‘Breeders’ Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard Get That Kids Are Wonderful, Maddening Creatures

If the thought of raising kids fills you with as much dread as joy, then you’re about to meet your new best friends. Created by Chris Addison and Simon Blackwell, Breeders follows the day-to-day lives of Paul (Martin Freeman) and Ally (Daisy Haggard), two parents who adore their children but who are just as tempted to abandon them. Irreverent and laugh out loud funny, Breeders explores the paradoxical highs and lows of parenthood through one couple who loves wine and cursing as much as they love competing for the all-time best kindergartens. Ahead of this new exploration into foul-mouthed parenthood Freeman and Haggard spoke to Decider at the Television Critics Association’s 2020 winter tour.

Though Freeman is well known from his roles in everything from The Hobbit movies to Sherlock, Haggard is likely best known to American audiences for her Showtime series Back to Life, a complicated comedy about a woman who has to adapt to modern life after a lengthy prison sentence. Breeders‘ Ally has never been incarcerated, but she’s certainly no angel.

“I mean not everyone — some people are just really horrible, obviously — but I like finding the humanity in people that do bad things,” Haggard explained. “I can’t relate to people that are just like ‘Everything’s perfect and amazing. I mean I’m a very happy person but I also love and am interested by the vulnerabilities and the imperfections, as you know from my writing. I’m fascinated by those moments where we’re not perfect and when we make mistakes cause they’re the bit that make you really human, aren’t they?”

When Haggard first auditioned for the role she was was sure she wouldn’t get it. “I auditioned along with several other people and I nearly didn’t even come in because I just had a baby and I was like, ‘Oh I can’t, I can’t walk,'” Haggard joked. But her longtime friendship with Freeman helped convince her to pursue the part. “When I did finally come in and do the recalls with him it felt really natural because we talked to each other so many times before. So it didn’t feel like I was reading with some stranger, you know?”

The actor and parent also felt a connection to Breeders‘ exasperated portrayal of children. “I have a two-year-old, but she will just tell me what she wants… She wanted butter at like two in the morning. She’s like ‘I want butter!'” Haggard said. “So you know, they’re muddling creatures but they’re also excellent.”

“You’re heart expands to what it needs,” Freeman, also a parent, added.

One aspect that sets Breeders apart from other series about parenthood is its frankness about the murkier aspects of raising children. In a later episode Paul and Ally’s two children lose their pet gerbil. After Paul explains to them what exactly death is, he starts to suspect that his son is a bit too accepting of mortality. Thus begins Paul’s darkly funny cycle of badgering his son until he gets a “proper” emotional reaction.

“The parents were very much there and on the side, and they were on set all the time,” Freeman said of the scene. Its frankness matched one of Freeman’s own parenting philosophies. “To be honest I, it’s not like I take perverse pleasure in being hard with kids, but I think I do have a feeling with kids which is like ‘fucking grow up.’ I do sort of think that about my own and everyone else’s, and clearly I wouldn’t take it upon myself to make other people’s kids grow up but I also, having met [Jayda Eyles and George Wakeman] a little bit by that point, I knew that they could handle it.”

Freeman and Haggard emphasized that both child actors knew they were just pretending during the bleak scene. “I think that’s a good thing. My kids are younger and we’re already like, ‘Why are we so bad at death?'” Haggard said. “It’s definitely going to happen so let’s try and teach our kids about that.”

“I think you just use your own experience then,” Freeman said. “There are direct threads and story bits and sometimes lines in the script that I recognize as things that have come from me.”

But more than anything else Freeman credits the comedy’s strength to showrunner Simon Blackwell and its writers.

“It’s just good writing really. So you inevitably bring your own experiences,” Freeman explained.

The first episode of Breeders premieres on FX Monday, March 2 at 10/9c p.m. It will be available to stream on Hulu the following day on March 3. For the rest of the season new episodes of Breeders will premiere on FX Mondays before coming to Hulu on Tuesdays. 

Where to stream Breeders