IT’S LOVELY BEING FAMOUS!
Phoebe Waller-bridge’s Fleabag is defining the zeitgeist of our time. The actor, writer and director talks fame and feminism with her friend, author Elizabeth Day
IT’S WEIRD watching one of your good friends become famous. One minute, you’re singing karaoke with them in the early hours; the next they’re being hailed as the saviour of modern feminism. That’s what happened with Phoebe Waller-bridge, who as well as creating and starring in the hit six-part comedy series Fleabag, also just so happens to be my friend – and my boyfriend’s sister. I’m very lucky to be able to say that, considering Fleabag was one of the biggest critical and commercial hits of 2016: hilarious, sad, angry and really bloody clever. I knew Phoebe was brilliant
so wasn’t surprised by its success. Endearingly, however, she was. If Phoebe had one word to describe the year, it would be ‘exhilarating’.
She wasn’t sure how Fleabag would be received. She thought the first episode was going to be OK because lots of the production staff had seen it and liked it. But the follow-up was nerve-wracking. Phoebe was on holiday with her husband when it aired. ‘I had to find somewhere with Wi-fi. I went on Twitter for 10 seconds and saw five Tweets saying,“this is really good.”’ It was, she says, the biggest moment of her year – even though that year also included going on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Phoebe is fundamentally one of the kindest people I know – someone who always makes time for family and friends even when the world is going mad around her. She’s a quintessential woman’s woman. She’s generous with her time and her talent, and believes that feminism comes from raising other women up rather than dragging them down. In creating a complicated, difficult anti-heroine who sometimes acts in unlikeable ways, she’s taught me to be less judgemental and more forgiving.
Fans of Fleabag now include Jake Gyllenhaal, Lena Dunham, Chris Rock and Sia, but Phoebe hasn’t let it go to her head. I suppose I would say that, but you’ll just have to take it from me that she’s sweetly thrilled people have responded so positively. ‘It’s lovely being a bit famous,’ she says. ‘I’ll get one person a day just trotting up saying, “I really love your work.” What could be nicer?’
It’s not just young women. A couple of [male] black cab drivers in their fifties saw her in a pub and told her they were fans. Then she met two teenage girls on the Tube ‘and one said her grandmother introduced her to the show and they watched the whole thing together’.
What was her biggest shock of 2016? ‘That Trump got elected… It’s made me want to write way more about feminism and women. It’s made me want to be more political in my writing.’
Her New Year’s resolution last year was ‘to stop being exactly eight minutes late for everything’. It wasn’t especially successful, given that she was precisely eight minutes late for our interview. The problem is ‘that I get so pleased with myself for being early and then I get myself a “Well done for being early coffee” and then that makes me late.’
So 2017 starts with the same resolution. I have faith in her. Still, it’ll be hard to stick to if people keep coming up to tell her how much they love her work.