Sharon audition was Scandalous
Emmett reveals he had to simulate sex in toilet for Horgan comedy series role
THE star of Sharon Horgan’s new comedy series has revealed he had to audition by simulating sex with a woman in a toilet.
Emmett Scanlan said he laughed when he first read the scene which he had to record at home on his own camera.
And he added he just hoped the neighbours weren’t looking when he got stuck into the scene for RTE Two’s Women On The Verge which starts on Thursday.
The 39-year-old former Hollyoaks and The Fall star said he would have done anything to be in the show about three friends, played by Kerry Condon, Eileen Walsh and Nina Sosanya.
He plays Condon’s married love interest while Horgan stars as her psychiatrist.
The Dubliner added: “My agent rang me up and said, ‘Scan, Sharon Horgan is doing a new…’ and before she could even finish her sentence I said, ‘I’m in’.
“And she goes, ‘I don’t have the scripts,’ I said, ‘I don’t give a s***, it’s Sharon Horgan, I’m in’.
“Because that’s how much I love her. I think she’s an extraordinary woman. Just so clever at what she does.
“And then the audition scene came in, and it was my character having sex with a lady in a toilet, and I just burst out laughing. I’m like, ‘OK, well, let’s do this’.
“So, I got up, my wife got up with me and set up the camera, she’s still in her dressing gown half asleep. I’m standing there with my shirt open.
“The curtains are open overlooking our courtyard, where our neighbours are leaving their houses, going to work, taking their kids to school, walking past our window while I was air-humping an invisible dancing partner.
“It was just one of those surreal moments. It was like, ‘Thank God, they know we’re actors, because this is just so weird right now’.
“I found it hugely liberating, to be honest with you. I like those kinds of bold scenes where you have to really commit. But it was a new experience for me and my neighbours.” Scanlan, who is married to actress Claire Cooper, said his journalist character regards himself as a bit of a Casanova.
He added: “He’s a ferocious flirt, a serial adulterer. He’s pretty much the embodiment of the cliche ‘having your cake and eating it’.
“He’s got this insatiable appetite for sex and success. He’s a lot of fun to play.”
Although married, his character Kieran is sleeping with Condon’s character Laura and doesn’t realise she is going through emotional pain.
Condon, 35, said she too was thrilled to get the part Sharon Horgan
of Laura, one of the three career-driven women who think life is passing them by.
Horgan had seen her in a play with her friend 13 years ago and followed her career. The Rome actress said: “I couldn’t believe she remembered really, to be honest with you.
“But it was nice to know that somebody was paying attention to something I’d done and put work into, that it was noted or whatever.”
I found it hugely liberating to be honest, I like those scenes where you have to commit
EMMETT SCANLAN ON GETTING KIT OFF TO AUDITION FOR ROLE