Phoebe Waller-Bridge 'empowered' to see violent women on TV
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who developed the award-winning BBC drama Killing Eve, has spoken of how it is “refreshing and oddly empowering” to see female characters being violent after decades of television in which women have been brutalised.
The writer and actor acclaimed for her role in a new series of the BBC sitcom Fleabag which she created, addressed the issue as fans eagerly await the second series of Killing Eve starring Jodie Comer as a psychopathic killer and Sandra Oh as an MI5 operative.
“I think people are slightly exhausted by seeing women being brutalised on screen,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show on Sunday. “We’re being allowed to see women on slabs the whole time and being beaten up, and in some ways that’s important to see because it shows the brutality against women.
“Seeing women being violent, the flipside of that is refreshing and oddly empowering,” she added.
Waller-Bridge’s comments,
the latest in a debate that has gathered pace amid criticisms of the depictions of violence against women in shows such as Luther, The Fall and The Politician’s Husband, were backed by the screenwriter and producer Sarah Phelps, who was behind a recent adaptation of Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders in which John Malkovich starred as Hercule Poirot.
“An idea has been sold to us in the past, which is that women can be feisty, but what is really empowering now is that we are seeing characters with some really dark and secret parts of the psyche that we haven’t seen in the past,” said Phelps.
“We’re now seeing much more layered and complex characters – that’s what Phoebe is talking about – instead of seeing women as cyphers for warped male fantasies.”
Phelps, whose upcoming projects include an adaptation of the work of the Dublin-based crime writer Tana French, said her approach to crime dramas was to “honour the body” and tell their tale.
She said: “What is empowering is that the women are telling the stories in dramas. They are not waiting for someone else, a male detective, to come in and stand over their macerated corpse and say: ‘By the way I am splitting from my wife.’ They are leading and defining the narrative.”
Rachel Krys, the co-director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: “Many women are tired of rape and other forms of violence being used to titillate, to scare and to promote myths about what ‘real’ victims and perpetrators are like and how they behave.
“It would be refreshing to see fewer programmes which fetishise violence against women and promote a toxic version of masculinity, and be offered more which challenges gender stereotypes and shifts social norms.”
The first trailer for the much-anticipated second season of Killing Eve was unveiled in February and featured more black comedy and at least one ominous shot of a kitchen knife.
The BBC spy drama, developed by Waller-Bridge, which first aired last year, stars Comer as the ruthless globehopping assassin Villanelle and Oh as Eve Polastri, the MI5 officer tasked with hunting her down. The series was a hit with viewers, becoming one of the most watched series on the BBC iPlayer. It also received widespread acclaim from critics, and was named the Guardian’s best TV show of 2018.
Waller-Bridge told Marr: “Strangely, there’s hardly any blood, there’s hardly any gruesomeness that we were allowed to show … There’s a man on the slab but no bits on show. We have just as much respect the other way around.
“BBC America, the original channel, said we couldn’t have that much blood on show, we couldn’t be too grotesque. The challenge was to make it feel very violent without actually showing anything. That’s a very different experience for the audience.”