‘SHARON HORGAN IS LIKE YOUR BIG SISTER’S COOL FRIEND’
show that connected most with people. ‘I can’t keep up with the Instagram messages I get from people telling me how lonely they feel. And they are not people of a certain age, colour, personality or view on Brexit. It’s so human.’
Aisling argues that technology is making us more lonely by tricking us into feeling connected, when actually we’re starved of human touch. ‘Sometimes, I feel like I’ve spoken to so many people, but I’ve been on my own all day, replying to Whatsapps. It’s like having a salad, but they’ve taken all the vitamins out. You know you’ve eaten, but you don’t feel satisfied. It has been the thing that’s haunted me most in life,’ she admits.
She talks articulately about mental health, and has written movingly about the emotional impact of losing her father, who took his own life when she was three, so investigating the human condition feels natural to her. But, I ask, when writing a character who’s had a breakdown, did she… ‘Did I have one?’
I was going to say, did you do research around it? ‘I’ve done a lifetime of research, I suppose,’ she says. ‘The show is a work of fiction but it doesn’t mean there aren’t grains of truth in it. I don’t go into what those are because I worked really hard on the show and don’t want to start pulling it apart over what’s real and what’s not.’
Sharon Horgan produced the series and also stars as Aine’s sister, which is nice symmetry because they met when Aisling was cast as Sharon’s sister in 2012’s Dead Boss. Is their off-screen relationship sisterly? ‘Lots of my show is influenced by our actual relationship, and I love her daughters, I feel like I’m their aunt.’ They get to hang out properly together mostly when they happen to be away for work at the same time. ‘When I was filming Living With Yourself in New York, Sharon was there directing an episode of Modern Love for Amazon,’ she explains. ‘And Sharon doesn’t like to be on her own in a hotel, she needs to be around people. She’s a lot more cuddly than you’d think.’
The friends are actually flying out to LA next week, to film the pilot of Delilah, a script they wrote for Channel 4, which was rejected in the UK before Sharon sold it to HBO (you snooze you lose, Channel 4). Aisling grins as she tells me she’s looking forward to hanging out, having manicures. ‘Sharon is like your big sister’s cool friend,’ she says. ‘I mean, she has a capsule wardrobe. Even her downtime clothes – she’ll turn up for a lazy day in a pair of dungarees with a band T-shirt, but a band she’s actually seen. Also, she’s like 14 years older than me and we look the same age. I keep hanging around with these ageless beauties. Maybe I should start doing cocaine?’
Phoebe Waller-bridge, meanwhile, is Aisling’s generation, and part of her wider gang. ‘We’ve messed around at improv things, and we’ve got friends in common,’ she says. ‘There aren’t that many of us – and this may sound arrogant – who’ve made our own show and starred in it. Like myself, Phoebe, Lena, Daniel Taylor, Roisin Conaty, Jamie Demetriou, Jessica Knappett. We share our stories and look out for each other. There is loneliness in writing something on your own, then being the face of it – and the highs and lows of that.’
Are you all in one big overachieving Whatsapp group? ‘We’re in a variety of Whatsapp groups,’ she laughs. ‘But my busiest one was the Love Island one. Richard Curtis’s daughter Scarlett started it and, because we all genuinely love the show, it became this radical feminist discussion.’ How many people are in it? ‘Well, I thought about 10 because of who was talking. Then I looked and was like, “Jesus, I’ve got to be careful what I say – there’s like 88 people in this group!”’
Refreshingly, being careful what she says doesn’t seem to be Aisling’s strong point. Our conversation turns to politics, because she was a vocal campaigner during the Irish referendums on same-sex marriage and abortion. With things so bleak politically at the moment, is she optimistic? ‘I’m optimistic about humans,’ she begins. ‘I was not connected to politics when I was younger, so it’s amazing to see this young girl [Greta Thunberg] spearheading a movement, and Alexandria Cortez is younger than me, but she knows how to mobilise voters through social media. Young people are now more active and that gives me hope.’
Would she ever go into politics? ‘Ah, there’s just no money in it,’ she deadpans. ‘No, seriously. Only psychopaths go into politics.’
Her publicist gently interrupts to tell her that next on her schedule is lunch and her face lights up with joy. Then she looks at me apologetically and says, ‘Sorry, not that this wasn’t great, but… lunch!’
As Aisling heads out, she starts bellowing statements from our conversation at random: I assume she’s guessing what the headline will be: ‘Politicians are psychopaths! Sharon Horgan is cuddly! Paul Rudd takes cocaine!’
Long may she not be careful what she says.
‘Living With Yourself ’ is available now on Netflix; ‘This Way Up’ is on All4