Claes Bang bared all while playing the most ghastly, smarmy creep John Paul, “The Prick,” on the TV series Bad Sisters. We’re talking literally, here, too—he showed his naked bum to the camera. In one scene, he laid in a coffin, dead, with an erection. And, in perhaps the trickiest acting challenge of the whole series, he was cruel to five of the sweetest women on planet Earth. Playing a schmuck on the level of John Paul “JP” is no easy feat, but Bang rose to the (despicable) occasion.
It’s not a spoiler to say JP dies at the end of Bad Sisters. (Though, warning: There are spoilers ahead.) In fact, JP is dead in the very first scene of Sharon Horgan’s new dark comedy, returning throughout the series in flashbacks.
Over the last few episodes, the Apple TV+ series jumped between the past (in which JP wreaks havoc on his sisters-in-law, who plot to murder him in return) and the present (after JP is dead, the folks behind his life insurance try to figure out if he was murdered) for the past few weeks. (It’s also really funny, we swear!)
Now, the finale here, having premiered on the streamer Friday. That means we know who killed JP. Was it Eva (Horgan), the big sis who developed a vendetta against him once he became her new boss? Or was it Bibi (Sarah Greene), who lost her eye as a result of his poor driving? There’s also Ursula (Eva Birthistle), who was manipulated out of having an affair by his brute intervention, and little Becka (Eve Hewson), who hates the way he treats his mom, a client of her massage business.
All four are sisters of Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), the meekest sibling, who pleads with JP to have sex with her—even after he berates and debases her for taking their daughter to a Lizzo concert.
Though he’s a conniving abuser, who spreads lies about neighbors being sex offenders and sisters-in-laws being terrible drunks, it can be quite fun watching JP shred the Garvey sisters’ world into pieces. There’s something twisted about enjoying this—like watching The White Lotus guests wreak havoc on hotel staff or Love Is Blind contestants manipulate their lovers—but it’s even more cathartic to watch him die.
Oddly enough, Bang says he can relate to JP, which is how he was able to bring the villain to life.
“I am basically just playing myself here, in a sense that I’ve taken all my worst sides and overexposed them,” Bang says. “I needed to do that in order to get him embodied, so that he wouldn’t just be an idiot or evil or a prick, but that he actually did sit somewhere. I have a weird, stupid tendency myself, where if I become very insecure, I can get mean or nasty or lash out at people.”
In a recent interview with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, Bang unpacked the many murder attempts of Bad Sisters, leading up to that ferocious climax in the finale. Spoilers ahead—though we know he’s been dead all along, we’ve been spared the specifics. Until now.
Do you think you said “Mammy” or the sisters said “The Prick” more while filming?
Oh my lord, I don’t know. We weren’t counting. But we ended up calling Anne-Marie “Mammy” all the time, even off-screen. And whenever they spoke to me, they would call me “The Prick” constantly. That’s my new alias. “The Prick.” How lovely!
Has the word “Mammy” snuck its way into your lexicon now?
No, not at all. It’s for the better.
I heard you had to be told to cut down on the use of “Mammy” on set, though.
At one point, it got out of hand. I literally tried to fit a Mammy into every sentence. The director of the last four episodes was like, “Do you think we could do with just two or three Mammy’s in this scene, instead of 11 or 12?”
My favorite part of watching the show is seeing you playing this manipulative jerk, who is also, somehow, a bumbling fool. Is that weird?
I was slightly surprised about how it sits with everyone. One thing that Anne-Marie and I were really careful of—because he is dead from the beginning; we know that’s where he goes—was managing him so that he wouldn’t be so much of an asshole from the very first episode. We had to stretch it over 10 episodes. That was mainly what we were concerned with. I’m surprised that people really goddamn hate this guy—I don’t think I knew it would be that bad when we filmed it.
How did you mesh him being an evil mastermind with being an idiot?
It has to be identifiable, I feel. Something you can relate to, somehow. Even if it’s just, “I had an uncle like that,” or, “I had a stepdad like that.” It wasn’t only just him being horrible and evil and an idiot, because then it becomes very monotonous. The stuff with my daughter came into play, because we need to see that he’s actually caring for someone, there’s a heart behind him. If he became just a caricature after one or two episodes, then you couldn’t sit through the whole 10 episodes. I had to find a way of making him identifiable.
He’s being very protective of himself and his family, and he’s got this feeling that these sisters are always trying to get to him, or get in the way of him having a normal life. He just feels that they’re a real threat, and that makes him very insecure.
Why does he see these sisters as a threat? They’re family, too.
In Episode 2, Sharon’s character goes out and buys a bra for my daughter. That’s a good example of this, where he’s like, “Come on, she’s young. I don’t want her to grow up too soon. Don’t start taking control over my family, even if my daughter is actually happy about it.” All of a sudden, they buy a kitten for Grace because the dog died. It’s like, stay the fuck out of my life, man! Don’t buy kittens and bras for me and my family. We can buy our own stuff.
If JP was not such a fucked up person, then he would see that it would be a marvelous thing to have sisters with that kind of connection and that kind of bond. If he was a bit more at home in himself and had a bigger confidence, believed a bit more in himself, he wouldn’t feel like it was such a threat. Because he’s a very insecure person, he feels that everything is a threat, rather than being able to be there and welcome them. It could be a marvelous thing to have a wife with that amazing connection to her sisters. But he only ever sees it as a threat.
What was your favorite murder attempt in the whole series?
Obviously, the one that was the most awkward, but also the most fun to shoot, was the one that happened in Episode 6, where they try to put the rohypnol in my nasal spray and I end up walking around the room almost naked, driving a car and falling into a lake. That was just so, so stupid. But quite good fun!
How was filming that?
It was kind of awkward. I’ve seen some of the stuff that has not ended up in the episode, where my butt is right, straight into the camera. I’m very happy it didn’t come out on international television.
You posted about another awkward scene that’s so funny. In the first episode, you have that dead guy boner. “Post-mortem priapism.” How hard—no pun intended—was that to film?
I had nothing to do with it! I was lying in the coffin for five hours while they were trying stuff on me. I was lying there while they were trying out different vegetables, different dildos, all kinds of stuff, trying to film it and figure out what looked right. Someone wrote to me about it, and I said, “Yeah, that’s my finest piece of method acting ever.” Which absolutely is not true!
Wait, you tried on vegetables?
They tried anything. At one point, I fell asleep. It was obviously a question of getting it right. You had to be able to see what it was, but it couldn’t be too monstrous or too weird or too tiny or too big.
It sort of sets the tone a little bit, because it’s quite early on. I think we’re like two minutes into the first episode, where you’ve got a corpse with a boner. That could’ve gone terribly wrong. We filmed all kinds of different versions so they could decide in the editing room what did the right thing. It could go totally slapstick weird, too much, if it wasn’t right. There was a lot of attention to detail on that day. But I didn’t have anything to do or say. I was dead.
I kept expecting that there would be some reason that he died with an erection, that he would croak while he was watching porn or something.
That’s not the case! Somebody investigated and looked into it, and this is something that happens to people. I actually had never heard about it before. When I read it the first time, I was like, “Ah, that’s a bit steep, isn’t it? That’s a bit weird.” But it is a thing. As you know, he didn’t die watching any kind of television. He died by Mammy’s hand, with the bloody thing she knitted over all 10 episodes.
That’s right. [Spoiler if you’re curious how JP ended up being killed: Grace ends up choking him to death, calling in Roger to help her hide the body]. He also died a bit by his neighbor Roger’s (Michael Smiley) too, which feels deserved. Why does JP hate this poor guy so much?
It’s the same thing as the sisters. He fucking brings seafood to my house every fucking second, come the fuck on! Why are you bringing all those clams and oysters and shit? Why are you dancing with my wife in the garden? Get the fuck out of my life, you twat! But it’s the same thing, where as if he hadn’t had all these inferiority complexes, and if he hadn’t felt like he had to prove something of himself, he would’ve had a bit of room for the neighbor coming over. He is so lovely and sweet. He never really does harm in any way.
On top of accusing Roger of being a pedophile, JP also has a porn addiction. He’s weird about sex, but still treats himself like he’s an alpha male.
We don’t see him with a mistress or anything. It’s not like he has a connection with someone else. I think he just lacks the ability, in a way, to be that intimate and close with someone. It’s not like he’s impotent. We see him on his own doing stuff. But the whole intimacy thing, he just cannot have other people in his life. He can’t even allow in his very, very sweet and lovely wife, who is ever so patient with him. She’s not mean to him in any way.
Which sister do you think JP wrongs the most?
Obviously the one I raped. [Editor’s Note: In Episode 10, it’s revealed that JP once raped Eva, leading to her miscarriage. Still, he blames her for the fall out.] There can be no question about that. The way that he talks about it and says, “That’s not how you rape someone,” it’s just so horrendous. That’s when you know he’s got a very, very twisted way of being with people. That’s so, so terrible. As if there is a way of raping someone, and there is some way that is not a way. When I read that the first time, and to say those words, it’s like, “Fuck, man, this guy is mental. He deserves what’s coming his way.”
It’s not comparable in any way, but knocking Bibi’s eye out is close behind.
That’s terrible! But in a way, it’s not intentional. He did not try to take her eye out. What he does with Ursula is much more intentional. He wants to hurt her, he wants to expose her. With Bibi, of course he should’ve slowed down when she said to slow down, but what happens is not something that he planned.
There’s a big difference in intentionally wanting to harm and hurt other people like he does—and then when something happens unintentionally, what he says he does afterwards is horrendous.
