Phoebe Waller-Bridge credits her father, Michael Cyprian Waller-Bridge, with her first lessons in feminism. “I was very aware of [feminism] quite early on,” she says over a phone interview. The 33-year-old writer-actor has crafted a career dedicated to revolutionising women on-screen, combining her passion for storytelling with a drive to create three-dimensional female characters.
The Englishwoman — a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London — swooped into collective pop cultural consciousness not with one, but two brilliant television shows in 2016: Crashing and Fleabag . The former is about the lives of six 20-something-year-olds who are property guardians in an abandoned hospital, but it’s the latter that has led Waller-Bridge to bigger and greater things. Case in point, a role in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
What started out as a dare to perform a single ten-minute stand-up piece in 2012, became a one-woman play and then evolved into the BBC show, Fleabag , that earned the actor and writer a BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance in 2017. The second season hit screens recently, and was well received. Not surprisingly, critics also hailed season two of her Killing Eve , the show she wrote for BBC America.
Fleabag’s happy ending
As the foul-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking protagonist, Fleabag drinks copiously and she’s as loose with her body as she is with her tongue. But it’s the humour that underscores the show, propelling it ahead of the countless series that deal with similar subjects. For instance, on the day of her mother’s funeral, Fleabag is obviously distraught. You’d think it’s because of, well, the occasion at hand. But the grouse is because she woke up looking amazing and everyone’s going to think she got a facial. ‘Just no matter what I do with my hair it just keeps falling in this really chic way,’ she grumbles. It’s an unexpected and bizarre trope to explore at a wake. This humour is peak Waller-Bridge.
With the show’s far too short second and final season, Fleabag has made marked improvement despite the self-sabotage of falling in love with a priest. Waller-Bridge admits the hardest episode to shoot was the fourth where Fleabag is painfully and tearfully vulnerable with the man she loves, though they’re separated by the walls of a confession box. ‘I think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I’ve been getting it wrong,’ she declares. This is one of the few moments of the show that’s bereft of humour and the sincerity of it could surely melt the stone-hearted. It’s no wonder then that Waller-Bridge has the audiences rooting for Fleabag, wishing the character at least one win. “[With season two] I do think I’ve given [ Fleabag ] a happy ending,” says Waller-Bridge. “She has grown up and learned to deal with things and developed relationships with her family.”
3D women
If it’s the fragility of human spirit that defines Fleabag , Waller-Bridge proves just how well she can rock the spectrum with Killing Eve . The 2018 show, an adaptation of Luke Jennings’ Codename Villanelle novellas, gave a new twist to the spy thriller genre.
Eschewing the suave and masculine energy of the cat-and-mouse-chase, Waller-Bridge’s protagonist, Eve (Sandra Oh), is fierce but often unintentionally funny and has to track down the psychopathic assassin, Villanelle (Jodie Comer). In less dexterous hands, Eve and Villanelle’s homoerotic fixation could descend into exploitation. But their mutual obsession with each other cleverly stokes the audiences’ own voyeuristic enthusiasm. “Women characters have come a long way today, especially in television,” says Waller-Bridge, adding that it wasn’t the case when she was growing up. The representation of a woman as a saint, sinner, villain or hero was never fully realised. “There are all these sides to women.”
While the writer-director is busy enjoying the acclaim garnered for Fleabag’s new season, she’s has also recently finished an extended run of a one woman show of the same name — off-Broadway — in New York. Currently, she’s been brought onboard to rewrite the script of upcoming James Bond film, Bond 25. Starring Daniel Craig in his fifth and final outing as the 007 agent, it will take a relook at the portrayal of the ‘Bond girls’. “They are fantastic, but I will try to make them more human,” she says about her contribution. Though the film will release in 2020, one thing is for certain, Waller-Bridge’s skill will ensure it’s hilarious and like nothing we have seen before.
Fleabag seasons 1 & 2 are currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
