Sharon Horgan and Andrij Parekh, with moderator Diana Lodderhose, at Karlovy Vary Georg Szalai/THR Sharon Horgan brought star power and insights into her upcoming HBO series Youth to Karlovy Vary’s KVIFF Industry Days program of the festival on Wednesday.
She appeared just after a session with The Sopranos creator David Chase at the industry strand of the 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic. With HBO being a topic at both keynote appearances, Horgan also faced a business question, namely what may happen to HBO after Paramount Skydance acquires its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. “Who knows?” the multihyphenate replied. “You just don’t know. I’m hopeful that nothing changes with HBO, because it would be kind of crazy. It’s such an iconic brand. It is the ultimate premium streamer. I don’t know why you would want to interfere with that.” Director and cinematographer Andrij Parekh (House of the Dragon, Succession) shared a similar thought: “I just hope that they have the wisdom to leave it alone.”
The two creatives appeared in an on-stage conversation entitled “The Cinematic Series: Storytelling in the Age of Streaming,” moderated by Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose. One audience member asked Horgan on Wednesday if her Apple TV series Bad Sisters could return for a third season one day, and she didn’t rule it out. Maybe “in the future, at some point – I’m always having ideas for stories,” she said.
“It’s just that at the moment the focus is the HBO show,” namely Youth. Horgan shared about it: “There’s a small element of autobiography to it – it’s a little more similar to Pulling and Catastrophe, … and it’s about being a woman of a certain age – that’s inspired by me.”
She added that the comedy show is “about the sandwich generation as well. It’s about a certain time in your life where your parents are becoming more elderly, your children are refusing to leave home, you’re caring for everyone, but how do you care for yourself when you’re in that situation?” Horgan said the series is set to debut in September. Parekh was also asked what he is working on, mentioning a Netflix series called The Retrievals, which the streamer unveiled in May and “which is shooting this fall.” He explained: “It’s actually shockingly uncommercial, but it’s a true story of a nurse at a Yale hospital that was replacing fentanyl in women’s IVF injections [to feed her opioid addiction] with saline, so the women went through an extraordinary amount of pain. And they were sort of gaslit by the hospital and the whole IVF system into believing that they were not.” Written and executive produced by Molly Smith Metzler (Sirens, Maid), the show is adapted from the Susan Burton podcast of the same name. About his roles on the show, Parekh highlighted: “I am shooting the pilot as DOP and then directing two episodes.”
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