Edinburgh to Emmys
Waller-Bridge rakes in the awards for series that started as one-woman show
When Phoebe Waller-Bridge walked onstage to accept the Emmy for outstanding comedy series, she immediately said what seemed to be on everyone’s mind: “Well, this is just getting ridiculous.”
That’s “ridiculous” in the best possible sense, of course, as the Fleabag creator had plenty to celebrate on Sunday night. Not only did her series win one of the ceremony’s most prestigious awards, but she also took home the trophies for best lead actress and writing in a comedy series.
Director Harry Bradbeer won for his work on the show as well, calling Waller-Bridge “some kind of glorious grenade.”
“Scientists are still trying to figure out how someone so utterly talented can be so lovely,” he quipped. (That talent extends to selecting collaborators, as Fleabag bagged outstanding casting and single-camera picture editing awards at the Creative Arts Emmys the previous weekend.)
The second season of Fleabag — which premièred on Amazon this past spring, a couple months after its British debut — was a critical smash.
Among its many praised qualities was the refreshing conciseness of Waller-Bridge’s storytelling. Each season, the first released in 2016, consists of just six roughly half-hour episodes.
But those episodes pack a punch. The titular character’s demeanour is far from that of the “lovely” English actress who plays her; while accepting the writing award, Waller-Bridge described Fleabag as a “dirty, pervy, angry, messedup woman.”
The first season slowly exposed how the tragic death of her best friend led Fleabag to spiral and pull away from her remaining loved ones. The second, which Waller-Bridge hesitated to write given how complete the first felt, explored the dynamic between Fleabag and a character referred to as the Hot Priest (Andrew Scott), whose turbulent emotional state presents itself as a match for hers.
Speaking to The Washington Post in May, Waller-Bridge said conflicted characters like Fleabag and the priest are the ones she tends to root for “the most, because I can relate to that. It shows that someone is reaching for something good, if they’re testing themselves all the time.”
Fleabag, Waller-Bridge continued, is a manifestation of her past cynicism.
She first wrote it as a comic monologue, which she performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014 and later brought to New York and London’s West End. While the television show unravels the reasons behind Fleabag’s caustic nature, it never loses its remarkable edginess.
Finding humour in something as traumatizing as a miscarriage is a tall order, and yet Waller-Bridge managed to do just that in the second season première.
This isn’t the only prominent project to which she has brought her dry wit. Waller-Bridge also created the BBC America series Killing Eve, which on Sunday earned lead actress Jodie Comer her first Emmy.
At the Emmys, Waller-Bridge jokingly pointed out a more difficult aspect of her job.
“I find writing really, really hard and really painful, but I’d like to say honestly, from the bottom of my heart, that the reason I do it is this,” she said with a smirk, holding up one of her awards.