders take a little bit of pride in the fact that some of these ghost markets for the CFLs to have pockets. The CFL fans and so that in and of itself is not all that revolutionary but the timing is poor. Yeah I think like all of that being considered yes absolutely 100% like this is something regular the CFL might do in previous years this timing sometimes you know it allows the opportunity for people to say well hold on given all the conversations that we are having this country maybe is this the right moment for that to be the choice I will say a Stacey let some CFL fans have been sort of digging to Riley's past a little bit looking at some of the things that he said and done so there was this moment back in 2023 at a show in Nashville he's got the song called I wish grandpa's never died and he switched the phrase Bud Light to cool his light and that's the significant thing because of the thing that was happening in the culture of the town do you want to talk up do I explain the background of that? Yeah so as a trans person and I'm supposed to be profoundly offended by blatant transphobia and it is an act of transphobia sort of people boycott it by light after promotion with trans actress Dylan Mulvaney and then he was at the speak performance in Newfound Stadium in Nashville and he replaced the Williams Bud Light with chorus late in the cloud cheered but he's such a bland opportunist that it just struck me as kind of desperate and sort of dumb can't really connect to his bigotry I'm reminded of when he took down a song where he kind of celebrated Robert E. Lee bury me in Dixie in 2019 because of controversy and then claim that he took it down because of audio quality but it was a story just streaming a few weeks later yeah so I'm like I it's not a good move but it's such a blatant move that I'm like I know I should be offended but also I'm just kind of amused okay I think some of the contracts that you're talking about there is maybe useful to dry it a little bit so Bud Light did this ad with trans actress Dylan Mulvaney and then in response you've had a bunch of people who said we're gonna boycott Bud Light and one of the things that Riley Green did is he changed the lyrics from Bud Light to course light and then that as you mentioned the crowd cheered but you you take this a sort of like a nod to the sort of to the to the to the larger culture war thing I sort of a transphobic move but also at the same time not really as you said quote-unquote committing to the bigotry is a very funny line I'm gonna I'm gonna carry that around with me for the rest of the day then there was also like the other controversy which is the thing that you mentioned that in the he's got the very very mean Dixie song changes the line of rock about Confederate dinner Robert E. Lee then the song goes down then the songs come back up so there's there is a lack of commitment to politics shall we say I'm on the part of Riley Green but Morgan like I assume that people to see if I can Google some of this stuff they can look it up and go like we know these stories this does it still surprises we go like now right he's still he's still our guy one there's the ability to Google these things but two there's the ability or willingness the capability the initiative to look at it through a certain lens now what you what Stacey was saying about Riley which Riley is this rather great I mean switching that lyric in his song right the first way that came to me you know it was interpreted as him not wanting to disappoint his his audience yeah by saying but like but now to learn that the actual lyrics which did everyone in this audience was waiting for right they cheer for it what is the word element you're a wrestling guy for the sudden onset of loud room shaking applause what do you call that I three letter word I don't you tell me a pop this is the Oh yeah for the pop it is for the pop so he knows now what the point is this is a guy that knows he can play he has an arena full of people and he says which button can I push for a cheap pop yeah bigotry I push the bigotry button I get applause now so the question I'm asking is like okay amongst like this guy's hardest core fans yeah why does the bigotry run so deep why is bigotry a redeeming quality now and so and now if I'm like now I'm not to see if they got a different set of questions are asking maybe they're not asking each question now as far as Robert E. Lee is concerned same thing now as a black person with deep roots in the US South yeah parents are not from the South but their parents are um whenever I hear any type of public figure wax nostalgic about the antebellum South and let's remind everyone Riley green yes we're not there things were better in the old days but man you were not in the old days you were five six generations removed from the old you don't know how good the old days were point is it makes me the opposite of curious so like if that song had popped across my radar wouldn't pay attention but I do know this like any um the South will rise again good old boy who is worth his F-150 is never backing down from Robert E. Lee praise so the fact that he did this speaks right to Stacy's point right now often you know people with that position they will say well it's not about racism it's not about slavery it's about southern heritage and as as I said we need to be smarter than to conflate um this love for Confederate folklore and Confederate history and Confederate war heroes with southern heritage because I will remind you again that my mom's mother was born and raised in Dallas County Arkansas she is every bit as southern is Riley green and never ever in her life they'd occur to her to pay an homage to Robert E. Lee so these two things do not go together not at all there's there's here's the thing that I'm conscious of is that with Riley green there've been these few incidences right like it's not just one it's not just two it's like these like little moments of popping in and telegraphing a set of politics united totally sure whether they are specifically a set of politics that are trying to say oh this is actually what I represent and stand for or they're just trying to as you mentioned get a pop from the crowd I'm thinking here of like there was also like this xenophobic tweet that he had in 2020 which is like during the Shakira half-time show Super Bowl half-time show he tweeted something about like hey can anybody you can somebody translate the Super Bowl half-time show again your telegraphing set of politics without as you mentioned Stacy kind of the being willing to commit to a set of politics because not like outwardly this he's just kind of every once in a while we'll just kind of nod to something there'll be like these like nods to a direction that an audience will respond to without actually like you know carrying through me like this is actually the these are actually my actual politics so there there are there are there's a number of reasons why a bunch of CFL fans are saying really is this the person for this moment but also as you mentioned earlier Stacy like you're like hey I like some of his songs they're like a little bit slower tempo but how will this necessarily work for a CFL sort of crowd and a half-time show if you were gonna if I was going to put you Stacey Easton in charge of putting somebody you know in the great tie in the great cup half-time show who's the person that you're picking? So I was talking to my friend JP Jonathan Peters was a brilliant country drama and win a peg and it took us like two minutes of conversation he were he placed drums in KD St. Domain's band Taneel Towns would be amazing Cameron Whitcomb Tyler James Miller those would all be fantastic I remember seeing a production with Dean Brody where he had a traditional loop dancer indigenous hoop dancer and he gave the hoop dancer like 20 minutes in an act of like just respecting the craft some Brody knows how to deal with that and then on a deeply personal level I would have loved to have William Prince I saw him and Hamilton at super crawl and I'd seen him also play for a full Massey I know the great cup is bigger than both of those but he can pull the list he can pull the women together absolutely and like my own like small five-bit moment I think just for the bit it'll be really funny to have Orville pack them wait I think that would not be just for the bit actually I think like Orville pack in Calgary with the fringe I actually think that would just be fully appropriate nothing ironic about that I think it would actually just be I'd good spot for Orville Peck to be. I, but also I love that, as we just saw, as you can see Morgan, Stacey took two and a half minutes and was like, here's eight people that who could have played this halftime show, and they would have been just as much of a delight. I really appreciate your time. You guys has been really wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Anytime. - Thank you so much for having us. - Of course, good to talk to you. Stacey Easton writes about country music. They are the author of multiple books, including Dolly Parton's White Limousine and Why Tammy Wine at Matters. Morgan Campbell is a senior contributor to CBC Sports. He's also the author of My Fighting Family, Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles that made us. This year's "Gray Cup" airs on Sunday, November 15th. And that is it for the show today, but look, before I let you go, I just want to say a big congratulations to the one and only Canadian poet and essayist Ann Carson. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature today by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Look, this is Ann Carson, we are talking about. Autobiography of Red, I'm not gonna be the only person to tell you today, but it changed their idea of what words can do. That is an incredible and towering work. And finally, at 76 years old, Ann Carson gets the recognition that she deserves with the Nobel Prize. Absolutely gigantic. For more on the story, you can go to cbcnews.ca. In the meantime, I'm Ellen Meade, I'm in my mood. This is commotion, we'll be back here tomorrow. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) For more cbcpodcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.