The Hollywood Reporter – August 14, 2019

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 61 AUGUST 14, 2019

begging you to look away when
she’s shared too much. In person,
they signal a burning curiosity
prone to throwing off sparks.
Waller-Bridge, ready to engage
in fresh Fleabag analysis, is
markedly more intrigued when
conversation veers off of antici-
pated terrain and into random
facts about elephant psychology,
the “Shakespearean” drama of
Love Island or, a real favorite,
death. For all of the doors it has
opened — making Killing Eve,
voicing a feisty droid in Solo: A
Star Wars Story, becoming only
the second woman in history with
a Bond writing credit — Fleabag
is still what’s expected of her.
When she talks about moving
on, people have opinions. During
a screening and panel down the
street two nights earlier, a stand-
ing ovation was shortly followed
by disapproving groans when
Waller-Bridge confirmed that, yet
again, she’s done with the show.
“I’d rather that than the other way
around,” she says, laughing. “ ‘End
it! Please, end it!’ No, I love that
sound that people make. But I can
genuinely say that was it.”
Waller-Bridge has tried to close
the door on the character before.
Fleabag the series, originally set
to end with one season, inspired

an initially reluctant sophomore

return. Fleabag the stage play,

which was to have wrapped after

its off-Broadway revival in April,

kicks off a string of 30 sold-out

performances on London’s West

End on Aug. 20. A chanteuse

begged to keep singing the hits,

obliging her public with multiple

farewell tours, she has been gear-

ing up to say goodbye to the role

of her young career for most of

its existence. “The reasons to end

never felt as guttural as they do

now,” she explains as she leans

over the lip of the couch, offering

a small bird an oily shard of tuna

from her Nicoise salad. Hopeful

eyes flatten under furrowed

disappointment as the sparrow

(possibly a finch) rejects her gift,

but she understands. “I’m a big

follower of the old gut.”

WALLER-BRIDGE GREW UP IN WEST

London — “clinging onto the end

of the Central Line,” as she puts

it, a practical way of signifying

her suburban childhood. Older

sister Isobel, a composer whose

work includes the gnarring metal

guitar and ethereal choral work

of the Fleabag score, and younger

brother Jasper, a music manager

transitioning into production,

flank her by only a few years on

either side. Her parents — her

mother works for the Ironworkers

Guild, her father is a retired

finance man who now focuses on

photography — divorced when

she was a teenager.

Divulging no sign of Middle

Child Syndrome, Waller-Bridge

describes a sibling rapport

more akin to the harmony of

The Partridge Family than the

discord of Fleabag. The series’

Academy of Dramatic Art. Her

first year lingered on technique

and theory, not the performing

she’d anticipated.

“I was quite footloose,” she

says of 17-year-old Phoebe. “I

just wanted to have ... what do

you guys call it when you just go

crazy? Freshman year! It’s not like

that in drama school.”

Instead, says Sian Clifford, who

studied with Waller-Bridge at

RADA before playing her uptight

older sister on Fleabag, “Drama

school was more about survival

than anything else, particularly

in our year.” The two actresses

met during their 2003 orienta-

tion, bonded over their shared

45-minute commute and went on

to spend nearly every day together

for the following three years. But

Clifford, the supporting charac-

ter onscreen, was “a favorite” at

RADA, she says, whereas “Phoebe

is someone I saw very stifled in

that environment, not really nur-

tured at all.”

Waller-Bridge looks back on her

three-year RADA program with a

“mixture of huge affection and a

feeling of being slightly trapped”

— especially by the type of period-

project lead that the institution

was famous for supplying to

British stage and screen. Though

she also applied to law school (“I

was never going to give up acting,

but I felt like my brain was going to

shit”), she was focused on mining

for satisfying roles. Stage produc-

tions of Balm in Gilead, in which

she played a transvestite — “I

looked exactly like Russell Brand,

it’s the hottest I’ve ever been” —

and Roaring Trade (opposite f ut ure

Fleabag season two “hot priest”

Andrew Scott) let her loose. But

PHOEBE’S

EMMY

SCORECARD

autobiographical elements are

limited to its creator’s worldview

and do not include the loss and

dysfunction that consume Waller-

Bridge’s character. “I want to say

we’re an artistic family,” she says,

before pausing to consider the

baggage of that description, “but

we’re probably quite a performa-

tive family is the truth.”

Gaze a few limbs further up

Waller-Bridge’s family tree and

you’ll find such terms as “landed

gentry” and “2nd Baronet.” Both

translate to roughly the same

thing: She was raised in the upper

middle class. Dead set on acting

from a young age, she attended a

private high school in London’s

tony Marylebone neighborhood,

then applied to and was accepted

by London’s rigorous Royal

4

Noms for Waller-Bridge —

for writing and acting on

Fleabag, plus series nods

for it and Killing Eve

11

Total nominations for

Fleabag, including

supporting nods for Sian

Clifford and Olivia Colman

9

Total nominations for

season two of Killing Eve;

Waller-Bridge, who created

the drama, also is an EP

“I’M JUST TRYING TO SNIFF OUT

WHERE THE FREEDOM IS.”

WALLER-BRIDGE, ON HER NEXT MOVE

1 “He’s sort of been objectified in a way
that I used to talk about actresses and
female characters being objectified,” says
Waller-Bridge of Andrew Scott’s Priest
on Fleabag. 2 Waller-Bridge (right) and
her onscreen sister Sian Clifford met
as students at London’s RADA in 2003.
3 From left: Waller-Bridge with Killing
Eve stars Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer at
January’s Golden Globes.