Fiona Shaw Is Terrifying as Angelica On ‘Bad Sisters’

There’s a line that Fiona Shaw makes an absolute feast of in her role as Angelica, the emerging villain on the second season of Bad Sisters, that speaks volumes about her: “That which is done in love cannot be bad.” Shaw arranges her face into a mask of sympathy as she says this, but there’s something in her delivery that made me shiver. It’s not an otherwise sweet line that’s somehow twisted into some dark shape by context. “That which is done in love” casts a wide blanket to cover any number of sins and you can see instantly how this character justifies their behavior, whatever that may be. Whatever she does, she does it out of love, and that makes it unimpeachable, no matter what she may call “love.” Angelica is a woman so certain in her innate righteousness that there is nothing she can do that’s wrong, which is unsettling in general, but especially bad news for our favorite Garvey gals.

Be warned, past this point are spoilers for the second season of Bad Sisters (currently streaming on AppleTV+).

Sin, penance, guilt, these are the looming themes this season as we watch the Garveys attempt to move on into more peaceable lives after the death of JP. A scene at the horse-racing track where the sisters have convened for Grace’s bachelorette party does brilliantly smooth work setting up the season’s pieces on the game board. Grace is getting remarried, this time to a sweet man named Ian, and the effects are pronounced; the once-subdued Grace is vivacious in a sexy, fun red dress. Eva is off the booze and hitting up Hinge. Becka has moved on from Matt to a perfectly nice himbo. Ursula is flirting at an Olympic level with a hot jockey. Bibi and her wife are working on having a second child. Nature is healing, or at least it seems to be until sweet doormat Roger appears with his sister Angelica at his side. The vibe immediately shifts.

Robert presents as sweet and sad, seeming to nurse a lingering love for Grace on top of the guilt he feels at having helped her cover up JP’s death, but Angelica carries a different kind of energy. Angelica’s cheery disposition is loud and forced. Her face flits between emotions as she takes in Grace’s sheepish apologies for not having been in contact for so long. Later, Grace will call Angelica’s presence “suffocating” and that’s precisely it; Angelica cloys, giving a bit too much to each interaction to where it seems desperate. While at the races, her gaze returns to the Garvey women time and again, watching them with a certain avarice. You get the sense Angelica is profoundly lonely, at least at first. At Grace’s wedding, when Angelica shoulder-checks Eva straight to the ground to catch the thrown bouquet, you begin to see something much more aggressive taking shape.

Angelica is quite religious and is also deeply involved in the town, going so far as to be a seeming pillar for the local group home/community center. Charity is a classic virtue and I’m quite sure Angelica has helped many people, but what Shaw shows us in her performance is how dark her compensation is. There’s an overriding falseness to Angelica’s care that we see first when she breaks Roger down to extract a confession about what happened with Grace and JP; sure she says it’s for Roger, but Angelica seems to get a charge out of knowing the secrets of others. She hounds Grace, ostensibly offering understanding, but in some self-aggrandizing way, she also offers absolution. It takes a certain arrogance to pry out a secret only to bully someone into emotional intimacy with it. Sometime after Angelica calls Grace in the middle of the night, Grace is racing in her car down the road with a bunch of cash before she gets into a fatal accident. Ursula is terrified that the sleeping pills she stole from the hospital and gave to Grace are to blame, so when Angelica approaches with her smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes, Ursula lets it all out.

Angelica is a snake that collects secrets. After dodging Ursula’s calls for a little bit, Angelica seems to expect the benighted Garvey sister when she comes in a panic. With icily sweet tones, Angelica blackmails Ursula with her secret. Granted, it’s to fix a broken window at the community center, but it’s blackmail all the same. The realization occurs: Angelica must have done the same thing to Grace. It would explain the cash Grace had with her when she died, thousands pulled from different ATMs. Ursula’s sin was worth 200-something Euro, but what would the rate for murder be? Angelica seems aware that JP was an abusive monster, but does that matter to someone who’s made themselves the moral arbiter of everyone around them? One wonders if she holds the “seven deadly sins” in serious regard. Her warped, self-centered conception of blackmail-as-absolution makes me wonder if there isn’t a more modern slate of “sins” that Angelica embodies; solipsism, predation, manipulation, parasitism, or myopia. Her extreme certainty that she is right in all things is a sin as it closes her mind to any possibility of a mistake or wrong-doing she has done.

Fiona Shaw’s performance is nothing short of virtuosic. Zealots are extremists by nature and that can be challenging to humanize, but Shaw works wonders in that regard. You get the sense that friendship and love are not easily earned for Angelica. In place of organic social connections, she uses sins as levers of power. Angelica seeks to control others through their guilt and without any ability to interrogate her motives, her seemingly sympathetic horrors are inflicted freely on all those around her. JP was a monster for all to see, but Angelica wears a mask as a pillar of the community and that’s what makes her especially terrifying.