For his latest GLAMOUR column, Josh Smith Meets, Josh talks to Eve Hewson, who, fresh from the success of Netflix’s Behind Her Eyes, is now starring in AppleTV+’s new show about a group of sisters who plot to murder their brother-in-law, Bad Sisters. Here Eve talks about the changing face of Hollywood and the power of sisterhood in her own life. And yes, she would murder for her sister…
“You are going to die,” Eve Hewson tells me minutes into our Zoom call - as we discuss her killer new TV show, Bad Sisters - but trust me, it’s not as malicious as it sounds because it’s entirely obvious the only way Eve could murder you is with a good time, fuelled by Guinness, unlike her latest character, who would actually murder you. “The first episode is when you have to introduce the characters, introduce the world and blah blah blah, but it gets so bonkers as it goes on. There were so many days where we were almost peeing our pants laughing,” she adds, speaking to me via Zoom from her New York abode.
Nearly 50 years after protesting the mistreatment of Native Americans on behalf of Brando, the actress and activist will be honoured at the Academy Museum.
Bonkers is the tone of the day, in fact. For 90 per cent of my Zoom with Eve, I am in bits - there is rarely a moment without laughter with Eve around. Which bodes well for Bad Sisters, created by Sharon Horgan, star and creator of the likes of Pulling and Catastrophe. The comedy-drama with the seasoning of a thriller - set in Ireland and with a largely Irish cast - sees four sisters (played by Sharon, Eve, Sarah Greene and Eva Birthistle) band together to murder their abusive brother-in-law, John Paul (Claes Bang) after years of watching him destroy their sister (Ann-Marie Duff) through violence and abusive words. It doesn’t sound like a laugh a minute but trust me, in the hands of Sharon, it is. Take the opening scene, for instance, whilst Grace (Ann Marie Duff) mourns for her husband at his open casket in her living room, his corpse spontaneously gets a hard-on which, as Eve says, “sets the tone perfectly.” So think Big Little Lies on (Irish) craic.
The show was a real gift for Eve, even if she didn’t see it as such at first. “First of all, I got the script the day before Christmas eve,” she says. “And I was like, ‘I don’t want to have to audition. I don’t want to make a f**king tape, it’s Christmas time!’ My agent told me to read it, and I was hoping it was sh*t, so I didn’t have to cancel my Christmas plans. I read it, and I was like, ‘oh f**k, this is so good!’ Now I am ganna have to cancel my plans, put down the Guinness down and make the tape.’”
What spoke to her about playing the ‘messy sister,’ Becka, who is a free spirit with a penchant for a good pint and hot men? “I'd never had that experience before where I was like, ‘this is me basically in a character.’ I'm definitely far more professional than Becka, and I do have my life together more, but there's a messiness to her and a wildness to her that I definitely relate to,” Eve replies.
Landing the role just as she turned 30 also marked a coming of age moment for Eve, that moment where your messiness hopefully subsides and out of the debris of your twenties, an adult emerges. Something I relate to. “I feel like she's my ode to my twenties,” Eve confirms, “when you don't have everything together, you don't know where your life is going, you're somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, but you're not really an adult either. You aren’t forced to have a proper career. You can float around, and you don't need to buy a house. It’s the decade where you're discovering things about yourself and all of your insecurities that you have about yourself and feeling like you don't have direction. You look like a grown-up, but you're not. Everyone is just pretending and winging it. It's also a period where you make all the wrong decisions, you date all the wrong people, you drink too much. It was a perfect moment for me to put all of my experience into one person and then step away from it, say goodbye to it in a way.”
I was a certified messy bitch in my twenties, how messy was Eve, I ask? “Oh, a messy bitch 100%,” she erupts with laughter. “It was just the messiest decades, and you couldn't f**king pay me to go back! My thirties are a good place to be. It's my safe place. It was amazingly cathartic looking back and then sort of moving through it. As long as they don't bring me back through it in season two. I think I've said goodbye. Maybe if we do season two, she can have her sh*t together for my mental health.”
Whilst it is clear a recent coming of age moment has empowered Eve, the changing landscape of Hollywood has had a part to play too. Bad Sisters, with its four strong female leads, is a symbol of how far the industry has come in not only creating female-led narratives but representing all facets of womanhood. The show certainly follows in the footsteps of recent hits Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere and basically anything Reese Witherspoon touches. But I wonder what still frustrates her about the conversations we're still having to have about the representation of women on screen?
The gloomy long-plaited character is back!
“That's a good question because I haven't felt that in a while, actually,” Eve replies. “I feel like the last projects I've done have been female-driven with really great characters. But God, pre Me-Too it was a joke! It was painful. I had a horrible time dealing with and trying to fit into this idea of what Hollywood, AKA, a bunch of white men in a boardroom thought was sexy, powerful and what people wanted to see. There's a lot of roles that I went up for and even played, where they just wanted tits on a stick, basically. You know, ‘don't eat anything and wear a push-up bra.’”
“It's also tricky because the people that are financing these things - I know it's changed now - but back then, it was a man's view of what they thought was sexy,” she continues. “But you can’t define sexuality at all. You can't whittle it down to just one look or one type of person. It was a man in the boardroom making a decision about your costume that he doesn't think is sexy because you look like the girl that rejected him when he was a kid. Sexuality is so personal, and they tried to make it this commercial thing, and it wasn't right to do that. Now there's more women stepping into power, and there's so much diversity. We've always had these stories to tell, but now they are getting told, and TV and film have gotten so much more interesting because of it. ‘Hollywood’ has realised that their audiences aren't stupid, you don't have to spoon feed people, and hopefully, we never go back to that time.”
The show certainly centres around the sheer power of sisterhood, something that has been ever present in Eve’s life through her relationship with her sister, Jordan. “Me and my sister’s favourite thing to do is sit around and have a good bitch for 20 minutes,” she says, talking about their incredible bond. But it was a relationship that caused havoc when she grew up in Ireland with her parents, activist Ali Hewson and music god, Bono. “We are Liam and Noel Gallagher, basically,” Eve laughs. “We fight all the time, but we love each other deeply and would actually kill for each other. My mum didn't have a sister, she had a brother, and she could never figure out this bizarre dynamic that we had, which was killing each other one second and loving each other the next.”
“My mum tells this story about when I was really young, like five and seven, and I ran into the kitchen and was like, ‘Mum, Jordan is being mean to me!’ My Mum ‘gave out’ to my sister, and she started crying. And I was like, ‘Why would you do that? Why would you make her cry? You're so mean!’ My mum was like, ‘this is the craziest dynamic. You guys love each other and hate each other, and I'm never gonna be able to figure it out.
Whilst the show deals with the comedic minefield of sisterhood as Eve says, “Sharon is a genius and she writes in this really amazing way, which is just one foot in comedy and one foot in drama.” And at the heart of the show is an exploration of domestic violence, something Eve was proud to bring to the screen. “We're really talking about something really serious and something that so many people experience, whether it's domestic violence or emotional abuse or being in a controlling relationship, and it isn't talked about that much. I think it's talked about more in the dramatic, more extreme cases, but in this, JP can be quite theatrical with it, but it’s also about the manipulation and the things he says that get into her head that make her doubt herself. Sharon dealt with it in such a delicate, smart way where he’s not punching her every day, and we're going, ‘we must kill him, he's beating up our sister.’ As the episodes go on, it’s a much bigger theme, and you realise what these women have been dealing with, with this guy. It makes the show have a real impact, it’s not just ‘funny, funny, haha,’ we're really trying to talk about something bigger.”
Now this is what you call a powerhouse roll call.
There is no doubting that Bad Sisters arrives during a new wave in Eve’s career following the huge success of the Netflix hit psychological thriller, Behind Her Eyes. But after working for over 15 years in such projects as Steven Soderbergh’s TV series, The Knick and the Oscar-winning, Bridge of Spies, what has she learned about success and failure? “Failure is the key to success,” Eve answers instantly.
“I know that people have f**king vision boards, and they have ideas that they wanna be, ‘at this place in my career at this point,’ but I have I've learned to not do that because I think you're losing the power of the moment that you're in and to enjoy where you are in your life. I also feel if you're getting hired as an actor, you're winning, so have some f**king perspective. As long as people are hiring you, you're good! Even with Behind Her Eyes I wasn’t like, ‘I have to be on a Netflix show, that's gonna be number one around the world.’ I got that script two weeks before they shot, and I barely even knew what I was signing on it. I was just like, ‘I’ll go to London. I think I can play this part.’ I just went for it, and it turned out to be wonderful, but if it wasn’t wonderful, even if no one saw it, it didn’t matter because I had a good time doing it.”
Is Eve enjoying her newfound niche for murderous dramas with mind-blowing plot twists? “I love murder and a plot twist! I was thinking about this the other day, every f**king show I've done is about murder. I've gotta step away from the murder!
As our time wraps up, I have one last big question, one that Bad Sisters asks of its audience: is it okay to bump someone off if they're really, really f**king awful? “Totally, knock them out! I don’t actually support murder but if you are in a TV show, go for it.”
Bad Sisters starts on Apple TV+ on Friday 19th August.
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