Kat Sadler has her head in her hands. She is sitting across from me, recalling the moment she won a Bafta for her painfully dark BBC Three comedy Such Brave Girls<\/a>. \u201cI wish I was one of those people who practise their speech in the shower,\u201d the 31-year-old laments, visibly cringing. \u201cYou know, people do that. I wish I\u2019d done that or thought about what I was gonna say. I got there, and I was like, I\u2019ve got f***ing nothing.\u201d Dressed in a suit as she picked up the award for Best Scripted Comedy alongside her sister and co-star Lizzie Davidson, Sadler did seem like a deer in headlights. Struggling to remember everyone to thank, she eventually babbled: \u201cI guess, writing\u2019s really hard and this is really nice.\u201d Talking about it a year on, she groans. \u201cIt\u2019s a car crash. What the hell was I saying?\u201d<\/p>\n Given the rave reviews the A24-produced Such Brave Girls received from critics and fans alike when it arrived in 2023 \u2013 The Guardian called the show a \u201cmalevolent delight\u201d \u2013 it might seem surprising that the former BBC Comedy joke writer wasn\u2019t more prepared for the possibility of the show winning the highly regarded prize. But as I speak to Sadler a few weeks before season two launches, it\u2019s clear that her self-deprecation is deeply felt. She is fidgety and talks quickly, unassumingly. Her brows are expressive, and near-permanently furrowed. <\/p>\n There\u2019s always a strange feeling when you speak to an actor best known for playing a version of themselves on screen: one of knowing them, while also being hyper-aware that you don\u2019t, really. With Sadler, the connection is particularly hard to shake. From day dot, she has made it clear that the troubled and chaotic single-parent family at the centre of Such Brave Girls is heavily inspired by life with her sister and mum, and their respective mental health struggles. Sadler does not sugarcoat anything to anyone. During that fateful Bafta speech, she was quick to recount the story of the phone call that prompted her to write Such Brave Girls. It was early 2020; Sadler told Davidson she had been sectioned after attempting to take her own life, and Davidson replied by admitting that she was \u00a320,000 in debt. Both burst out laughing.<\/p>\n In Such Brave Girls, Sadler co-stars as moping twentysomething Josie, who\u2019s struggling with her sexuality and threatens to have a panic attack whenever she wants to get out of going to work. Her sister on screen and off, Davidson, is Billie, the attention-seeking ringleader constantly concocting schemes to win back her drug dealer ex. And then there\u2019s Louise Brealey as their domineering, neurotic mother Deb, a woman hellbent on ensuring that the weird, sad daughters living under her roof do not scare off her new man Dev (Paul Bazely).<\/p>\n There\u2019s a scene in series one where the sisters lie on Josie\u2019s bed together. \u201cI guess we just have to remember that most people aren\u2019t wet for trauma like we are,\u201d Josie says, to which Billie replies, frustrated, \u201cBut trauma\u2019s all we\u2019ve got.\u201d For the characters, mental illness is a language of its own: suicide threats, toxic relationships and abandonment issues after their dad went out for teabags and never came back are all standard fare. Deb is more of a comic creation, but Josie and Billie are heavily inspired by, albeit more extreme versions of, Sadler and Davidson. Sadler began writing the show in 2020, with real-life events constantly popping up in the script. \u201cMy sister will tell me an anecdote about something, and I\u2019ll be like, \u2018I\u2019ll just be having that,\u2019\u201d Sadler jokes.<\/p>\n The Davidson family (Sadler is a stage name) grew up on the outskirts of London, where making each other laugh was their personal currency. They had a \u201creal venom towards each other\u201d, when it came to jokes, Sadler says. \u201c[We were] always one-upping each other. It\u2019s quite a competitive house\u2026 Mum would always do pranks on us, and we\u2019d always take the piss. You weren\u2019t allowed to have any dignity.\u201d You can sense this attitude in the show\u2019s dark, often abrasive sense of humour, where sex, death and dangerous hair dye jobs are all joked about with equal casual brashness.<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Sadler as Josie in the painfully dark \u2018Such Brave Girls\u2019 (BBC\/Various Artists Limited)<\/p>\n With season one, there was some pressure from TV execs, Sadler admits, to tone down the characters and make them more \u201clikeable\u201d. She was staunchly against it. Luckily, so too was director Simon Bird<\/a>, who had approached Sadler and Davidson about joining the project after watching their 2021 pilot. Considering he had his start playing the mildly insufferable Will on The Inbetweeners<\/a>, it\u2019s no surprise that Bird got what the sisters were going for. \u201cHe\u2019s the first person that\u2019s like, \u2018It\u2019s not about that. Nobody cares about that,\u2019\u201d Sadler says. \u201cI feel like we have the benefit of the doubt more [with series two] so we can push the boundaries. That was the fun challenge, just to be like, \u2018OK, how do we make things worse?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bold claim: the first series already saw Josie mistaking her crush\u2019s affectionate relationship with her dad for incest, Billie foaming at the mouth while bleaching her hair, and Deb burning a picture of her boyfriend\u2019s dead wife while calling her a \u201cf***ing frigid b****\u201d. <\/strong>But on a show of extremes like Such Brave Girls, making things worse for the characters makes the show better. Many plot points are heavily embargoed, but I can confirm that season two is season one on steroids. Despite the acclaim and the awards, however, Sadler is by no means confident. When I casually bring up a particular plot point from the opening episode I found particularly funny, Sadler replies, \u201cYeah?\u201d with a relieved, if not entirely convinced look in her eyes. \u201cI\u2019m not secure about series two at all. I haven\u2019t worked out how I feel,\u201d she says. \u201cIf someone says they watched it, I\u2019m still thinking, did you like it?\u201d Sadler knows those nerves are a good sign for a writer, \u201cotherwise you\u2019re not going to move the needle\u201d, but that doesn\u2019t make them any less unpleasant. \u201cI was \u2013 \u201d her voice drops to a whisper \u201c \u2013 f***ing petrified. And I continue to be for series two.\u201d<\/p>\n Considering Sadler\u2019s outward displays of nervousness, it\u2019s hard to imagine how she got into comedy in the first place. Davidson was the performer in their household growing up, a musical theatre kid who would go on to work at the London Dungeons and Shrek\u2019s Adventure! before the show came out. In contrast, Sadler was \u201cmuch more brooding and just sat on my laptop writing sad poetry and didn\u2019t think I was brave enough to do any performing\u201d. She got into stand-up comedy at university (after assuming the society was for comedy fans, rather than prospective performers), but says she never conquered her nerves. She stopped stand-up around seven years ago, and right until the end would down a bottle of Pepto Bismol before getting on stage.<\/p>\n I would love to get out of my head<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The internet helped. Sadler would pre-write sets in a blog, which she\u2019d then perform on stage. And she gained a substantial following on Twitter with one-liners which, she admits, she has occasionally repurposed for Josie in Such Brave Girls. When a Twitter thread went viral where Sadler had listed the craziest things she\u2019d done for love, it was a boost, telling her that her own experiences might be more universal than she thought. \u201cAnd everyone called me a psycho and I should kill myself. But it\u2019s worth it, because I think people that felt seen felt seen!\u201d she jokes, in a mock blas\u00e9 tone.<\/p>\n There are lots of suicide jokes in Such Brave Girls. Dealing with this issue more \u201csensitively\u201d would feel inauthentic to Sadler; when it comes to her and her family, \u201cthat\u2019s not how we talk\u201d, she explains. \u201cWe\u2019re so numb to it in my household that we\u2019re just like, \u2018Yeah, what else? Yeah, OK, we all feel that way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When a character gets sectioned in series two of Such Brave Girls, I thought about her Bafta speech. But it also made me consider how, even in our age of talking about mental health, we so rarely go beyond vague platitudes. We\u2019re quick to say that it\u2019s \u201cOK not to be OK\u201d \u2013 less so to look at these gnarlier, less palatable versions of mental illness. Psychosis, state intervention \u2013 Such Brave Girls is one of the few forms of media showing that these things are more common than you think.<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Davidson, Brealey and Sadler in \u2018Such Brave Girls\u2019 (BBC\/Various Artists Limited)<\/p>\n Sadler describes society\u2019s refusal to acknowledge more serious mental health issues as a \u201creal squeamishness\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care if it makes people uncomfortable,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was really important to show, bones and all.\u201d She says that, in the plotline in the series, she didn\u2019t want to necessarily have the family be sensitive about it, because that\u2019s not always the reality. \u201cI almost think that can make people feel worse\u2026 It can be quite lonely, watching a family band together around someone who\u2019s gone through a mental health crisis. That makes me feel lonely, because that\u2019s not what happens in my experience.\u201d <\/p>\n While fans might be hoping for a third series \u2013 and Sadler certainly has ideas for one \u2013 the comic wants to go out and live some life first. This could even include acting in something she hasn\u2019t also created. \u201cI would love to get out of my head,\u201d she says. \u201cIt might be nice to be on set and just be an actor and be like, \u2018This is the gift of the part, what I do with it?\u2019 Rather than being like, \u2018I\u2019ve made this, do people like it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In putting her story on screen, Sadler is finally beginning to carve out her own place in an industry that has always felt exclusionary. Still, the nerves, the feeling of not fitting in, are hard to shake. When they won the Bafta, Sadler and Davidson refused to even let themselves bask in it. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the biggest mouths, and we never belong at those events,\u201d Sadler says. \u201cWe did a victory lap around the venue, and then left, and that was the night. We were just like, \u2018We can\u2019t stay,\u2019 because it\u2019s too much pressure.\u201d She groans, again. \u201cIt\u2019s too embarrassing, the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n All six episodes of \u2018Such Brave Girls\u2019 season two are available in the UK on Thursday, 3 July, on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-223685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114766043215075932","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sadler](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/524222.jpeg\")
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