Kat Sadler: “Having to go home and live with my mum and sister again for a bit is what made Such Brave Girls happen”

“She’s the most annoying of the three family members at the core of the show. She’s a true narcissist but doesn’t know it. She’s obsessed with her trauma and thinks that everybody’s out to get her. She loves to play the victim and feels the world owes her.”

That’s Londoner Kat Sadler talking about her character Josie in Such Brave Girls, the whip-smart and frequently pitch black BBC 3 comedy she created, wrote and stars in.

A family affair, it also features her real life sister Lizzie Davidson as her equally dysfunctional sibling Billie and Louise Brealey as their man hungry mother Deb.

As popular and regularly quoted in pub conservations in the UK as Derry Girls and The Young Offenders – the three shows definitely share comedy DNA – its first season somewhat flew under the radar here because we don’t have access to the BBC iPlayer which a sizable chunk of its audience watched it on.

Over six painfully funny episodes we got drawn into Josie’s ‘vortex of misery’ which includes her ruminations on suicide, self-harm, abortion, therapy, queer love/lust and other topics that aren’t standard sitcom fare.

While not strictly autobiographical, it mirrors some of the mental health travails Kat went through herself during Covid when Such Brave Girls was conceived.

“Loads of people I know had huge mental collapses during lockdown because all of the things we relied on to get us through life were suddenly taken away,” she confides. “For me, I needed to go to a café and scroll my phone, read a book, write on my computer or whatever. All of the crutches I had to deal with my mental health were knocked out from under me, I had a big break-up and was sectioned. In hospital there were so many others like me who didn’t know what to do next and were lost.

“It was a really dark time but going through that and also having to go home and live with my mum and sister again for a bit is what made Such Brave Girls happen. The humour in the show comes directly from how we talked about and dealt with my collapse.”

Growing up, did Kat see people like herself on the telly?

“Not really,” she replies. “You’d see mental health dealt with in either a very wholesome way or as being this sexy, glamorous, dangerous thing. There were aspects of it in the likes of Ghost World, but they didn’t have the nuance I wanted to capture. Y’know, the cold-heartedness and numbness that can come with it.

“I was sick of seeing shows with a protagonist talking about these serious issues, who the writer is desperate for you to like. I wanted to keep it blurry whether you sympathise with Josie or with her mother for having to put up with her.”

Touchingly, one of Kat’s main reasons for creating Such Brave Girls was to showcase her sister’s acting talents.

“Lizzie is the most incredible actor but, because of what happened in our childhood, was like, ‘If I don’t try, I can’t fail’,” she explains. “I wanted to prove to her that if you do put your heart into something, you can achieve and be amazing. She was never going to audition for anything on her own, so it was a real joy to put her on screen.”

Lizzie did have one previous acting gig, though.

“She was a ‘scarer’ at the London Dungeon,” Kat giggles. “She had to jump out and scream at people which was great fun but gave her the worst vocal nodules. She’s still husky from it. She didn’t get to see much sunlight so she’s probably Vitamin D deficient as well.”

Kat Sadler photographed by Pip Bourdillon.

Josie is rarely stuck for words, but in one of S1’s most cringey (in a good way!) scenes is stunned into silence when she finds her mum being, ahem, fingered from behind by boyfriend Dev who’s brilliantly played by veteran character actor Paul Bazely.

“It was like he was trying to birth a lamb but the lamb didn’t want to come out yet,” she later tells a mortified colleague at the bookshop they work in.

Did Kat learn anything from acting alongside Bazely whose CV includes Citadel, Black Mirror, The Ipcress Files and Pirates Of The Caribbean?

“Oh my god, loads! I think Paul’s a comedy genius. Instead of being afraid of his weird physicality, he leans into every awkward facet of his body. He brought this wholesome yet creepy quality to Dev, which is mesmerising. His mere presence makes you laugh. It’s such a gift.”

Taking care of directorial duties is Simon Bird who will forever be The Inbetweeners’ Will McKenzie in my mind.

“I couldn’t ask for someone better to direct than Simon,” Kat says. “He really cares about me and Lizzie and wanted to make the show we wanted to make rather than turning it into something different. Simon’s very light touch but constantly watching our performances. If he gives you a thumbs up you know it’s good and if you’re shit he’ll say, ‘Maybe try that again.’ It’s such an honest relationship, which I wouldn’t give away for the world.”

Raised on a healthy comedic diet of The Simpsons, Friends, Scrubs, Wayne’s World, more cult-y things like Nathan For You and the late, extremely great Stewart Lee, Kat had an early epiphany when her mum whisked her and Lizzie off to Universal Studios Miami which, it has to be said, was quality parenting.

“When we were really young she put puppet shows on for us when we were in the bath, which set up our sense of humour. She’s very acerbic and we’d all make jokes at each other’s expense. You can be all highbrow about it, but nothing’s as funny as watching your sister fall over!

“Mum’s a big Universal fan, so she took us there and I was fascinated by the fake shopfronts and painted backgrounds. I remember thinking, ‘I’d love to be part of this!’”

Inspired by her trip to Florida, Sadler opted to study Film and Literature at the University of Warwick where first she became part of a student comedy sketch troupe and then decided to have a go at standup.

“I was so, so nervous that I chugged a whole bottle of the pink Pepto Bismol before going on,” she shudders. “I’d booked it the month before thinking, ‘Surely by then I’ll be ready?’ but the agony of waiting to get on stage was hideous.

“The curse being that if your first gig goes well – like mine did – the next ten are going to be unbelievably shit. I went from thinking, ‘Wow, I can do this!’ to dying on my arse and feeling, ‘Oh my god, this is the end!’ Do not, repeat do not go into standup if you’ve self-esteem issues.

“People say, ‘Keep gigging and the nerves go away’ but that didn’t happen for me. I haven’t done standup in five or six years and because I’ve left it so long the fear has formed like a callous. It’d take a lot for me to be brave enough to go back out there. Never say never, though. If I’m writing for the show and come up with a joke or one-liner that I don’t think will fit into the Such Brave Girls word, I add it to the little list of things I’d like to try if I do perform live again.”

University of Warwick studies completed, Kat shot scripted ideas off to everyone she could think of and in 2019 hit the jackpot when she won a BBC Comedy Writers Bursary.

“One of the great things I learned at the BBC – and this’ll sound odd until I explain it – is how to care less,” she reflects. “When you start out writing you’re very precious and aren’t brave enough to show people anything. I remember turning my computer screen away in cafés because I was scared somebody would walk past and see what I was working on. There was a real vulnerability, but doing that job it was like, ‘I need you to write ten jokes about something you don’t know anything about in the next five minutes.’ Those jokes don’t necessarily have to be perfect, you just have to come up with something as a jumping off point. It flexed a muscle that I didn’t know I had and cured me of being totally paralysed because I don’t have anything on the page.”

The new gig required her to become a habitual News At Ten viewer.

“Having gone into that BBC writing job knowing basically nothing about politics, I had to learn so much about what was happening in the world,” Kat explains. “I was daunted by it, but a fellow writer said to me, ‘You just need to know a little more than the person reading your writing’ which really helped.”

One of the first people she worked with at Broadcasting House was controversial Glasgow comedian Frankie Boyle, whose parents, fact fans, hail from Crolly in Donegal. So, should Heimir Hallgrímsson be in need of a ginger ninja for the World Cup qualifying campaign, he knows who to call.

Frankie Boyle.

“Frankie is an absolute genius and very sensitive, thoughtful and kind,” Kat enthuses. “When you start out doing comedy, you need to nail your colours to the mast and establish who you are, which he certainly did. I’d watched his standup before and thought he was so clever and interesting and had perspectives on things that I’d never thought of. Doing the first writers’ room with him I was really nervous, but it struck me that what he wants isn’t necessarily the best comedy writers, it’s perspective. Ultimately all he wanted was my opinion. Once I worked that out, it was a really easy relationship to navigate.

“Frankie likes to have ideas that he jots down in his notebook and then goes away and does the scripts on his own. You know you’ve got something good if he nods and writes it down.”

Next to benefit from her talents was Joe Lycett, who’s equal parts comic, consumer watchdog and social justice warrior.

“I had such a fun time with him,” Kat enthuses again. “Joe’s got one of those brains that needs to be working on a million things at once. He’s so funny and kind and genuinely interested in you. He has such a specific sense of humour that you’d write something and know, ‘He’s going to like that!’”

Given the subject matter, Kat wasn’t sure how well Such Brave Girls would go down with viewers – it’s also been picked up for steaming by Disney+ and Hulu – and took evasive action to avoid obsessively checking the social media reaction when it first went out in November 2023.

“My sister, who’s much braver than me, has a Google alert for when the show’s mentioned but I’m not able for it,” she smiles. “I was like, ‘I’m not sitting through this!’ and timed it that me and my best friend would be flying, funnily enough, to Universal Studios when it aired,

“I could’ve got angry ‘How can you do this?’ messages but, honestly, everyone’s been lovely. It’s so affirming to have somebody tweet you and say, ‘You made me want to start living again.’ I love being able to put stuff on screen that a person might be embarrassed by or ashamed of, and them going, ‘Oh, that’s not a weird thought, she has that too!’ It’s been cathartic for me and hopefully cathartic for those watching.”

Asked where the family’s heads are at as we rejoin them for series two, Kat grins and says, “Josie’s made progress and is on a quest to find herself, which takes her to art school. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but you can imagine how well that goes!

“Moving on from her ex-boyfriend Nicky, Billie is with a much more mature lover which is exciting for her and Deb is happily with Dev. They’re trying to make it work, but some secrets about her husband and the girls’ dad are about to come out.”

Finally, how big a blast was it being in London’s Royal Festival Hall to pick up Such Brave Girls’ 2024 Best Scripted Comedy BAFTA Award?

“It was the best night of my life – and my sister’s too!” Kat beams. “The whooping and screaming when we won were frankly embarrassing. I got to dedicate it to my friend who I lost last year, so you couldn’t write it. The taxi home dropped me in the wrong place, so I was walking up Brixton High Street at 1am in my heels carrying a BAFTA. It was honestly mad!”

• Such Brave Girls returns to BBC Three on July 3 and Hulu on July 7.