How Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge rose from bit player to Bafta genius — but ex-husband says fame may have led to their split
WITH a voice that could cut crystal, baronets on both sides of the family and a filthy sense of humour, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the epitome of the British upper crust. And now the brilliant actress and writer, who penned hit TV shows Killing Eve and Fleabag, is the toast of America. Comedy queens including Amy […]
WITH a voice that could cut crystal, baronets on both sides of the family and a filthy sense of humour, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the epitome of the British upper crust.
And now the brilliant actress and writer, who penned hit TV shows Killing Eve and Fleabag, is the toast of America.
Comedy queens including Amy Schumer have flocked to see her sold-out New York play, which inspired the smash-hit BBC Three show Fleabag that Phoebe also starred in.
And when the 32-year-old landed in the Big Apple two weeks ago, Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour threw her a star-packed dinner.
“This woman is a genius and this is only the beginning,” gushed her good friend, model Cara Delevingne.
Phoebe is certainly having her moment.
This week she bagged a staggering 14 nods for TV Bafta awards for rollocking assassin drama Killing Eve.
Her current man, screenwriter and director Martin McDonagh, 49, is no stranger to awards either. His 2017 movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won two Oscars.
The pair, who met after Phoebe split from her husband of three years, documentary maker Conor Woodman, in 2017, make quite the power couple.
And all this after she ascended to the Star Wars universe, playing a spikey droid in Solo last year.
It is an incredible rise for the striking star, who left the Rada stage school in London believing she was an “appalling” actress.
She was once even jeered off stage while playing a woman who cheated on her boyfriend, then telling him sometimes girls need a “massive penis”. She says with a grin: “It was then I realised you just have to talk about penises as much as you can.”
She also portrays women as fearless. Fleabag oozes messy sex and Killing Eve revels in violence.
“I write what I’d like to watch,” said Phoebe. “I’m always satisfying my own appetite. So I guess that means transgressive women, friendships, pain. I love pain.”
The actress grew up on a tree-lined street in Ealing, North West London, in a £2.3million, red-brick mansion.
Her dad Michael co-founded Tradepoint, the first fully electronic stock market and her mum Teresa works for a company in the City.
They split when Phoebe was in her teens. Even as a child, Phoebe loved to shock, perhaps heeding her mum’s advice: “You can be whatever you want as long as you’re outrageous.”
She once regailed her “very proper and Christian” grandmother, who she adored, with a far from orthdox pre-dinner “prayer”.
She explains: “At school I’d heard someone say, ‘Good meat, good God, let’s eat’ and I thought, well, that’s quite fun.”
“My grandmother was very shockable, and as a kid, shockable people were my ideal playmates.”
She has a younger brother, Jasper, now 31, and an older sister, Isobel, 34. She missed both terribly during her two years at boarding school — before switching to St Augustine’s Priory in Ealing aged 11.
While the independent Catholic school charges more than £4,000 per term, she paints the picture of a rather gritty inner-city London school.
“The first weekend they asked if I wanted to go to see a fight,” she reveals. “Mum said, ‘What are you doing at the weekend?’ and I was like, ‘I’m going to a fight in Ealing Broadway’ and she was like, ‘How exciting!”
Things could be equally scrappy at home.
She said: “One time me and my sister were spatting over dinner, until Mum said, ‘I’ve had it. You two, upstairs now. Fight it out, on the landing. To the death’.
“We looked at each other with fire in our eyes. I remember doing one vicious move, then she got me in the door frame and started bashing the door on me.”
At school, Phoebe was just as tricksy — but on her mother’s advice, she was “a little angel” at first. “So I did get away with everything — escaping, boys, smoking.”
An elderly female neighbour said: “She was a cheeky girl but she was so winning with it. She took after her mother in that way, Teresa was an absolute riot. It doesn’t surprise me that Phoebe went on to be such a success. Even as a little girl she had this ‘take on the world’ attitude.”
When Phoebe graduated from Rada in 2006, she assumed “being posh with curly hair equals a Shakespearean career” but struggled to find work.
Fed up with “passive princess parts” she started to write to provide meaty roles for herself.
Along with her co-writer, Vicky Jones, she began to develop the character Fleabag.
It was turned into a one-woman show and won the Fringe First award at Edinburgh in 2013. Since then, Phoebe has not stopped working.
In 2015 she appeared as junior barrister Abby Thompson in the second series of Broadchurch and a year later the six-part first series of Fleabag was screened on BBC Three.
With the lead character’s glances to the viewer and wry observations about modern life, it is not like other BBC comedies.
It attracted the cream of British acting talent, including Olivia Colman and Bill Paterson.
Watched by 750,000 people, its second series was switched to BBC1, where it currently averages 2.5million viewers on a Monday night.
It now also features Sherlock actor Andrew Scott and Four Weddings star Kristin Scott Thomas.
In the attention-grabbing first series Phoebe’s sex-obsessed character pleasured herself while watching a Barack Obama speech and in the current season she is desperately trying to bed Scott’s Catholic priest.
Sadly, just like the incredibly popular Fawlty Towers, only two series of six episodes each were made of the show. But thanks to the whole first series being snapped up by Amazon Prime Video, it will be available in over 200 countries from May.
Killing Eve has also been a huge success, with audiences revelling in the power dynamics between its two brilliant leading ladies Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer.
While some found assassin Villanelle too violent, Phoebe revelled in writing the unconventional character.
She said: “That was what was glorious about writing Villanelle, who looks at the world and goes, ‘Hmm, all these little rules you guys have created — they aren’t really that interesting to me’.
“Our laws and moral codes don’t apply — she lives totally fearlessly and absolutely without fear of consequence. I haven’t seen a character like that before.”
She added: “It feels like, recently, a lot of female anger has been unleashed. Articulated anger. Which is exciting for me because I’ve always found female rage appealing.”
Her next project is romantic comedy Run, starring Merritt Wever, from Godless, and Domhnall Gleeson, which has been picked up by American TV giant HBO.
Created by Phoebe, it follows Ruby, who is living a humdrum life then gets a text inviting her to fulfill a youthful pact.
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Phoebe also fancies writing and directing a feature film.
But sadly she’s done with her riotous incarnation Fleabag.
“We’ve had a ball,” she says, “but it’s time to move on.”
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