Woman's Hour - Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the award-winning writer and creator of Fleabag, tells Jenni Murray about all things Fleabag: from celibacy, religion and sexual fluidity to the relationship between feminism and breast size, and of course the ‘Hot Priest’. Plus insight into the characters from Killing Eve, behind the scenes working on the new Bond film and how friends can be the greatest love story of your life. After the first season of Fleabag aired on the BBC in 2016, Phoebe brought us more complex and unpredictable female characters with her hit TV drama Killing Eve. In 2019 the second series of Fleabag won her critical acclaim in the US as well as the UK, including a handful of Emmys and a multi-million pound producing deal, and now a book Fleabag: The Scriptures. So how has she handled such an extraordinary run of success? And what difference has her work made to the way we see women on TV?Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Helen Fitzhenry Interviewed guest: Phoebe Waller-Bridge

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Now, my first encounter with Phoebe Waller-Bridge was sitting in front of her in a little theatre in Soho at the opening night of the play Touch, written by her best friend Vicky Jones. It was soon after the first series of Fleabag began. We said a polite hello to each other and it all came back to me when we met again late last week. So you've come on a bit since I saw you. Amazing. Absolutely mad yeah. It has been amazing. Yeah, it has. I can't really...

Yeah. Amazing being the operative word, has there ever been such a speedy rise to international fame and fortune for bringing extraordinary and unusual female characters to the screen? Fleabag began in 2016. The second series was last year. Killing Eve with Villanelle, the well-dressed contract killer, started in 2018. Series two

was last year and there's another on the way. Then she was co-opted into the writing team of the new James Bond film. In the last 12 months, she's won three Emmys for acting and writing, two Golden Globes, a Critics' Choice Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. And they were all collected wearing fabulous frocks. And now there's a book of all the Fleabag scripts and her reflections on colleagues, friends and family. Why has she called it The Scriptures with a big banner declaring it's a love story? Well, we thought The Scriptures was just a nice little riff on the theme of the second series. And I feel like the

combination of the two series is a love story. And I think it was one of my favourite lines from the second series, this is a love story. And it was possibly because once I'd written that first scene of her in the bathroom, I wrote that before I knew anything else about the series. I sort of wrote that and went, oh, it's going to be a love story let's see how this pans out that's the sort of aesthetic of it but it was it was such a special thing putting the book together because I got to revisit the writing process as well really and go back into the you see my stomach rumble then I'm gonna take a nibble out of this microphone if I'm not careful um yeah just to to go back and remember writing it and all the stage directions and what was going through my mind at the time.

So who is Fleabag? I mean, where did she come from? When I was in my 20s and I was feeling quite cynical, I sort of, when I was standing on the precipice, and I say this a bit, when I was standing on the precipice, and I say this a bit, but I was standing on the precipice of being sort of too cynical or becoming a little bit depressed about the pressures of society and starting to wake up to the reality of, you know, the pressures that women are under, and men as well, but particularly women.

And I felt that if I looked down over the precipice into the chasm below at the bottom was Fleabag you know wearing lipstick and looking up at me it was the worst case um scenario of a kind of spiral of um self-loathing and judgment the play is darker I think than the tv show and that's where it all started as a play. But it was really about a woman who felt that she was really valued primarily by her sort of sexual desirability. And I just really wanted to write about that, but in a way that was accessible and funny, so people didn't realise that's what it was about until it sneaks up on you. But what's with her seeing sex in everything? I mean, that moment when she's in bed and there's Obama on the television news.

I thought, oh, come on. You sound surprised. You sound surprised. I believe that's quite a relatable moment in the TV show. Yeah, well, actually, in the play, I wanted her to sexualise absolutely everything. So in the first couple of paragraphs, she sexualises her pizza.

She calls her pizza a slutty pizza and she sexualises... I mean, at one point, she even kind of sexualises her dad, but it's in this kind of... It's this sort of offhand, witty way, so you think that she's just doing it for effect, but actually, ideally, when you think that she's just doing it for effect but actually ideally when you realise that it's so relentless you realise that there's actually something else

going on underneath that she is actually preoccupied by it but yes we stripped some of that out some of that out of the TV show but Obama that was never going to go anywhere that is a truism he represents hope and hope is sexy.

But how difficult was it for you personally, Phoebe, not Fleabag, to deal with the way women's sexuality was everywhere? I mean, we even see a naked woman advertising a mortgage. Yeah, that was important to me because I'd felt, again in my early 20s and it was only really dawning on me because you get these messages um fed your whole uh you know you know our whole lives and um but I only started really um zoning in on them in my early 20s when I'd be on the tube

and I'd see um a woman in her bra looking sort of delighted at a pencil case she just got or something that seems that doesn't sound not quite right about that and then I just felt that sort of that we always had to be perfect and pert and looking gorgeous before anything else like if you're in that position when you when you are looking good you can then start your day um and I really started feeling that and so the advert it was so funny coming up with that though with the art art department because we were sort of like I mean she's I mean the woman is masturbating naked on a bed about getting a mortgage it's very subtle but um but it made the point for me anyway. We spoke to Vicky Jones some time ago, who I know wrote Fleabag with you about her play Touch.

She mentioned in that interview a most wonderful best friend. Now, I assume she meant you. I hope so. She didn't actually write it with me. She directed the stage play and she developed the stage play with me and it wouldn't exist without her. I don't know if I'd have a career without her. We met when we were both out on the hustle trying to get, she was trying to be a director and I was trying to be an actor

and she just had so much faith from the off and I think that's such a unusual thing when you're an actor as well because everybody you know actors coming out of drama school to directors who are already in the industry are basically just like swarms of rats coming out every year being like just trying to nibble on them and I remember telling like approaching her and saying if you ever have anything that you need a kind of you know a 23 year old girl for I mean my bracket was basically I was like I'll do anything and she was so enthusiastic and she was like oh my god it's so exciting that you want to be an actress and of course we'll work together and and then we did and then we

started our theatre company and it was just became about making stuff that was exciting to us and that cracked us up or made us feel like excited and that was when it all really changed and then she really really pushed me to write and then directed all of my stuff and and then a few years into that when that sort of started going well um I suddenly was like now hold on a second now you write something and then she did she wrote the one and touch which were both smash it plays and now she's just written her first show, which she created, which is going to be on HBO anytime now. So how much did that incredibly close and important friendship influence you embarking

on a story about a woman dealing with the loss of such a friendship? Well, it was hugely influential because I wrote a lot of Fleabag from the point of view of worst case scenarios. And I looked at everything that was precious to me in my life. And I imagined having them all taken away as a good starting place for a dramatic character. And then the revelation that the reason Boo had died was because of something that Fleabag did. So the fact that she'd be blaming herself for losing her own friend. That was a gutting day, but exciting one. And I was developing it with Vicky.

And I was like, where's the twist? Where's the twist? There's a twist in this because I was just writing it as it was coming out. And I just couldn't find and all the things were in place. You know, there was a woman who was obsessed with sex, who felt like that was the only validation she needed and could get from the world. And she also had her best friend who, and I'd written that her best friend had died, trying to punish her boyfriend for cheating on her. And I just the missing link was that it was Fleabag. And it took me sort of three weeks to have those things floating in front of me. And I was with Vicky. And then I suddenly had the revelation. I went, it was Fleabag who slept with her boyfriend. And then Vicky looked at me and just went, no, sorry, no, that can't be that

can't be the case. No, I'm sorry. That's too upsetting. And I was like, the reason you're saying that she got so upset. And she was like, okay, that's, that has to be it because it was too upsetting. but the idea of like being disconnected from my family so much or losing my mum or having or having been the cause of my friend's death you know all of those things um fed into it and you wouldn't sleep with her boyfriend no would you under Under no circumstances whatsoever. Under no circumstances, absolutely not. And that's the thing, it's scary when you're writing things because sometimes things feel so uncomfortable writing them.

And I think that's when you feel like you're getting to an interesting place with writing. Because when I did say that to Jones, the instant I said it, we both imagined going through, like, if that had happened between the two of us and actually how you would survive it. And to be honest, we were sort of like, we probably would survive something like that because we are the greatest love story in each other's life. And we obviously trust each other not to do that sort of thing. But yeah, that kind of heartbreak, that kind of betrayal from a friend is, it can feel Shakespearean in its pain and its drama.

Is it slightly scary that a lot of people watching it might assume it's all autobiographical? Yeah, I mean, I had let that go quite early on because I assumed people would. And I called it Fleabag, which is my family nickname. So I was asking for trouble. Yes, you thank your family at the end of the book for calling you Flea.

Yes, yeah. And so, yeah, and I assumed that there will be people that would think it's autobiographical, but I hope that people don't think that I did that because I didn't. It's interesting that the term bromance has been around for a long time, the assumption that there might be a romantic element even to a there might be a romantic element

even to a straight relationship, a friendship between two men. Why do you suppose there isn't all written about that element of romance in a female friendship? I think probably because stories have, you know, there are more male writers published in the world and there are more male-driven stories in the world and they've dominated the industry for forever. Because I think friendships are the greatest romances of our lives.

I think, and Vicky and I always would joke that our boyfriends were our mistresses to our marriage and our love story. Which doesn't go down so well with the boyfriends, I've got to say. But they are, I think they're so profound and complex that actually just seeing kind of like giggly girl gang kind of portrayals is something we've become used to, that girls are sort of cliquey or they're just sort of like that gossipy thing. But what runs deeper, I think female relationships have such depth

because they begin from a place... I think women, I don't want to generalise, but we learn to talk to each other from such an early time in our lives. And we can skip the bullshit. I don't know if I could say bullshit you just did yeah i find there's a quick way to sort of skip it and that was the thing when i felt when i met vicky um and we can say that we love each other and it's an easy it's an easier thing for us to

say and i just i mean within a week i was like i'm i think i love you and then jenny who who is working with me now and has been developing the series of the second series of Fleabag and then she and then with Killing Eve as well. It's the same thing. I picked up the phone to her to start working together and I heard her voice and it was love at first voice again. I fell in love again. There is an encounter in series two with Christian Scott Thomas character where Fleabag says, well, she's not strictly a lesbian, and then she moves to kiss her. Villanelle in Killing Eve pursues sexual relationships equally, it seems to me, with men and women.

Why are you never keen to really define a character's sexuality? Because I think people, I think the most interesting characters have an element of surprise about them, and whether that's that they're surprising themselves or they're surprising the audience or they're surprising somebody else in the room, and I think that's really how I like to approach my life,

and I think the moment you define yourself or define somebody else, you're limiting yourself. People are all we've got. They grab the night by its nipples and go and flirt with someone. No, that's not what I meant. Oh, I wish you were my type. You know, take this tart back to my party and go and find someone to actually do that with. I want to do it with you.

No. Why not? Honestly? Yeah. Can't be arsed, darling. And I think the characters that I've been writing that have that, they are open to... They're actually desperate to be surprised

by themselves and by the world and by other things, and they are open. And also, I just think now we're living in a time where, you know, it's starting to be part of the conversation where people saying that, you know, you can be fluid and I don't want to define myself. And I just think that's a really wonderful thing that's starting to happen. And my characters are basking in it. How comfortable are you with writing about women who are full of rage or extremely violent, which of course Villanelle is?

Very comfortable. Extremely comfortable. You've done quite well out of them, haven't you? Yeah, I think for me, as long as it's not without the other the other side of the story so for me Villanelle is interesting because she's so incredibly vulnerable and childlike moments before or after she commits this heinous act of violence for me that's what makes it interesting I'm not interested in a character who's just he's just going to go and murder lots of people shoot lots of people if she's just brutal. I want to see the whole picture.

And I also am excited by extremes as much as the detail. The fact that she can be so gentle with a piece of clothing that she adores and then just like smash somebody's eyeball with a pin and she sort of has the same amount of excitement and thrill from both was exciting to me because you don't really see people's extremes in real life I mean ideally you'll never see that that version that extreme version of anybody and it's just rare to see that in women I think in female characters because I think the pressure with female action heroes or ones who are violent you just they normally have

to be sort of badass and not necessarily be connected emotionally to it. And I think I knew that the first, like what I was saying earlier about the opening of Fleabag 2, when Fleabag had a bloody nose, I'd written that before I knew what the series was going to be about. I sat down to write and that was the first scene that came out and it told me so much about where we were going to go but I was as surprised by that first scene um than uh than anybody and I was like gosh who hit her and why is there violence and I think I'd been really influenced by the writing Villanelle that there is something electric about writing about women

in violence because it's rarely portrayed I think with that extra emotional element to it. There seems to me to be a degree of shame about feminism in the Fleabag stories. Why the worry that she wouldn't be such a feminist if she had bigger tit. I mean, I don't know how to describe that. That to me was just, it was a joke that has been around on my post-it wall for a really long time that just felt truthful. And without sort of unpacking it, I guess there was just a little bit of magic in that joke for me that just felt like, oh, there was just something honest in it and something funny and wry

and then just put that on the wall and put it away. I actually wrote that so long ago. I think it was even crashing my first series. I tried to get it into crashing, tried to get it into the first series of Fleabag. Sometimes it was in a man's mouth, sometimes it was in a woman's mouth, but it never really fit, which made me think maybe it's just not, maybe it just doesn't quite,

I don't know, fit anywhere. But with Fleabag, her relationship with feminism is so complex because she's vulnerable with it. She doesn't understand the rules of it. She knows in her bones that it's the thing that she wants to be and she wants to identify as a feminist, but she feels like she's letting feminism down all the time. And in that scene, she's embarrassed by it because it's a secret even she didn't know about herself. Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, what am I going to say? What am I going to say?

I sometimes worry that I wouldn't be such a feminist if I had bigger tits. Most of the turns to the camera is when she tells us what she really thinks. And that one she surprised herself. And it's a dirty secret that actually she wishes she was more perfect. And that feels like it was an attack on feminism itself. And what's Phoebe's relationship with feminism as opposed to Fleabag's? Well, very similar.

And particularly when I wrote the play, I felt the same thing, which is that that scene when in the first series when somebody asked them if they would trade five years of their life for the perfect body, I would have been the girl with the hand up. I'd have been like, hell yes.

And then thinking that was honest and thinking that's empowering because it's honest and yet feeling at the same time that it's letting the side down and not really knowing what the rules were um but then caring so deeply about women and equality and the the basic principles of of feminism and then being slightly frightened by the nuances and that there are traps out there. And I still feel like that. I still get, even when I start being asked by it, I still a little bit, my heart starts beating a little bit faster because I know that there are, there are minds that you can step on. And I think I'll probably always have that. You often seem to be inviting the audience to cheer on occasions like there's that thing about women's hair.

And I wonder what confidence you gained from realising that the audience on the whole was coming with you. But when I realised people are responding to particular bits, like the hair speech, you mean? Yeah. Oh my God, it's the best feeling in the world i think because it's such a small when things start like a small idea like the fact that the hair speech um got picked up and that people were relating to it you know i sometimes have these ideas and you think it's like i'll have a conversation with my sister and i'll just say why is just all why is hair so stressful why is hair why why is hair so stressful? Why is it so stressful? Why does it feel like it's everything? And then we have such a relief talking to each other about it,

a sense of relief. And then that sort of goes away. But then a kernel of it stays in the back of my mind. And then I think, oh, I'll just write a little bit about that just as a nod to that conversation I had with her or just because it feels a little bit true. And those are always the ones that surprise you and blow up because they're these little truisms. And I think when that happens, that's when I just feel a little bit less alone in the world because I'm like, you too?

Oh, thank God. That is exactly what she asked for. No, it's not. We want compensation. Claire? I've got two important meetings and I look like a pencil. No, don't blame me for your bad choices. Hair isn't everything. Wow.

What? Hair is everything. We wish it wasn't, so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is. It's the difference between a good day and a bad day. We're meant to think that it's a symbol of power, that it's a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it and it pays your fucking bills. Hair is everything, Anthony. People have often said you have written every woman in Fleabag. She, like you, comes from

a rather privileged background. And I wondered how concerned you were that audiences might look at her and think, what's she got to worry about with a millionaire sister? Yeah, I mean, it was a concern and wasn't a concern because that was her circumstances. Her circumstances, I had decided that that was going to be her life. And there are moments where she feels apologetic about it. And there are moments in my life when I feel apologetic about it. And I think part of her whole character is that she knows there's a moment when she says to the therapist in the

second season, she goes, I don't need help. I have a nice life. I just want, just tell me how not to do this one bad thing. And I think that's part of her anxiety is, I can't complain. I'm not complaining. I'm fighting. I'm telling you I'm fine all the time. And then you slowly see that inside she's crumbling with her own, you know, with her own issues and her own self-loathing. It was really important to me that she didn't complain about her lifestyle and that she wasn't complaining about not having money. I think it's really important when you just see a character fight for something or fight against something. And she was fighting to make the audience believe that she was fine rather than trying to elicit sympathy from them. I think if she'd been doing that, then it would have been, then I think it would have pissed

people off. Now, we mentioned your sister recently on the programme because we did a piece about the new Emma and the beautiful score that she has written for it. But I wondered how much do you draw on your relationship with her to create your relationship with Claire in the series? Well, Claire's not anything like my sister. So the character herself was built completely from a completely isolated point of view. And it was actually very inspired by Sian Clifford, who plays Claire,

and knowing that I wanted to write something for her and everything she brought to that character and then I would build it. You know, she's very sort of uptight and corporate and is there's nothing like that at all but there are elements of the dynamic which are so accurate to us like when they sit when they sort of you feel like they're completely different people and yet they have exactly the same sense of humour or they connect on something in a way that seems really private just to them and that there is a sense of undying eternal love and it's I have that with both my siblings that you know it's it's that it's the

depth of it but there are a couple of little moments in there which are just little things almost like for Io and i'm just like what um well they're for iso maybe it's for her at the end of the book you thank all your collaborators including your family as we said they had called you flee but you say you wish you'd protected them better from the impact of fleabag what do you mean by that that oh that was from a podcast wasn't it that's not in the book i think um that'd be quite intense if i put that in the book it's a happy it's a happy book um i just think you just don't know what what's going to happen when you write something and you put it out in the world and your dream is that it it hits and it and people love it and people care about it and I had sort of fortified myself to that a little bit because that's sort of what you're building

towards the whole time but you know my family's not in the edit every day they're not in the writer's room they're not building up they're not doing the press they're not feeling this machine start to work suddenly you know they're going about their own lives and then suddenly the show comes out and boom people are talking about the show they have uh they want to connect with my my family or want to talk about it and it's just a bit of a shock i think when you become quite visible suddenly and we've got quite a unusual surname so I think people know that it's like my mum, it's Mrs. Waller-Bridge. So I think it's just like a wave hitting you

and that they just weren't prepared for. But I mean, it was lovely. I suppose it was just having some foresight and saying, but then you never want to be the person who goes, guys, this is going to be huge. Put your armbands on. So, yeah, I just think in hindsight, just to say, this show is emotional and about family and about friendships.

And a little bit rude from time to time. And a little bit rude. How did the parents go down with that? Oh, well, I am my mother's daughter, so. And my dad loves the show. You know, I can't, you know, they brought me up. So it's on them, really. We've got this far without much discussion of the hot priest.

How did that... Both of us have been thinking about him the entire time though, right? Yes. I know. I mean, how did that character come about and how did you persuade Andrew to do it? Andrew. Andrew was a huge, huge part of this whole process.

I had come up with... I knew that I wanted the show to have something to do with religion. Because when I look back over my notebook that I'd been keeping while I was writing Killing Eve, whenever I'd have an idea for Fleabag, I'd put it in a notebook. And I read through all of them. And there was so many religious jokes, religious ideas, things about faith. And I was like, whoa, I sort of wasn't expecting that. So I knew there'd be a religious element to it. And I knew that Fleabag was going to meet somebody.

And so the perfect meeting of those two ideas was Fleabag meets a priest. But it seemed almost too on the nose. And I was, and I sort of resisted the idea for a while, especially because there have been so many priests in comedy that it's almost sort of a crowded market of like iconic priests and I was like I don't want to take that on I don't want to fall into the the um the traps myself of trying to make him a kind of comedy priest and then I thought but what if Andrew Scott played him and suddenly he came he just crystallised in my mind

as a very real person. So you're a cool priest, are you? A cool priest? Yeah. No, I'm a big reader with no friends. Are you a cool person? I'm a pretty normal person. A normal person?

Yeah, a normal person. What makes you a normal person? Well, I don't believe in God. I love it when he does that. Because Andrew is very grounded and has such a huge heart and is unafraid of the complexity of emotions when he's performing. And so I met him at the Soho Theatre, where we first met to do a play ten years ago.

And we had a coffee and he was like, what's going on? And I just said, I need you to be in the show because it needs to be built around you. And then I told him about how I wanted the character to be a man first and then a priest, if that makes sense, that we meet him and he's complex and kind and funny, but with his own damage. And he's somebody who is a match for Fleabag because the men that she met in the first season she can reduce to tube rodent or bus rodent as he's called in the in the tv show or arsehole guy she finds it she just wants to be able to reduce somebody and he's

the one person that she can't do that to and And so Andrew, I was talking to Andrew about love and we were talking about it being a love story and he said that he'd wanted to play love for a really long time. And then he said, I want you to come. He was like, let me show you something. And we walked around Soho and he took me to the Quaker Hall

that is actually featuring in the show. And as we were talking about faith and love and sex and relationships, we walked into the Quaker Hall and he said this is a beautiful little haven in the middle of the kind of chaos of the city and we sat there and talked for another hour or two hours or something the two of us breaking all the rules of silence in the Quaker Hall there was nobody else there thank god and we sat across almost exactly in the positions that we were sitting in the show,

and then talked for ages. And then by the time we left, he just turned around to me and said, I want to play this part. You mention in the book a Father William with whom you discussed his relationship with celibacy. What did he teach you? Well, he was very kind with his approach to talking about it because he had great humour about it because I tried to speak to a couple of other priests about it. And obviously, it's a sensitive subject for people to come into it very sensitively. And but I wanted to basically

ask them all the questions that I believe Fleabag would ask the priest. And Father William just had this huge roaring laugh and open heart. And he just believed that if people have a question, you must answer it honestly. And he said that it was a great gift for him. But also that it was something that he struggled with every day. It was part of his faith. it wasn't something that he wore as a sort of medal or anything it was something that was kept him constantly having a conversation with himself about his own solitude and his own needs and he said something beautiful about that he knew that he was going to be the last he knew that i can't quite remember exactly what he said i've written it down somewhere but but when he turned the handle to close the door to his bedroom every

night he knew that he was going to be the last person the only person to um touch that door handle and he got and to close the door and he got a lot of um comfort out of that but at the same time of course it's lonely and he said it could feel like a wound sometimes, which that went right through me. But then also the consistency of it is what gave him his freedom in some way as well. He taught me so much. And just even being able to call him up and say, what would the priest say in this sort of situation, like about grief or like the priest says in episode two,

has to respond to Fleabag when he thinks that she's had a miscarriage. And just knowing that there are texts out there that you can reference. And he was talking to me about the idea that the whole thing is sort of like poetry. You've got to interpret texts. The Bible isn't just a blueprint. It's something for you to consistently find things in. And a certain line in the Bible that might have meant a lot to you when you were 25 could mean something very different. When you're 45, you interpret it differently and actually having that to go back to all the time.

And I just loved hearing about the philosophical elements of faith and religion because we hear so much about the political influence that it can have and how kind of insidious it can be. And I just loved hearing about the good that it can bring into people's lives, the community and the sort of conversation it prompts you to have with yourself all the time. Would you describe yourself as a woman who has faith? I'm an atheist, but I have faith.

I have faith in people and in energy and good energy. I have a lot of faith, but it's not directed to one god there is that moment at the end where he says he loves her when she declares her love for him why was it important that he should do that well that was andrew that wasn't in the script actually i wrote well i was debating whether or not he should say it back for a while. And then when we got on set, Andrew, he was very, we worked so closely. And every time drafts came in, we would talk about it a lot. And this was one thing he was like, he's got, he has to say it back. Because it'll pass being the last thing he says.

Could be a bit harsh. And I think it was important because it was the first time that he said something to her that was just purely about his own emotional state and how he felt about her outside of his faith, outside of religion, just about their connection. And there's something so pure about those words when they're used properly. And there was something about the symmetry of them saying it to each other made it feel equal. And that was the basis of what was inspiring to me about these two is that they saw each other as equals. He treats her as an equal and she treats him as

an equal, even though they find each other extremely eccentric in their belief systems. So it was that really, it was that they could share it together. And what's your there were foxes in London. So many people were like, is that a thing? There's like these animals just walking around on the street. Yeah, they have such swagger. There's such a kind of like swaggering sexiness about the foxes in London. They own the city. It's theirs. We're in their way.

We put the lids on the bins. And that's the greatest irritation for them. And again, sometimes I'm writing and it'll just come out. and I was writing the scene about them talking about celibacy and it just felt maybe I was getting too tense writing it because they were starting to talk about it and then the Fox speech just came out of nowhere I just started writing it just to make myself laugh and I sent it to Andrew and sent the episode to Andrew and he just wrote back saying it was he was like that's my he's I cannot wait to do that bit do you think I should become a Catholic no don't do that I like that you believe in a meaningless existence and you're good for me you make me question my faith

and I've never felt closer to God fuck you what was that it wasn't a fox was it I don't know is it a fox shine something oh god I bet it's a fox which't a fox, was it? I don't know. Is it a fox? Shine something. Boo! Bah! Oh God, I bet it's a fox. Which is a really important thing for me. I'm always thinking about the actors.

I'm always writing something thinking, as an actor, I want them to read it going, oh, I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. Now, quite a bit more has happened to you since Fleabag. A couple of awards. And then being asked to work on a Bond film. What was your reaction when they said, will you come and do that? I mean, it was a big old, yes, please. The wonderful thing about that is that those phone calls happen.

Someone says, Barbara wants to meet you, and you meet Barbara, and then you go to meet Daniel. And you have these incredible conversations about this iconic character who you've grown up with and then suddenly when you're on board it's like every other job because everyone is just making a story, making a thing work and you're just suddenly in a room again

with post-its on the wall and then you go to the loo and you'll see a set being built outside for some extraordinary thing and you're like oh yes this is this is different this is different from from fleabag um but it was actually seeing the stunt people the stunt guys practicing practicing drilling i don't know and that they they actually hold hold their hands like guns like kids when kids, when they're rehearsing it. And I was walking past and then they all go, pew, pew, pew, for the gun sound.

That was my favourite takeaway from being on a Bond set. We should just say that it was, of course, Barbara Broccoli and Daniel Craig. Yes. Does he hold his two fingers and go, poink, poink, poink? I haven't seen him do it, but I think his stunt double did. Pew, pew. In fact, I think there's a French contingent who go pew, pew. And I think there's an English contingent who go bang, bang.

I don't know. It was very amusing. So you enjoyed the whole experience? Yeah. I mean, it was really challenging. You know, my role there was to try and be helpful and to offer things. The script was there. You know,rie had a

really specific vision for the movie um and and so did daniel and and it had been in development for a really long time and they had a script and so i think it's just about that process for me was about you know stepping back and just saying i'm going to give you these options and then you you can use any of them or you can get rid of all of them because everybody was writing on it I mean there were just so many ideas and so clear to so many people I was just sort of throwing things out there and hoping that anything's yeah I was going pew pew pew how's that that when Fleabag launched you weren't, you're now divorced and in another relationship. But I wondered, how easy is it to manage a private, a family life

in the midst of the kind of fame and adulation that you have enjoyed in the past few years? Well, I think it's just trying to keep it as private as possible, really. And I think when people realise that you're just, you know, that you are just on your sofa watching Netflix with your boyfriend, that you're not, that you're actually as boring as the rest of us, as everybody else,

they kind of, you know, lose interest if you're not doing anything kind of wild. I think it's just keeping it as private. And I've always had an instinct about that. You know, keep what's really precious to you as close to you as you can and try and make the work more interesting than your life to people. Now, Run is a new series which is going to begin, I think,

on Sky Atlantic in April, written by your pal, your friend, but you have a part in it. How different a direction will that take you in? Well, the joy of it is that I get to be the cheerleader for Vicky that Vicky's been for me this whole time. I'm an executive producer on the show, which means I'm there to support Vicky and her vision and basically just celebrate her day in day out and and which is exactly what

she's done for me for years and years and years and seeing her on that set with a new baby having just written the whole thing and show running it was just the greatest it was just the greatest feeling and also just really fun and I'm playing a character that she wrote for me that I would probably never have been I'd never get to play a character like this I would probably never have been cast for something like this if it wasn't for Vicky um and there's just something so cool about it coming back round to us working together again except now it's HBO and now you know we were filming in Toronto this incredible set and so it's good it was you know, we were filming in Toronto, this incredible set. So it was good. It was, you know, it was another learning experience being an exec on something and being able to step back. And just all about, it just becomes all about somebody else's vision, which is really nice as well, actually.

No foxes this time, eh? There's no foxes. Let's see if I can sneak one in. Phoebe, thank you very much. That was lovely. Thank you. I was talking to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The book, The Scriptures, is out now. And if you missed the first two series of Fleabag and probably the last two, because I doubt she'll ever write any more, you can find them on BBC iPlayer. Bye-bye. What are you interested in? And I mean really interested in. Really into box certificates.

Pencils. Crinoline mania. So much so that if you see it, or hold it, or just think about it, then everything stops. And then, one day, it just vanished. Each week in the Boring Talks podcast, join me, James Ward, as I introduce a guest speaker to share their own fascination for a very niche subject. But what could it possibly be? From the personal joys of pencils and teletext to the expectant sounds of old computer games loading,

every talk is a varied and surprising treat. Hear that? Lovely. The Boring Talks. Subscribe right now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

Available now.