“Bad Sisters'” Sharon Horgan Had to Stop Using Friends' Experiences to Write TV Shows After It 'Backfired' (Exclusive)

The Irish writer, actress and producer tells PEOPLE why she's "very careful" with her writing now — and what subjects are off-limits — in this week's issue

Sharon Horgan is careful about how much real life she infuses into her writing.

The Bad Sisters creator and star, 54, is the first to admit that when she was starting out, she was a "magpie for people's stories" and would pull from the real experiences of those around her to infuse into her writing.

"When I grew [up] some more, I was like, 'Oh, you can't do that,'" she tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "I make sure I'm very careful now."

Related: Sharon Horgan Was an 'Incredibly Pretentious' Kid on a 'Turkey Farm' in Ireland. Now She's at the Top of Her Game (Exclusive)

Part of the evolution was Horgan growing up, yes, but part of her pilfering also came back to haunt her a "couple of times."

"Not that it backfired horribly, but yeah, I got an email out of the blue from a woman I used to live with," she recalls. "She was like, 'Hey, I just watched' — I can't remember what it was, Pulling, I think — 'and I really recognized the story.' And I mean, she didn't admonish me. It was more of a catch-up. It was more like, 'Wow, those [were] heavy days.'"

While it didn't go over that badly, "it certainly put me off doing it again," she admits.

"I think initially, when I started out, I was so excited by the fact that I was getting to do this thing and getting to tell these stories, but I also had this other part of me that was like, 'Well, what if I run out of ideas? We're still doing this thing now, how do I keep the train on the tracks?' And so I was just a bit more hungry for stories than I am now."

Still, "It's a great way to get accuracy into your writing," she defends.

Related: Fiona Shaw Was Told the Plot of Bad Sisters Season 2 in '25 Seconds' Over Breakfast and Was Immediately 'Delighted to Join' (Exclusive)

Case in point: while writing HBO's Divorce, Horgan says she hadn't been through divorce yet but her friend had. "And so I was like, 'Look, I'm writing this thing and I just feel like I want it to feel as authentic as possible. Can you talk me through what happened the day you asked her husband for a divorce?'"

Her friend recalled her ex-husband "kicked over a couple of chairs," and the "strange specificity" of the memory was just what Horgan needed. Plus, it was a "fun by-product" for her friend to see the moment reenacted onscreen between Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church.

Now that she has been through a divorce — she separated from Jeremy Rainbird, with whom she shares daughters Sadhbh, 20, and Amer, 16, in 2019 after 14 years of marriage — Horgan admits she likely would've pulled from her own experiences a bit for that series. "That's my story. It's 50% my story. I think that's okay."

Her daughters, on the other hand, will always be firmly off limits in her writing. "I would never use their experiences because I just feel it's not my place."

For more on Sharon Horgan, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

Nearly two decades after her first taste of success with the BBC Three sitcom Pulling, Horgan can "worry less about what idea is coming from where next," but there's one critic that weighs heavily on her mind these days.

"It was so important to me to get [Bad Sisters] right because being Irish is, like, 90% of my personality," she says of the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ comedy about sisters in Dublin who plot to kill their abusive brother-in-law (Horgan stars alongside Eve Hewson, Sarah Greene, Anne-Marie Duff and Eva Birthistle).

"If I hadn't represented Ireland and the Irish people accurately or in a way that made them proud… I'd throw in the towel."

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New episodes of Bad Sisters season 2 premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV+.