‘I can try sitting down, I just don’t know how fanny-showing this skirt is,’ says Anna Maxwell Martin, leaning on a wooden stool and high-kicking one leg. While Anna says she hates photo shoots – ‘So awkward for an actor, having to stand there and be yourself ’ – today she’s happily hamming it up for the camera with Sharon Horgan to celebrate the triumphant return of hit BBC comedy Motherland.
Where the first series introduced us to the hilarious and painfully recognisable world of playground politics and competitive mums, the second builds on the tightness of the friendship between ever-frazzled Julia, played by Anna, laid-back Liz (Diane Morgan) and adorable, wet Kevin (Paul Ready), plus acerbic frenemy Amanda (Lucy Punch).
Co-written by Sharon Horgan, the gags come thick and fast as the second series navigates familiar parenting terrain, taking us from a new school term through to sports day, via Halloween and a group trip to a grotty Airbnb for half-term. This time around, Kevin is working full-time at the local soft play centre, pristine Amanda is running a vastly overpriced kids’ boutique and Julia now works from home – ‘I can’t sneak off to the toilet with reception’s copy of Grazia because if I take a long poo, it’s on my own time now,’ she laments. ‘It’s about the adults behaving like children,’ says Anna, sitting alongside Sharon as they have their hair and make-up done. ‘We weren’t even going to show the kids if we could get away with it,’ adds Sharon. ‘Because it’s not about parenting, it’s about friendships. It’s like a workplace comedy in a way because it’s about a group of people thrown together who only know each other through that situation.’
Aside from Motherland, Sharon and Anna have much in common. Both live in North London, have two daughters and ‘don’t go anywhere near the PTA’. Do they have their own school-gate tribes? ‘Yes! You do need your people, especially if you’re working. God, I sound like Julia taking advantage of all her friends, but you do need friends to pick up your kids!’ says Anna, hooting with laughter.
'The genius of Motherland lies in how it pits hyper-middle-class parenting and all of the self-inflicted angst that comes with it.'
Given the show’s achingly realistic observations and cringeworthy characters, does the playground become an awkward place for Sharon while the series is on? ‘I did feel awkward,’ she says. ‘When it went out last time, I was really anxious and thought, “Oh god, they’re all gonna think I’m here to steal their souls and their stories.” I got a bit paranoid. But then I’m always paranoid in school. I’ve actually just finished the whole drop-off and pick-up thing – where you go in, head down, because you can’t see any of your crew. Or you spot them and hang around talking about the others... Both my kids are now in secondary school – it’s going to be interesting to see how we write the third series.’
With women-led comedy finally riding a golden wave – we meet the day after Phoebe Waller-Bridge swept the board at the Emmys – much of the credit has to go to Sharon and her phenomenally successful body of taboo-busting work. With Pulling, Catastrophe, Divorce and Motherland on her CV, she’s proved that the tragicomic stuff of women’s everyday lives not only produces gut-grabbing laughs, but that it really sells, too. ‘That’s key,’ she says. ‘That’s what makes the guys at the top – the CEOs and the people who run the networks – sit up.’
But for Anna, being cast in Motherland was a whole new direction. With a string of drama performances to her name (The Bletchley Circle, Philomena and Bleak House, for which she won a BAFTA), she'd never done comedy before. Sick of auditioning, she turned up for the casting in a very grumpy mood, ‘had a little cry in the lift’, and then stood silently in the doorway, staring dead-eyed at Graham Linehan, one of the show’s other writers.
Sharon throws her head back and laughs. ‘You terrified him so much that he desperately didn’t want you to get the part!’ But Sharon knew instinctively that Anna was the right fit. ‘She did it like nobody else could or would do it.’ It’s the livid grin, I suggest, and Sharon nods furiously, ‘Oh, that’s my favourite.’ Laughs aside, this series of Motherland shows the full spectrum of parenthood, exploring dating, divorce and, of course, the frenzy of keeping multiple plates spinning. Do they think parenting is more complex than it used to be?
‘My parents had five kids,’ says Sharon. ‘I think they just fed us and gave us shelter and sent us to school [laughs]. It’s not like there wasn’t an interest there but it really was down to you to make your choices and your mistakes, I think it’s a lot harder for parents now.
So where does that pressure to be fully engaged in your kids, school and career come from? ‘It’s an interesting question,’ says Anna. ‘Do we create it or is it really, truly there? Is it social media? Or is it our generation putting too much pressure on ourselves? I don’t think my mum really gave a shit! We didn’t have playdates, did we?!’ She hoots again.
'It’s taken us a long time to admit our foibles and frailties at parenting.’
The genius of Motherland lies in how it pits hyper-middle-class parenting and all of the self-inflicted angst that comes with it against the parents who are just trying to make it to bedtime. It really is one of those shows that leaves you baffled as to why it didn’t get made sooner. ‘Because no one gave a shit?’ offers Sharon. ‘There have been lots of shows about parenthood so maybe they thought it was covered. The thing that’s fun about creating a show like Motherland is showing people failing and fucking up – but not everyone is happy to show mothers doing that. It doesn’t necessarily appeal to show someone being negligent when there are kids around, but I think we all are, or have been, at some point.
‘It’s taken us quite a long time to say, woman to woman, “God I fucked up last night and really screamed at the kids and then drank 10 bottles of wine,”’ says Anna. ‘It’s taken us a long time to admit our foibles and frailties at parenting.’
The conversation moves on to what it’s like having older kids – Sharon’s girls are now 11 and 16, while Anna’s are seven and 10. Both women are regularly told off by their daughters for not doing enough to protect the environment (‘I’m not even meant to pick up a dog shit with a plastic bag!’ says Anna), while Sharon says her girls are ‘incredibly political’.
‘Teenagers either don’t give a shit about anything or they worry about everything, and my daughters are the latter,’ says Sharon. ‘They genuinely get nervous and anxious about stuff. In some ways it’s great that they want to talk and question everything but, in other ways, I hate that they have this burden of worry.’
Unsurprisingly for two women at the top of their game, both say the one thing they could do with is more time. With several projects on the go, Sharon says she doesn’t know when they’ll start writing the third series of Motherland but Anna can’t wait to do it all again. ‘I have a very nice time at work,’ she says. ‘I really value the writers and the other actors – they’re all really funny and kind in real life. You just want to be around nice people, not dickheads.
‘Motherland’ returns on 7 October at 10pm on BBC Two. The whole series will be available immediately afterwards on BBC iPlayer
Sharon's episode of Modern Love, Rallying To Keep The Game Alive, is available 18 October on Amazon Prime.