Will Sharon and Rob survive Season 3 of Amazon’s ‘Catastrophe’?
Our favorite trans-Atlantic couple is back.
Catastrophe, the brutally honest comedy about marriage, returns to Amazon Prime Video on Friday with a third six-episode season. This time, Sharon (Sharon Horgan), an Irish schoolteacher, and Rob (Rob Delaney), her American businessman husband, are two kids deep into a marriage that started with an accidental pregnancy. As in real life, things aren’t getting any easier. We check in with Horgan and Delaney, who also created and wrote the series and live in the U.K. with their own (real) families.
Q You throw a lot at TV Sharon and Rob this season: Infidelity, unemployment, addiction, a death. Was it a conscious decision to turn the pressure up in their marriage?
DELANEY: Yeah, it was. I have a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. My real life reflects Catastrophe- level pressures, so I just try to take away the feeling and add more jokes. Things are difficult right now for my family. We just had a bunch of kids in a row and we live in a foreign country. So (that’s) what it feels like.
Q When Sharon looks for sympathy from Rob, she takes cover, citing societal pressure from Brexit and Trump. When did you decide to stir in real-life events?
HORGAN: Brexit happened kind of at the beginning of the writing process. Then Trump got elected ... and we kind of felt (that) it was so huge, what was happening in the world, that it would feel odd to not mention it.
DELANEY: We almost never talk about specific political things or politicians, because we would like the show to be evergreen. But those things are so huge that 20 years from now, people will remember that Trump was president and Brexit happened and that both events caused stress for people on a macro level and on a personal level.
Q In Seasons 1 and 2, Rob and Sharon dealt with an unplanned pregnancy, cultural differences and the arrival of two kids. This season Rob struggles with unemployment, possible infidelity and Rob’s alcoholism. Do you still feel these two are a match?
HORGAN: Yes. I still really do. Whether they would have got to- gether if it hadn’t been for the pregnancy — the answer is probably not. But they grew together. By the end of Season 3 they’ve both decided that they don’t work without each other. The first season they were falling in love while dealing with this massive thing that’s happened; the second season was trying to stay in love when you’ve got a young family. I think Season 3, in a way, is about realizing when the bad things happen, that they are going to just suck it up.
DELANEY: I think we just don’t put a varnish on it. Because that’s what life is like. Sharon and Rob are the realest couple around. Marriage is hard. Kids are hard. You have to make the choice to make it work.
Q The last episode is dedicated to Carrie Fisher, who resumed her role as Rob’s caustic American mother. (Fisher suffered a fatal heart attack on the flight home from London after filming). In one scene, she and Rob confront each other about addiction. What was that like?
DELANEY: Just really special. What we all know about her biographically, you know that she’s wrestled with those issues. It so happened that I have as well. So it was pretty poignant. It was pretty heavy. When we were shooting it, I didn’t know she would be dead in a couple of weeks. I didn’t know it was that special, but I knew it was special.
Q Have you thought about how you’ll handle her death in the next season?
HORGAN: Not really. It was hard enough (editing), because we hadn’t lost her very long before, and so it was desperately strange and upsetting to see this person alive and on screen, and yet she was no longer with us. But it’s important to us that we find the right way to address it and to honor her. We tried to do that with Episode 6, we tried for that to be Carrie’s episode.