American comedian, actor and writer Rob Delaney, 46, weathered a bout of alcoholism and years of struggle on the standup circuit before rocketing to fame via Twitter over a decade ago. His blend of filthy wit and mordant honesty helped make the sitcom Catastrophe, which he co-wrote and starred in alongside Sharon Horgan, a Bafta-winning hit. Since then, Delaney has appeared in films including Deadpool 2 and Home Sweet Home Alone. He has more in the pipeline but is currently taking part in the Sag-Aftra actors’ strike. In 2018, his two-year-old son Henry died of brain cancer. Delaney’s memoir, A Heart That Works, strives to capture some of what the family (he and his wife have three other sons) went through during the course of Henry’s extensive treatment and in the immediate aftermath of his death. Spare, brutally poignant and at times darkly humorous in its candour, it’s ultimately a love story.
Early on in the book, you confess that the urge to hurt people was part of your motivation for writing it. Were you surprised by how tender it turned out to be?
I almost laughed near the end because I thought I was writing this big angry monster of a book, that was my goal, but the takeaway is love – and not just for Henry but for his brothers and his mum, my sister and my niece and my parents and my in-laws. I mean, my book is like a frickin’ ad for these people and how wonderful they are.
Was it at all cathartic?
Writing the book felt like a healthy process, because it helped me organise a lot of thoughts and feelings, but I don’t think it held any therapeutic value for me, and promoting it was excruciating. There were people blowing smoke up my rear end, treating me like some kind of grief expert – I almost began to wonder, am I going to graduate a few levels of grief just because I wrote a book? The answer to that is certainly not. I still get sad and angry and confused, and that’s normal and good. If your child dies you want to be, and should be, sad about it.
It’s a devastatingly intimate book. How did you decide what to leave out?
I checked with my wife and she was usually like, “No, put it in.” Because, like me, she wanted people to have as clear a picture of this experience as we could create. The things I make involve a lot of personal stuff – that’s my style as a comedian and a writer – but while people get quite a heap of unvarnished experience and truth in this book, some stuff is just too precious to share.
It is, in parts, very funny. Can you envisage a topic ever being off-limits for laughter?
No subjects are off limits. Ideally, you do it without malice in your heart, but humour can help someone in the darkest moments. I don’t have a lot of authority in most realms but people say that losing a child is the worst thing that could happen, and I’ve experienced that and I still laugh. I learned with Catastrophe that your audience can handle anything. They have a richer base of experience and inner life than you could possibly imagine.
You’re often described as an activist. Do you embrace the term?
No, I hate it! When somebody calls themselves an activist, I’m like, “Oh, did you post a tweet, you activist?” It’s OK not to resist other people calling you an activist only after you’ve been arrested at least twice. I care about things and I talk about them, and I’ve had the good fortune to be involved in rallies and strikes but I have never been arrested for any of my beliefs.
You did make a campaign video for Jeremy Corbyn’s “new deal” for the NHS. How optimistic do you feel about the NHS these days?
The NHS in my experience has been great at the small stuff and immeasurably amazing at huge stuff. In 2023, you’d still rather get sick in the UK than the US but you can’t take something as wonderful as the NHS for granted. I would urge people to get involved – get to know their local nurses and porters and ask what they can do to help – and to vote for people who care and have explicit plans. And don’t just say things like “you’ll be better off with us”, which Labour does now. Bullet-point that thing! Do a little work every day, then you won’t have to do a lot next week when you storm parliament with rakes and shovels.
You moved to the UK in 2014 to make Catastrophe and ended up staying. Is there anything that still flummoxes you as an American in London?
The fact that the NHS exists and there’s like, 11 guns in the whole country, is amazing. And I do love being able to literally take a train to a place where they speak another language. But present company excluded, there are some rancid elements to the British press. A lot of it is like a rotten tide pool; it needs a big wave to come through and wash out the weird inbred molluscs.
Were you always funny?
I had a lightbulb moment in a diner when I was little. A guy ran in and joined a woman at the table next to us, and he goes, “Sorry I’m late, I had to park in fucking Tel Aviv!” And I was like, what did he just say? Number one, that’s not true, number two, he said the F-word – thrilling – and number three, the woman he joined laughed. God bless that man, he gave me the recipe of comedy: surprise, detail, dishonesty, exaggeration, profanity.
About that profanity…
There are many very funny people who I love a lot who don’t use profanity but I can’t help it, swearing makes me happy. It’s like having a beautiful old Fender Telecaster: I’m going to not play it, are you kidding me? Also, in Boston, where I grew up, people just have filthy, filthy mouths, so it also feels like I’m being respectful of my culture to be a scumbag.
You’re in the latest Mission: Impossible film with Tom Cruise. How did you get involved and what’s your next project?
I can’t tell you about any of that because of the strike – but that’s good because somebody will read this and they’ll be disappointed, and they’ll complain to the studio. You only need the tiniest bit of labour history to learn that we will win, so the studios might as well just skip to the inevitable and we can all get back to work.
You and your wife just celebrated your 17th wedding anniversary. Do you have any marriage tips?
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks – do learn new tricks. From a sexist point of view – because I am sexist, I don’t want to be but if you admit it and work with it then you can be less of one – I thought that women just said things because they had to hit a certain word quota each day. It took me years to learn that when women say something, they actually mean it. So that’s me, an old dog going in a new direction. Another little saying that I find useful is you can only coast downhill. Sorry everybody, but it takes work. All the time.
A Heart That Works is published in paperback by Hodder & Stoughton (£10.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
