Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Peculiar Hollywood Wobble

If the Oscar hype is to be believed — and this year, given the relative paucity of strong contenders, it risks turning into the most predictable awards season fiesta in a long while — then Andrew Scott has a good chance of winning his first Academy Award for his performance as the dying actor Ian Charleson in the British film “Elsinore.” Whether or not he is successful, it’s the latest in a long line of acclaimed performances for the Irish actor that have included the lead in the World War II thriller “Pressure“, his widely praised turn in “All of Us Strangers” and revelatory stage appearances in Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Coward. And all this can, at least in part, be put down to his performance in the second series of “Fleabag” as the so-called “Hot Priest”.To be fair, Mr. Scott was hardly an ingenue before, having won a BAFTA for his appearance in “Sherlock” in 2012. But it was his superlative work in “Fleabag” — as the character whose vows, and pants buttons, are tested by Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s upper-crust hot mess — that have made him a favorite for audiences and casting directors ever since. Mr. Scott undoubtedly deserves his stratospheric success, and we can look forward to decades’ worth of interesting work from him. But why has the same good fortune not befallen his co-star, who not only starred in “Fleabag,” but also wrote and created it, too?Andrew Scott and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in ‘Fleabag.’ Via Amazon“Good fortune” is, of course, a relative term. When Ms. Waller-Bridge first stepped into the role of “Fleabag” — she has no given Christian name or surname and is only ever referred to her by her nickname, an amusingly Brechtian touch in a show that smuggles more formal subversion into the mainstream than most would have thought possible – she was hardly an unknown quantity. But the minor roles that she had been playing in pictures such as “Albert Nobbs” and “The Iron Lady” and on stage were insignificant compared to the one-woman show that she had premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013, also called “Fleabag.”After successful runs in Edinburgh and London it was commissioned for BBC3, with the second series moving over to the more mainstream BBC1. Ten years ago. Amazon Prime signed up as the show’s American partner. “Fleabag” made Ms. Waller-Bridge, 41, a star on both sides of the Atlantic in a way that, arguably, no British woman had been since Emma Thompson. She was an established double threat as both actress and writer and appeared to have the world at her feet. So, what exactly did she do next?The adventures of Ms. Waller-Bridge between 2019 and the present day are one of the most perplexing “journeys” that any talented star has been on in the modern entertainment industry. At its most banal, it boils down to money. Amazon, in keeping with its policy, released no viewing figures for “Fleabag,” but the series’ critical acclaim and awards success pointed to a sizeable audience.Amazon, desperate to nurture their own talent and to create a crossover series that would be even bigger than “Fleabag,” signed Ms. Waller-Bridge to an astonishingly large deal, worth a rumored $20 million a year, that began in late 2019 and would mean that she would exclusively create content for their streaming service Prime.Yet there was one particularly strange lacuna in the deal. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was under no obligation to produce any shows. Instead, Amazon reserved the right to take first dibs on anything that she did. Alternatively, she could simply sit at home and count the money, free from immediate pressure to create the next “Fleabag.”Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepts the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series for ‘Fleabag’ at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles, California, on January 19 2020. Via Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for TurnerThat, bizarrely, is more or less what has happened since. The most significant project that she took on around the time of “Fleabag” was to act as showrunner for the first (and best) series of “Killing Eve,” for which she wrote four episodes, before passing on show running responsibilities to Emerald Fennell for the second season. But creatively, her most high-profile work after that was to act as an additional screenwriter on the last James Bond film, “No Time To Die.” If she had been hired to provide sarcastic, witty quips for Bond and the supporting cast alike, they seemingly got lost in the edit room. The film was, even by the grim standards of the Daniel Craig era, a joyless trudge that appeared to take a macabre delight in killing off its cast one by one, ending with 007 himself.Ms. Waller-Bridge has not been entirely absent as an actress, but she was horribly miscast as an amoral adventuress — though, thank God, not a love interest — in the Indiana Jones film “Dial of Destiny,” and she seems to have developed an unfortunate habit of picking flops in which to appear. These have included voicing a robot in the Han Solo origin picture “Solo” and taking small roles in unsuccessful films like “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” and “Rule Breakers.” If you listened closely, she was also offering voice work in the television series “His Dark Materials” and John Krasinski’s family fantasy film “IF.” But, if you were a Fleabag fan, your most recent encounter with its brilliant star was most likely in a music video by Harry Styles or FKA twigs.Phoebe Waller-Bridge in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.’ LucasfilmIt is rare, even unique, for someone who has enjoyed the level of success and acclaim that Ms. Waller-Bridge has received to pursue the subsequent career that she has. However, the no-strings-attached presence of $20 million a year coming into your bank account might disincentivize even the most industrious of performers to do all that much. Which is not to say that she has not been busy in her personal life.She has been the partner of the writer-director Martin McDonagh, who shares her similarly dark and taboo-busting sense of humor, since 2017, and supposedly gave birth to their first child late last year, although the pair have refused to discuss any specifics of their family life.Amusingly, the greatest challenge to Scott for Best Actor at the Oscars comes from John Malkovich in the Mr. McDonagh-directed “Wild Horse Nine,” meaning that their household could end up being divided on the night.Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Martin McDonagh at the premiere of ‘Wild Horse Nine’ at the Venice International Film Festival on September 03, 2026. Via Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for PeugeotBelatedly, Amazon is getting something for its dollars from Ms. Waller-Bridge in the form of a new “Tomb Raider” series, for which she is creator, writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner. It might turn out to be exceptionally good, although the casting of Sophie Turner in the lead and the fact that no Lara Croft incarnation in the past has ever come to much should give viewers caution.But is it not profoundly depressing that someone as talented and original as Phoebe Waller-Bridge should end up overseeing a “Tomb Raider” TV show? It will either prove as formulaic and, ironically, unadventurous as the earlier treatments of the ever-popular computer game have been, or, worse, will seek to bring “Fleabag”-level irony and subversion to a show that primarily exists to further its IP. It is, one fears, unlikely to succeed in this grave-robbing task.The entertainment industry does not have a brilliant reputation when it comes to auteur female showrunners. After Sharon Horgan broke through with “Catastrophe,” her recent work has been eclectic but increasingly patchy, not least her increasingly grim and unfunny series “Divorce,” with Sarah Jessica Parker. Ms. Horgan has been stuck in a rut of making samey shows about middle-aged relationships, of which her bizarre latest offering, “Youth,” attempts to mix “Extras”-esque celebrity cameo farce with more strait-laced familial drama. To say nothing of various scenes of Horgan in her underwear with her younger love interest that remind the audience that, yes, she looks exceptionally good for 56.Perhaps in a decade and a half Ms. Waller-Bridge will attempt her own version of “Youth,” or will renege on her vow never to resurrect the “Fleabag” character on screen. Certainly, it is hard to think of a more perfect farewell to “Fleabag” than the end of the show’s second season when, heartbroken but finally coming to terms with her own life and identity, she waves goodbye to the camera that she has been pouring out her thoughts into and walks away into the next phase.It is dispiriting that what has awaited Fleabag’s peerlessly talented creator since then has been truckloads of money, with creativity and originality taking a backseat. “Tomb Raider” seems like a cynical attempt to resurrect a brand rather than something that ever needed to be made, and it seems safe to say that the series will not give her the kind of awards-season prominence that her partner, Mr. McDonagh, and her former co-star Mr. Scott, are currently enjoying. But it is to be hoped that its visibility will lead Phoebe Waller-Bridge next time to a project more worthy of her talents.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Peculiar Hollywood Wobble

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Peculiar Hollywood Wobble

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