Rob Delaney ‘would rather starve to death’ than film new Catastrophe series

By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

Rob Delaney said he would “rather starve to death” then do a fifth series of his sitcom Catastrophe.

The actor, who created and wrote the Channel 4 and Amazon show with actress Sharon Horgan, has since gone on to have parts in 2018’s Deadpool 2 and 2021’s Tom & Jerry.

American star Delaney and Irish actress Horgan, 52, both won a TV Bafta in 2016 for Catastrophe and were nominated the same year for the comedy series at the Emmys.

They also become one of the 60 finalists listed for a 2015 Peabody Award.

When asked about another series on podcast Dish, Delaney said: “I hope we don’t, only because people reboot everything now. Like let it be.

“We stopped doing it because we had done four series that we were proud of and we could smell that we were getting in danger of repeating ourselves, and frankly, we said a lot about marriage and parenting in there, maybe Sharon might have some ideas. I totally don’t.”

The show chronicles the life of Rob Norris (Delaney) and Sharon Morris (Horgan), who go from having a fling to subsequently expecting a child.

They marry shortly before Horgan’s character gives birth in the first series, which aired in 2015, and in the last series, released in 2019, their family takes a trip to Rob’s home town of Boston.

Delaney added he felt another season “might be bad, or worse, a cash grab” and he would “rather starve to death”.

He also said: “I don’t want my kids to starve to death, but I would totally on principle be like, check it out I starved to death ‘cause it was cooler than trot out some (rubbish).”

Delaney added that he would like to make another project with Horgan – who has also been nominated for Baftas for her roles in dark comedy drama Bad Sisters and sitcom Pulling – as she is “hilariously funny and gifted”.

The 46-year-old actor also said Tom Cruise, who he got to know on the set of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, was “so intensely involved in every aspect of the production” in a “different” way from any other “big star”.

He added: “He’ll be like, oh, well we should use this lens, that actor in the background’s hair should be an eighth of an inch shorter, like, like a computer, you know? So incredibly passionate.”

The first episode of season three of Dish is available from Wednesday.