Failure Throwback: Phoebe Waller-Bridge

I’ve hand-picked some of my favourite episodes of all time to revisit this Christmas, so today’s a very special one. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was my first EVER guest on this podcast when I launched in July 2018. A year after that, almost to the day, I welcomed her back to talk about how her life had changed in the interim [spoiler alert: she’d become a global superstar]. Phoebe talks about the craziness of those 12 months, during which she wrote and starred in Fleabag 2 (described as a televisual masterpiece by...well...almost everyone), made Killing Eve (described as a televisual masterpiece by...well...almost everyone) and worked her magic on the new James Bond movie. It was a year that, from the outside, seemed to many of us to be the epitome of success. But what failures lay underneath the surface? What about those private moments of vulnerability and self-doubt we are so rarely privy to? Phoebe joined me to talk about three failures from that year, including her failure to connect with her family, her failure to speak up for herself and her failure to Marie Kondo her bedroom. Along the way, we discuss what makes the perfect water bottle, filming THAT final scene in Fleabag (apparently the foxes were total divas), sexuality, exhaustion and why female creators are often unfairly assumed to be writing autobiography. And yes, the Meryl Streep apple crumble anecdote makes an(other) appearance. HOW TO FAIL PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR tickets: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 1:07Elizabeth Day?

  Hello, it's Elizabeth here, and I have a special seasonal treat for you. For the next few episodes, I've handpicked some of my favourite ever interviews from the How To Fail archive. Today, I bring you an episode from July 2019, the unstoppable Phoebe Waller-Bridge in our second chat together. Fleabag is back. I love this episode because it was a year almost to the day since she was the first ever guest on How To Fail. And in the 12 months that had followed our first ever interview, she had become this global success story. Fleabag had won a clutch of Emmys and BAFTAs. And I was really interested in hearing from her what that felt like, and whether actually

• 1:52Elizabeth Day?

  there were moments of failure that she experienced along the way. The other reason I love it is because Phoebe is a dear friend of mine, and it's always so much fun to talk to her. Thank you so much for listening, and here she is, the one and only Phoebe Waller-Bridge. So, this is a very special episode. Just over a year ago, I launched a podcast. The idea was to have vulnerable and honest conversations with people about the things that hadn't gone right. I DM'd a hummus company on Twitter for sponsorship. I sold my wedding dress on eBay to get the funds to hire a producer. And then I asked people I knew to be my interviewees.

• 2:34Elizabeth Day?

  My first ever guest on the podcast that would become How to Fail with Elizabeth Day was none other than my dear and generous friend, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. At the time we spoke, she had just wrapped filming on a Star Wars movie. The first series of Fleabag had aired, and she was hard at work on the second. And a TV drama she had written and exec produced called Killing Eve was about to air. Since then, Phoebe has become one of the most phenomenally successful women on the planet. Killing Eve won three BAFTAs and was praised in Rolling Stone for undermining every rule of TV and for being hilarious, bloody, unclassifiable.

• 3:19Elizabeth Day?

  Fleabag, Season Two, was universally acclaimed as a masterpiece and single-handedly made the entire Catholic Church question its commitment to priestly celibacy. Her off-Broadway one-woman show ran to rave reviews and was watched by everyone from Hillary Clinton to Nicole Kidman. Now, she's writing on the new James Bond film, bringing her caustic feminist wit to 007's historically retrograde attitude to women. But what has life been like for her behind these extraordinary successes? After all, this is a podcast about what happens when you scratch the surface of achievement. It's about the moments of vulnerability, of sadness, and yes, of failure, that don't

• 4:03Elizabeth Day?

  always get the airplay. What has she learned from those moments when things didn't go according to plan, when success didn't always feel like it should? And that's why I'm barely coherent with excitement to welcome back my most downloaded podcast guest of all time, the one, the only, the dazzling Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Phoebe! Elizabeth! You're back! I'm back! Thank you. Thank you. How has it been? What have you been up to? Haven't heard much from you lately.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  It sounds quite exhausting when you read it out on the page like that. Yeah, it's been pretty, um, pretty great. Pretty intense and great since we last spoke.

• 4:46Elizabeth Day?

  Have you been getting enough sleep?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  No, no, but then, no, not really. Although last night I slept for like thirteen hours. I say night, yeah.

• 4:57Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  It just happened. You know, sometimes when it happens when your body like puts you to sleep to get some other shit done that that you don't know about. So that's what happened last night.

• 5:05Elizabeth Day?

  And what is it like genuinely when you hear me read out an introduction like that? And you look back on what the last twelve months have contained? Because it is literally almost exactly a year ago since we met last to do this podcast.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I suppose when you read it out, it does. And also because I've heard your podcast so many times and every time you're reading out people's achievements, I'm always like, oh my god, like that's extraordinary. Everything you have mine, it's like, it just sounds silly. I don't know, like, there'll always be a surreal element that someone will be reading out. Your past twelve months and I guess leaving out the bits in between that we're going to talk about, which is that like Killing Eve came out and that was such a huge and exciting. Thing and had had such an impact on on my life. But then the process of making that thing was a whole other experience in its own. So it's always like when it's always compressed into just. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. It's actually very rare that I see the year like that. Because I suppose from everyone else's point of view, it's when it comes out. But from my point of view, it's all the work it takes to get it there. And then that's the end of the job.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And other people see it as the beginning when it comes out. Does this make any sense?

• 6:07Elizabeth Day?

  Makes total sense. And actually, as you're talking, I'm remembering that when we first met in twenty fourteen. You were writing scripts and you were like, oh, I'm sort of adapting these spy novels. And it was a very long process of lots of, there was rejection along the way before it became Killing Eve.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It was turned down sort of by everybody, actually. All the channels in this country. I thought it was a goner and we thought it was a goner, the production company. And then they sent it to BBC America, who just very simply just went, and with all the complicated notes you get back and the reasons that people don't want it, or it might not fit on their channel, that kind of stuff. They just came back to us and just said, great! And like, that was it. They were like, we love it. And just said, like, go for it. So also, sometimes you think something is gone and and I really did with that. And then suddenly it just, obviously the producers were working hard behind the scenes to get it away. But then suddenly, something that I thought I would never return to becomes the biggest thing in my life.

• 7:01Elizabeth Day?

  One of the many, many things that I love about Killing Eve, and actually about Fleabag as well, is that you never explain a character's sexuality. It is there and it is what it is. And I think that that's particularly revolutionary when it comes to women and female characters. Is that something that you set out to do, or it just comes to you naturally?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I think it comes to me naturally. And then, once it's there, it's really important to me to protect that and not to wave a flag or have any kind of smugery around any choices around that sort of thing. Or allow it to be an event. I just want the characters to feel completely truthful and surprising. And they're not thinking about it. Villanelle's not thinking day in, day out about the fact that she's bisexual. She's just tagging who she wants. I think, I think that feels more natural. And also, for me, it's just trying to represent a relationship between those two particular women. But I do recognise in, in real life, that women do interact romantically, erotically, like professionally and sexually in ways that, every day, all the time, in ways that we just so rarely see on TV.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And I like that we play it as a non-event in the TV show, which then makes it a bigger thing, rather than, there's the bisexual character or, you know. And I suppose Eve's fascination with Villanelle as well was just not having to explain what that was, just letting us discover it with Eve, that she's discovering her sexuality and her obsession. It's not being pointed at.

• 8:30Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. Now, you've casually walked into my flat with a water bottle that I've just noticed.

• 8:38Elizabeth Day?

  Has the 007 logo on it and a little name sticker saying, see the water bridge above. Bon 25.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Okay, this sounds like I'm walking around with my 007 badge on. I'm not. This actual, physical water bottle is the best water bottle I have ever had.

• 8:53Elizabeth Day?

  Why?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Water bottles always like leak, I'm not, especially when you're giving them on production. You can ask Jenny Robbins, who's been my story producer on Fleabag and Killing Eve, who's also working on Bond. We both were given this water bottle and we both had a total freak out about how amazing it is. It not only just has a push down lid, but then it screws as well, like just on the little knobble bit at the top.

• 9:13Elizabeth Day?

  Got it, yes.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  But it never leaks, the screw bit is just really satisfying. It's got this little clip that you can put on your belt and it's just very sturdy. The colour's cool, it's like a light kind of grey. I cannot get over the actual design of the water bottle. And the annoying thing is that there's no branding on the actual bottle. Honestly Jenny and I have been looking, so we don't know where to get it. It's just one of these mysterious things. It's just the 007 water bottle is the best water bottle.

• 9:36Elizabeth Day?

  But is that just for cast and crew? You can't, I don't think you can buy that.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  No, you can't buy that, no, yeah.

• 9:41Elizabeth Day?

  It's not like the Love Island water bottle, which is my other favourite model.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yes, you can buy this, they should, I mean, that's the thing. They, actually, do you have that here?

• 9:48Elizabeth Day?

  No.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  We'll look at that afterwards. But yeah, of all the excitement and everything, suddenly we went into our office and there was just a water bottle there. And that's when we really lost our minds.

• 9:56Elizabeth Day?

  You're like, forget Daniel Craig, I've met this water bottle.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  The water bottle, it's just so satisfying, the shape of it and it just, it's just, I've never carried a water bottle from set around with me in real life, ever in my life, other than this one. And it looks like it's because it says 007 on it, but it's not, it's because it's an excellent, excellently shaped bottle.

• 10:15Elizabeth Day?

  I promise I'm gonna get on.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  You'll probably cut that bit out.

• 10:17Elizabeth Day?

  No, never. I promise I'm gonna get on to your failures in a minute, but I've got one more question, which is, it has been extraordinary, the overwhelming acclaim. I can't remember something in my lifetime that has got the acclaim that Fleabag specifically got for the second season. And I wonder what it's like to carry that weight, because you're now almost universally heralded as the voice of your generation. And people come up to you on the street and say, I am Fleabag and this meant so much to me. How do you cope with the weight of that? Maybe you try not to think about it and I've ruined that for you now.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  It doesn't feel like that heavy, actually, doesn't feel like weight. I think there was something about this season of Fleabag that I feel slightly disconnected from in a lovely way. It feels like it had another thing, like it took on another energy. We could slightly feel it on set. We were all just sort of like, what is this? There was something a bit mystical about the energy between all the actors and a director and just everybody there was just operating on such an emotional level. Everybody cared so much about the story that it felt like it was all of ours. And it really, really does still feel like that. Honestly, and it sounds really corny, but I feel like every single person on that set gave a little tiny part of their heart to that show. And I think you can really feel that. So when I was watching it and when the reviews were coming in and when

• 11:40Speaker 01

  people were talking about it, we were all talking like, oh my gosh, we all felt that there was something special. So it's actually a light feeling. You're just sort of like, oh, it was special what we all did.

• 11:50Elizabeth Day?

  And do you feel understood in a way? Because something that I keep coming back to on this podcast is the idea that when we are open about our vulnerabilities and what we perceive as our weirdness, actually, that's the biggest source of connection with other people. And did you feel that with Fleabag?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  I did massively with the play and the first series particularly, because that was such a specific type of humour and such a specific type of insight into a cynicism and a kind of brokenness that I'd felt in my twenties and that a lot of my friends did. And that feeling of not being so alone, because what was written felt it was raw. I could recognise it was raw and truthful to me and to our team and Vicky, you know, who directed the play. And so when that went out and people responded, that was like, oh, oh, we're all going through that. We're all going through that or have gone through that or can touch on that. But this series, I think, again, because it was love.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  The thing that felt so heartwarming about it was that how much people wanted to see a story about love. Because that's what I really felt like I wanted to see, a romantic love story, but also not about families like breaking up or breaking down anymore. It's like the attempt to connect, the attempt to love. Whereas in the last series, I think she couldn't love and she'd been so burnt by loving a friend and then fucking it up. And I think love was just so held, which is in this one, it was putting it out there. And I felt like that was really moving about the response is that people do want to love each other and they want to watch shows about love.

• 13:22Elizabeth Day?

  That's so beautiful. I do remember watching the final episode of Fleabag Ever. And being in floods of tears and sending you a video message of me crying, just like, I dare, you made me cry this much. The fox, the saying goodbye.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  It was amazing. I know. And there's actually takes of Andrew and I, when we first did that scene, we were both in floods. And also not in a way that we were like building up to the scene and it was none of that bullshit because it was so last minute. The road was so noisy, we didn't have any time to shoot that scene and I knew it was the most important scene. We all knew it was the most important scene and think we were like, oh god. And it was like, we were talking and suddenly a boss would be like, ah. And they'd be like, stop, go again. So we just sort of got there and I'm like, okay, sit down, and they just went, go. And so I hadn't felt like I was emotionally prepared for the scene anyway. I was like, oh damn, it's not going to go as well as I thought. And sat down and just did that scene with Andrew. We both just literally in floods. And then about two takes that we can't really use because we were just like, and also, I mean, any scene with Andrew, you just end up sort of crying in any way.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Because he's so truthful, even like the lighthearted ones, you're just like, oh my god, this man. Yeah, and that's honestly that sense of something other happening in it.

• 14:33Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I'd love there to be a DVD of Outtakes, a DVD like I'm from, sorry, nineteen ninety five.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  You specifically want a DVD.

• 14:39Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, just for me.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really funny though, stuff like that, because that was the hardest scene to edit because it felt there was potential for it to be really amazing. But if we lost the rhythm or the beat or the emotional journey for one second, then we'd lose the, I don't know, the power of it. And also Andrew came to set that. Day, determined to say, I love you too. Cause it was a, it was an option. I wasn't sure if the character said, I love you too at the end. And so it's just meant to be, I love you, it'll pass and then the character and then go. And I sort of wasn't sure if he should say, I love you too. And Andrew came in, he was like, I'm saying it. And he's basically like, I'm not giving you another option. Cause I have to say it. And you know, when an actor feels that strongly about something, they'll be right, especially for someone like Andrew, you know.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  He had huge input to the whole thing, but, and I think actually that's the clincher of the whole thing is that he says it. He was so right. And I have him to thank for that.

• 15:31Elizabeth Day?

  Was it a real fox? Did you have a real trained fox?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  We tried with a real fox. This was the funniest thing. There was like, two foxes turned up and they were called like Buttercup and Tinkawinker. Or something and they turned up and it was so funny because again, middle of the night, a really loud street. And everyone was like, we've got to be really careful with these foxes. We can't spook them. And what we'd realised is that like urban foxes are like that, cause they've been fucking living in London.

• 15:59Elizabeth Day?

  They've been on the streets.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  They've been on the streets for ages and they've got that swag. These two little foxes have been brought up in, you know, Henley, like by the river. And I saw him, so then they came out and they were like, what the fuck is this? There were two of them, tiny, and they were in there and you're not going to believe this. They, they lay down. And then the handler came up to me and she was like, so Tinker Bell doesn't like people and Buttercup doesn't like any kind of loud environment. So either way, we're fucked. You're like, okay. And they're like, the only way we can make this happen is if we play Coldplay very, very, uh, very loudly into the street. And if nobody else can move. So there's a really surreal moment when everyone had to step back, the whole crew had to step back, the director, everybody had to step back.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And then me sat alone, cause that's when the fox comes and then they open this thing and then they put on a little radio and Coldplay starts playing. And then they open the thing and this tiny terrified little fox just going, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck comes out? And then just skids around for ages. We did that for about 20 minutes. And then we went back to look at the footage and it was, I mean, it was just too funny. There was literally, it went everywhere except for in front of the camera. And so then we got the CGI fox in the end.

• 17:08Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my God, was it like Coldplay Fix You or something?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  It was, God, I wish I could remember what it was. I think it might have been Fix You. And it was comedy. Like they just love Coldplay and it calms them down. But obviously, I mean, it must have been a terrifying experience for those foxes.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  But they didn't really have the cool swag that we needed.

• 17:24Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my gosh. Okay, so failure to find a fox that would walk in front of you is not actually one of your three failures. And these are failures that you have very kindly chosen from your last year, because I do think that that's a really interesting thing to examine. Because for so many people listening to this podcast right now, you are the epitome of success and fame and brilliance. And I think it's really important that everyone realises that there is a journey to get there. And if you're not there right now, that's fine, because sometimes there are weird things that happen and you learn from them. So the first one is really interesting. It's about how you were actually in New York when Fleabag season two aired over here. And you felt disconnected from the people

• 18:09Elizabeth Day?

  that you most loved. So tell us about that.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, um, so the show was coming out. And also, like I said before, you're working so hard and then you you finish the job and then it's done. Well, for me, it was done. The show was ready to go out and then it was just going to go out. Whereas for everybody else, it begins when the show goes out. And so we'd finished editing, it was all in the can, then went to New York to do the play, which was also an amazing experience. But then the show came out and I'd underestimated, as we all had, what impact the show was going to have and that people were gonna wanna talk about it so much and like it so much. And I was essentially just so far away from everybody and on a different time zone and doing the play, but working really hard. I was like writing during the day and doing the play during the night. It wasn't like a kind of like New York baby for my thing. It was more like just work at work. And I hadn't really connected with

• 18:56Speaker 01

  my family and my friends, my close friends and family, but particularly my family when it went out. So then they had this kind of strange explosion of this show happening that had so much to do with me and the work that I'd been doing. And Izzo, my sister who'd written all the music for it, she was connected to it professionally as well. So she had a bit more ownership over it. But because it's about family and everything, this show, I think there was suddenly this really intense, my family's have experienced a kind of intense focus from people in their lives and people asking about the show and asking about me. And I think one of my regrets is that I wish I'd seen that coming so that we could have just been. A bit like this might be weird. You'd never want to overestimate the success of something you've done. So you don't wanna say, this is gonna be huge, guys. So, uh, so let's hold hands and that.

• 19:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  And I honestly didn't have that feeling either. It was just like, done this and off we go. And also it changed my family's lives a tiny bit. When Fleabag one first came out, because suddenly there was a Waller Bridge profile and.

• 19:52Elizabeth Day?

  And it's a distinctive surname.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  It's distinctive surname and everyone weathered that really brilliantly. And also people assume that that it's based on my family and all that kind of stuff. Because it's about a family, which also is a whole other conversation, because that's about, you know, how women can't write.

• 20:05Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, don't worry, we'll get on to that.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Women can make things up to you. Not all, you know, our diaries.

• 20:12Elizabeth Day?

  Also because the show is called Fleabag, which is your family nickname.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:16Elizabeth Day?

  So there's also this sense that the people who love you and know you are watching you on screen, but you physically, Phoebe, are thousands of miles away. So they can't see you as the real person. They see you on screen. And that must have been so weird. And by the way, no one, I don't think, could have anticipated the enormity of what was about to happen, because it has been astonishing, deservedly so. But I don't think you should beat yourself up about that, because you couldn't have known.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 20:45Elizabeth Day?

  And you would have sounded like the worst kind of hybrid of Mariah Carey.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  And?

• 20:51Elizabeth Day?

  Donald Trump.

• 20:53Elizabeth Day?

  Guys, I'm a huge deal. And, um, but was that it? Was there a slight disconnect between your family seeing you on screen but not seeing you in person?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yes, I think all this buzz was sort of happening back in London and I was kind of in this apartment in New York. And not around anyone who'd made the show or not around my family, all that kind of stuff. And I think they were actually taking the brunt of the profile of the show suddenly, uh, getting bigger. Also, I wasn't there, so they were being asked all the questions about the show and they had no answers. Um, the time difference and everything just made it weird. Basically, there was just a communication breakdown with my family. Nothing really happened. But I just suddenly felt like I could have been braver with.

• 21:27Elizabeth Day?

  I know what you're saying, because I think women specifically, just to generalize horribly of agenda, I'm, I'm not all women. But some women struggle with claiming their own power. So we struggle with the idea that we can say, I think what I've done is a really good piece of work and it might garner some acclaim. And I want you to be prepared for that, because it seems self-aggrandizing. And we don't like that, because we've been raised a certain way to like. Be modest and self-deprecating and always to slightly undermine ourselves. And maybe it was that that you were.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely, definitely some of that.

• 22:05Elizabeth Day?

  And you don't tempt fate.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Don't tempt fate, exactly. But also, I think when you're writing fiction and you're making art. Just trying to train myself to use that word.

• 22:15Elizabeth Day?

  And even when you used it, you had to giggle.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:18Elizabeth Day?

  But you've made art.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  But I feel like, I feel like the difference in my head is now I'm, that's what I'm trying to do. And so I feel like that's instead of just like, I'm writing a sitcom. It's like, no, I think the ambition must always be to write something with artistic integrity. And so I'm trying to train myself to use the word, although whenever anyone else uses that word, I'm like. Um, but yeah, when you're trying to make something artistic.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  You're trying to make something artistic. I certainly felt like a lot of what was personal to me had gone into that show. So I'd sort of like emotionally vomited. So much of my insides and my life and my relationships in a kind of abstract way into that show. And it's incredibly personal for me. So I had been fortifying myself in the process of making it as well. Like, I was aware that what I was doing was. Inviting people to see me in a very personal way. I was inviting people to watch this character and relate to her. Whether they do or not, but that's the beckoning from her. But that's something I've controlled and I've created. And then so the people closest to me, like my family, they didn't necessarily invite that. And there's so much over familiarity that comes with that.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  And so I think people are assuming that Iza is like Claire or is Claire. And that people would ask her, are you Claire? And she'd have to explain a million times, no, I'm not. And they're like, oh, did you shit in the sink was a lot. Was what she got a lot of the time in the first series. And also people just assuming that so much of it is true. And so that actually, that bleeds into my family's life when the show's going out. Cause then they're, they weirdly are having to defend our family.

• 23:48Elizabeth Day?

  And to defend their own individuality, I guess. Yes, yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  And I think I'd underestimated that because what I know I'm writing is it's really personal to me. And of course, I'm drawing on on real life experiences and things and things that echo in real life through the things do echo through the show, but you know, I write about my biggest fears. I write about losing my best friend or losing my mum or not communicating with my dad or not getting on with his new partner. And all those things are my worst fears, but actually, you know, my mum's alive and well. My best friend is alive and well, and we have an unbelievable relationship. My my relationship with both my siblings is incredible. I get on really well with my stepmother and with my dad, but it's the what if.

• 24:26Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  And I think what people see when they watch it is the, um, oh, that must be it. And I just wish I'd had the foresight to sit my family down and gone, what I've done is really personal. It's not about you guys. There's a few degree of separation in other people's minds because it's so personal about family. And because there are strange links, like I did have an ex-boyfriend with a motorbike or like my stepmother is actually an artist. And all those sort of things that I just wish I'd had more responsibility and said to them, just managed to fortify them a bit more.

• 24:56Elizabeth Day?

  I think that is so beautifully expressed, what you've just done there, because I think, again, that this is something that is very gendered in art creation. Is that the most pretentious sentence I've ever uttered possibly?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  No, this is what we're talking about. No, it's not. It's that it's very factual, the creation of art.

• 25:14Elizabeth Day?

  I, as a female novelist, have often felt that when women write about families, it is always assumed that it is their family and that they don't have the intellectual imagination to make that cognitive leap into real fiction. Whereas when Jonathan Franzen does it, and don't get me wrong, I love Jonathan Franzen, but when he writes a family novel like The Corrections, it's seen as the state of the nation.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I just love how you speak.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  See, when we were talking about this briefly before, I mean, when you said that, it was like, that's exactly the point. And actually, probably that's why I assumed that it wouldn't be seen like that. And people wouldn't assume that of my family. And maybe it is a gendered thing, maybe they do. Like I say, it's a strange thing because nothing actually happened. It was just this underlying sense of, oh gosh, I wish I'd taken better care. Because they're actually fielding things that I was completely unaware of. Like people coming up to my siblings and my parents all the time being like, is this true? What's this about? Is this, you know, is this you guys? And I just really felt for them.

• 26:15Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think that that would have happened, were you a man?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  I don't know. I absolutely, I really, really don't know. There's just no way of knowing. It might be to do with the fact that I'm a woman, but also, but it also might not be. I feel like in terms of how the show has that kind of autobiographical assumption is something that I'm asked about a lot. And I'm also asked if I think that happens a lot because I'm a woman.

• 26:38Elizabeth Day?

  Sorry, it's a really boring question.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  No, but it's not, because it's a really interesting question. And it's, you know, it's one I wanted to talk about with you as well, because either it's the show feels so raw and real. That that's why people think it's real. Or it's because people assume that there's a limit to a woman's imagination. I think I'd always rather believe the former.

• 26:55Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  You have a suspicion, but I don't know.

• 26:58Elizabeth Day?

  To be fair, I think that the former is true of you because Fleabag and Killing Eve, as that critic from Rolling Stone so brilliantly put it, like they defy all conventional genre, not only in terms of the TV that you're writing, but the characters that you're writing and the way that they are. But I think what's interesting about that is that you don't define yourself in a particularly female or a particularly male way, I don't think, as a writer.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  No, not at all. I don't think of myself in that way at all. I'm aware of it.

• 27:29Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Because of where I'm positioned in the industry, but I know that my work will never pander to that. In fact, the opposite. And I think that's part of the fun, it's part of the game. Because once you know what box you're gonna, and people do, I understand why people want to put people in boxes, because it's, that's how we understand people and it's how we can immediately feel like we know who they are and what's safe about them.

• 28:00Elizabeth Day?

  It's interesting what you were saying about how there are certain things that come from your insides, as it were, but you warp them to an nth degree. So actually, it feels like a lot of the characters in Fleabag are aspects of you, rather than based on real people. And I have had the great good fortune of meeting and getting to know your sister, and she is nothing like Claire. But the bit that I think a lot of people related to and thought was so beautiful was the bit where Claire's saying that she would run through an airport for Fleabag. Because it's this pean, actually what you're doing there is this pean to love and to family connection.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and actually, summing up the whole feeling that you have, which is, whatever happens, you're the person that I will always love you to a degree that no one else will ever understand. And actually, just forgetting to say that, actually remembering to say that is a big part of families and siblinghood, I think, because we take for granted that you're there for each other if you're lucky enough to have family that is there for you, and that you sometimes just need to say it in the power of that. But then again, I'm writing that, and it just came out like, nah, I didn't, but I'm writing that episode, and I'm a very, very last minute writer, in like, in a kind of panic, last minute way. So I'm writing all that stuff, and I'm not feeling like the fact that that line had such

• 29:18Speaker 01

  an impact, and then it makes me go back and look at it again and go, oh my god, yes, of course, that's a big moment. But I wasn't there writing going, and then Claire says, "I love you," in her own words to Fleabag. Like, it doesn't feel as structurally sort of like contrived as that, but then, and I love that, and love seeing that people were saying that they were texting their sisters that and stuff afterwards. But there's so much that, I mean, Izzo and I, when we were watching the episodes together, and Izzo wrote the music for the show, and so there's a lot of her insides in this show as well.

• 29:43Elizabeth Day?

  The music is utterly fantastic.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  It's just insane. And again... I get a lot of the heat around the success of the show, of course I do, because you know, I'm writing and I'm in it. But the process of there being an episode and it's not working and it's not working and everyone knows it's not working. And I've got this genius editor, Gary Dolan, I've got Harry and Jenny Robbins, story producer and Harry Brabham, the director. And we're all in the room, we can't make it work, we can't make it work, we don't know what's happening. There were so many dark moments in the edit, we're like, it's not working. And then Izzo will deliver some music and we'll put the music over these two scenes and suddenly it will make sense. And that happened so many times with this show. And Izzo, you know, I knew that I wanted something really massive and choral and it to feel epic because

• 30:24Speaker 01

  it's a small story, it's about a couple of people in the world, but to them, it's epic. And I love that feeling of making something feel big for the characters, even though we're acknowledging that the characters are just a bunch of middle class people in London somewhere, but for them, they're in their own Greek tragedy. And so when we first, I was talking to Izzo about it and said, can you write some music? And then like big choral stuff. References I was giving her were like an orchestra of like a hundred and twenty and she has the budget for like six people. So I was like, can it be like that? And she's like, mm hmm, mm hmm. And then she went away and she did it and she was using these six incredible singers. But then when she brought the music back, and this was an amazing thing and ties into the whole, there's something other about it.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  She brought the music back and we were putting it over the first episode and we were thinking, something's not working, something's not working. It's just not clicking. So we put that in the bin, which is actually a storage place on our editor's computer rather than an actual bin. He puts it in like Izzo's bin. And then she started writing more music for the first episode. And then as we got later down the series and we were editing it and this scene wasn't working and it was episode four and five, things weren't working. And Gary just took out what Izzo had written for the first episode and put it on the final episodes and it worked. Her compositions fit perfectly to the cut that he'd done before any work had been done either to her composition or his edit. And it was this really spooky moment of she'd written the end at the beginning and she then she didn't need to write anymore because she'd already written the entire show, but just backwards.

• 31:54Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  And then we realised that so it was already there and the Age of the singers gets older through the series and they're actually using young boys at the beginning and then adult singers by the end. And then we weirdly, it's only afterwards we realised that that's, it's a show of, you know, it's about maturing, it's a coming of age story. And she did that with the music, which was, which is amazing. But yeah, but there's like loads of dynamics between me and Izzo in it. And actually, there was one night when we were talking about the music and we were back, we lived together and we were staying up late. And I mean, Sean Clifford's performance is so amazing and we just love watching it so much. But then we did have to watch through one episode together and we were just pissing each other going, that's us, that's us, that's us, that's us, that's us.

• 32:35Elizabeth Day?

  Am I right in thinking, so the episode where Claire gets a terrible haircut, didn't that happen to you?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  You remember?

• 32:42Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. And I remember you, didn't you call your, your mum and Izzo and Izzo was like, it's really, this is really bad. It's really, like she was talking to your mum and being like, we really need to take this very seriously because it is a massive issue. Tell us what happened.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  I can't believe you remember. I got a haircut before the first series of Fleabag. And it ends up becoming like the Fleabag haircut.

• 33:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, because in Crashing, which by the way, if you haven't watched Crashing, you must watch Crashing. The second episode of Crashing is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. But you had really long hair, I've just remembered.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  That was hair extensions.

• 33:18Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, okay.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Because I'd done, but I'd made it.

• 33:20Elizabeth Day?

  I'm very observant.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  You are, but I'd made the pilot Fleabag just before I made Crashing. And so I also had to make the pilot Fleabag, then make Crashing and then go back through the rest of the series. So I wanted to have a different look between the two shows. And I also just wanted to have locks for a time in my life. Although it's basically like carrying around a pony on your head. Like you have to like.

• 33:37Elizabeth Day?

  And you can't run your hands through it, can you?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  No, it's really, really itchy and heavy. And, um, but then when, when someone does it all nice for you, then it's your Beyonce. If you probably noticed in Crashing, that's the person that came to mind when you saw my, my look. But yeah, I, so then I got a new haircut for Fleabag and I thought it was too short. And also I think I was just having my period and I was just like in the middle and that's the stress of the show about to start filming and I hadn't finished the script and all that kind of stuff. And then.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  I got a haircut on top of everything else.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  And I was like, I remember being in like floods, like absolute floods of tears. And I called Izzo and I was like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, literally like the phone call thing. I was like, my fucking life is over and I'm about to go do this show and I'm gonna show. And she was so amazing. She just went and she was like, she took me so seriously. And I'll never forget it. This is one of those airport moments because she took me so seriously. She was like, okay, listen, where are you? And I was like, I'm at my flat. I'm never leaving my flat again. It's so short. And then she was like, I'm coming over and she came over because of my bad haircut. And she's in the doorbell ring. She's there. And then she looks at me and she was like, oh darling. I was like, don't say it. It looks nice. And she's like, it does. And it's just one of those moments. And then she sat with me and we worked it out and we kind of.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  We're just one of those moments of sisterly loyalty and love that I've never forgotten. And it's just so funny because then the next day I'm like, totally fine.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  And then I see, and I see friends. They're like, you got your haircut? I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure. It's like the madness, but it does show, I think that it shows the stakes around hair and stuff. So I think that's where the idea came from for Hair is Everything because the stakes around that stuff are stupid high.

• 35:18Elizabeth Day?

  They are.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  And it's like, why do we care? Why do we care that much? And it just feels like it's so deep in us that, you know, all that image stuff and everything. But, but it is also just great material.

• 35:30Elizabeth Day?

  Your second failure is, I think, something that people will find surprising if they only know you through the incredibly strong and complicated characters that you create, which is your tendency to people please in specific instances related to work. So tell us about that.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like it's the part of myself that drives me most crazy. And we've talked about it a lot. And actually, I don't know, I feel like I've spoken to a lot of women about it. But just what would happen if I'm not just the nicest person in the room all the time, which seems like cataclysmic. And I know that's insane. Or maybe it's not actually. But the characters, you know, I've said in another interview that I write characters that don't care about that because I'm teaching myself how to be one. And it's not really not giving, like not caring what you think. It's not caring about the consequences of speaking their mind or doing the thing that they believe is the right thing, or just following their own instinct. If that's met with people disagreeing with them, that

• 36:32Speaker 01

  they don't mind. And when it comes to my actual on the ground work, like the actual writing and making of a thing, I can fight and fight and fight for something because it's very specific. I'm fighting for the art, shall we say. But it's all the politics in between it. I still feel completely handcuffed by a politeness. And not that politeness isn't a good thing, but I think it can be a yoke around your neck when it's the thing that gets in between you and saying what you really want to say. I don't ever want to be a genuine nightmare to people. And I don't think I would ever be. But I think knowing the difference between not caring about people saying that you're difficult when you know you haven't been. Actually, during Killing Eve, I actually had a sort

• 37:16Speaker 01

  of physical reaction to the pressure that I was under. I was sort of shaking and I basically almost passed out in one of the offices one day and had to get picked up and go to a doctor.

• 37:27Elizabeth Day?

  It sounds to me as if the Killing Eve thing, you were also very grateful that BBC America was taking this chance and other people had rejected it. And suddenly you're going from Fleabag, which was very much a one woman thing, to something where you're heading up a writer's room and there are lots of different opinions all at once. And that must have been incredibly stressful. Do you think you've got better at it because of that salutary experience where what you were doing in your mind had such a massive knock on effect to your physical self?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I do, I felt like I hit the edges of something during Killing Eve. And also because I was filming Star Wars at the same time, and you feel so lucky, so you do push yourself. I also probably should have said, I need to take a week because I can't think straight because I'm so tired. But unless you really demand that, no one's really gonna say that for you. Because everyone's just like, it'll be fine, get on with it. And even if they did, which they did, you know, a little bit, I'd say, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Because the tanker's moving forward. So I felt like you just had to, I had to keep going. I got better on it with Fleabag, I think, but then I said, I was still having like, I was still so tired. I was still having like shakes and stuff. The final take of that, I was so, so, so tired.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  I do work myself to the ground as well, and I'm really, really hard on myself when I'm doing it. And I feel like that's because I care so, so much about getting it right and getting it really, really good. But I also think sometimes you need to give yourself permission to stop. And I didn't stop because I didn't want to let people down.

• 38:55Elizabeth Day?

  Got it. But you also need to give yourself permission to stop because being creative can't come when you're frazzled and adrenalized and not thinking straight. You need to have a period of rest.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Um, although sometimes I get scared that my most creative stuff comes when I'm that frazzled.

• 39:13Elizabeth Day?

  That's so interesting, really.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  But I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it's true, but I do feel I'm so self-critical when I'm writing. So if I'm like, woke up at ten, cup of coffee, went for a jog, sat down, I'll write three sentences and I'll be like, this is a part of shit. Whereas if my deadline was two days ago and I've got a whole load of ideas that I've already chucked out and then I have to do something really quickly, I can't judge it so much, then I'll send that off easier. It's both a strange process because I get so much energy from it and yet I have no structure to my creative process at all.

• 39:47Elizabeth Day?

  Do you still write in bed?

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of the time, particularly with Fleabag Two, I was rewriting on the set so much. And that, I mean, it's so crazy for the actors, because I was so lucky to have those actors who already knew their characters so well and have such great instincts. Like Brett Gelman, I wrote his final speech in episode six in the car between the unit base and the set. I just was like, I'm really sorry, I've just got to rewrite it, because it doesn't, weirdly, it felt more like the original speech felt more like a Fleabag speech than a Martin speech. So I quickly rewrote it in the car and he had loads of input into it and it was brilliant, but when I say I'm last minute, I mean, it did get to extremes with that. But then sometimes the good stuff does just come out there and I think I need to work out. So the next process I'm gonna go through is not have any deadlines, not take any other

• 40:32Speaker 01

  jobs on, I'm gonna write on spec now and see if I actually get anything written, or if I need a deadline.

• 40:37Elizabeth Day?

  That's exciting.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Elizabeth Day?

  How do you cope now with knowing when you need help? I mean, what's your relationship like with anxiety and nervous exhaustion and handling that? And do you have therapy? Do you have strategies that are going for a run? What, how do you cope?

• 40:57Speaker 01

  I don't really like taking things. I don't go to therapy. I have Jenny Robbins. I think is my, I think is my way out of the madness, who was a story producer on Killing Eve, who was brought on by the producers and it's, I mean, such a brilliant move because you know, there was so much to do and we were already a team of sort of six or seven people that the scripts had to go through. So I'd write something and then I'd be speaking to like four or five people. But they all had these other jobs as well, so they were like, we're gonna bring one more person on. And I was like, you're not bringing another person on, I cannot deal with one more person. And they were like, no, no, no. I remember Sally, who's the exec on it, just saying like, just speak to Jenny. She's a miracle worker. So I got on the phone

• 41:41Speaker 01

  and it was, honestly, it was love at first voice. I've never experienced it before in my life. If I called her up and I was just like, I've got to speak to this person who's gonna come on and be like another voice in the room. And from that moment on, in ten minutes on the phone, she'd already sorted out two of the major plot problems. And this is when we were introducing each other to each other. And she came on board and she has got such a rigorous. Story mind and also such a brilliant sense of humour and that is always the way out. And, you know, I had the same thing with Vicky, who's now writing her own show HBO. You know, with Jenny as well, Jenny's story producing on that as well. And Jenny's just become the heart of Dry Right and all the work that we do. Because the more stressful things get, the more Jenny laughs. And not really at a situation, but with it. And I think actually that's so rare.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  You know, there was one brilliant producer, a said gentle called Henrietta Colvin, and she just would every now and again just text me and say, it's only telly. It's only telly, it's only telly. And Jenny has that. So really, it's calling Jenny.

• 42:37Elizabeth Day?

  It's calling Jenny, it's laughter and keeping things in perspective.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely.

• 42:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Completely. And knowing that it's in you. There's something quite comforting about knowing that there is a deadline and it will happen. This thing is gonna happen and you've just got to keep pouring whatever you can into it. And just know that you've got a good team around you. And I always need my like, my partner in crime that I can bounce things off. And actually, when Vicky's career as a writer started taking off, all the euphoria of that around both of us. It meant that neither of us could be there for each other, to be each other's sounding board. As much because we were both working on our own independent things. And we honestly never thought we'd ever find anybody that could do what we would do for each other. And we're still in each other's processes, but it's people like Jenny that just, people just don't know about Jennies. And I suppose there's only really one Jenny.

• 43:24Elizabeth Day?

  They do know.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  They do now, they know about Jenny. And also whenever anyone else meets Jenny, they're always like, can I have Jenny?

• 43:32Elizabeth Day?

  I love, I love Jenny because I've never met her, but she said some nice things about some interviews that I've written. So I'm like massively pro her.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  She loves you, yeah. But she, um, yeah, she's, she's just got the clearest mind and such a strong instinct. And really keeps everything grounded and moving while keeping it really fun. And that's the most important thing. God, honestly, that's the most important thing, is keeping it fun.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Greetings, it's Mel Gedroich here, host of Where There's a Will Is Awake, the podcast that laughs in the face of death. Yes, that's right, celebrities plan every detail of their dream demise, from the funeral playlist to the buffet at the wake. And our recent live funeral shows in an actual church delivered plenty of deliciously dark surprises. So if you've ever wondered what Mark Watson's final meal would be, or how Phil Wang would like to be remembered, you're in luck. Watch and listen to Mark Watson's funeral now, exclusively on Amazon Music. And don't miss Phil Wang's cracker of a funeral, coming on the 12th of November. See you on the other side.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  Two Girls, One Ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. And check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 45:06Elizabeth Day?

  I said that Fleabag was universally acclaimed, and it absolutely was, because the one time anyone tried to say one thing against it, which is that it was a bit middle class, there was just this outpouring on social media saying, how dare you, how dare you say that about Fleabag. But I'd really like to address that, the question of privilege. What is your reaction when people say, oh, you're just so privileged?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  I understand that it comes from a point of view of opportunity. It feels like lack of opportunity is the thing that drives that. And people feel like I would never have had the opportunity to make my Fleabag if I hadn't been in the position that Phoebe Waller-Bridgerton's in, which is absolutely probably true, that loads of people don't. And I think if that's where it comes from, then I'm really sympathetic to that feeling. But when it's about the actual work and about the actual words on the page and the writing and stuff, and it's a criticism of that, then I take umbrage because that's about a craft and a story that's being told. And to criticize a story on the basis of where the author had come from, or how privileged the author is, undermines the story.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I've never pretended that I'm not from a privileged position. I really know that I am. I mean, my God. I've had, not only from the point of view that, you know, I got to go to nice schools and live in London, but I've also had the love and support of my family. I mean, I was perfectly set up to have success in the world. But then I also then, from that point, had to really, really work for it. And it's not like my privilege created Fleabag. I created Fleabag, but from a point of place in my life where I was able to sit and write and I was able to take the time. I was around people who could support that. And the work itself is not a product of that, I think. It's a product of whoever I, and I like to think that whatever life I'd lived,

• 47:02Speaker 01

  wherever I'd been born or brought up, I would still have written if I'd been given the encouragement. And actually, that's the thing that I care about, is encouraging people to do it. I suppose some of the criticism is that it was just for posh girls, right? That it was just, it's just for posh girls. And what I loved is that people were sending me photos of tweets, friends of mine saying, like, there was one guy who was like, I'm a disabled forty two year old man living in Hull and I am Fleabag. And it was like, yes, mate! Because that's, that's always what I'm striving for, is to so that people feel like it's a human story, blah, blah, blah. But it was told through the prism of a very middle class family. And I was very aware of that when I was writing it. I was using them to tell a story that was emotional.

• 47:43Elizabeth Day?

  And I think you were also using them to tell stories that were by their nature universal and sometimes given a lack of attention. And one of the things I'd love to talk to you about is the miscarriage scene.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, yeah.

• 48:00Elizabeth Day?

  That opens the first episode of season two of Fleabag. And the reason I felt particularly personally connected to it is because I had a phone call from you a few months before the screening saying,

• 48:15Elizabeth Day?

  I'm really sorry if I've done this, but I think I've taken a story of your miscarriage and put it in Fleabag. And the story of my miscarriage is that I started miscarrying at three months in a restaurant toilet, although it was over brunch and not over dinner. And I was actually incredibly honoured and so happy that you were taking that and using it and giving it a platform that was necessary. And when I watched that scene, and it was this screening at the BFI, and I felt really emotional, but in all of the best ways, because that is a story that doesn't get told enough.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:55Elizabeth Day?

  And I want to thank you for doing it.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Well, it wouldn't be there if you hadn't told me that story. I know, but getting emotional. It wouldn't be there if you hadn't told me that story. And also, I felt when it came out in the writing process and then suddenly realising, because, you know, we absorb so much stuff as a writer, you know. And when you told me that story, I think it was a couple of years previously, it had had such an impact on me because of what you'd done afterwards, which was, sit back down.

• 49:25Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  And the fact that you'd gone, oh, this is, I don't want my miscarriage to inconvenience somebody else.

• 49:31Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, talk about people pleasing.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's, in fact, that is the purest form of it I'd ever heard, and it was so female as well. A miscarriage, a story of a miscarriage getting in the way of somebody else's brunch, your miscarriage getting in someone else's brunch or meeting. I absorbed that story on like a cellular level, I think, and was so moved by the way you told it. And then when we were writing, you know, when I was with the Fleabag people and just talking about all these ideas, and I remember thinking about that story and thinking, what if this happens, and then realising that it had, and it was you, and then calling you and feeling like I was taking something from you, I was scared that it was, I was taking something from your life and calling you and saying, it's come out of this story, and it was you, it's totally you, it's totally been inspired by you, and oh my god, and

• 50:14Speaker 01

  I never forget you just saying, brilliant, take it, tell the story, you know. And that kind of generosity of spirit there as well, and it not being, people being so obsessively private about their own experiences. Which I understand why, but I am as well, everybody is, but the bravery you have and not only by doing this podcast, but in everything that you write and every column that you write and and in your book. And when you said that the moment you started talking honestly, people started responding in a louder, hungrier way for your work. And so just the fact that you'd said, yes, please, please, please use it. And it made me feel even more empowered by it. So I think I felt a little bit of shame and guilt when I realised that it was your story. And so when I phoned you, it was just like, like, oh, God, I'm sorry. And you're like, why are you apologising?

• 50:59Elizabeth Day?

  It was so lovely of you even to call me. And I just sort of think your role is as this sort of truth teller through your stories. And I, and so much of what you did specifically in the second series of Fleabag was about a woman's reclamation of the shit they have to go through.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes. And what we don't see, you know, what we don't see. And I just want to just show it. Oh, you know, God, it gives me so much energy writing that stuff. Like, you know, when you've got something truthful and it's unusual that you see. And again, it's that thing of not waving a flag around it. Because I honestly think watching people fight is the most compelling thing in the world. And we watched Claire fight that miscarriage every single second. And Sean's performance is so extraordinary because it's at the same time, really funny as well as being really heartbreaking in that moment that she does it. But you see the fight, you see the struggle, like, this will not take over my evening. Yeah. It's the first point. This will not take over. This will not ruin their evening. This is going to be something that I'm going to package and deal with later. And then it's Fleabag saying, no, we've got to go now, now, now, now, now.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  And having someone force her to, and then she's like, okay, fine. And she knows she's not going to. In that moment, she sits down, she's, because then her life will become defined, or that evening will become defined by her and her inverted commas, failure or drama around that night. And knowing that that was actually where the strength of those characters lay in the pain that they have, and the energy that they put into fighting it.

• 52:25Elizabeth Day?

  It's incredible scene. Feel free to use anything I've ever told you. If you're going to do something that brilliant with it. I mean, what a scene. I'm just aware that I could talk to you for days on end. And we haven't got on to your third failure, but luckily it's less profound. So your third failure is your failure to tidy your room.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I said that kind of as a joke when we first talking about it, but really it goes into like a deeper, it's like a much deeper thing, which is I'm quite disorganised. Um, and I think that is just a daily failure, like on terms of like, there's all the profound failures that we've been talking about, but like you're, I mean, look at this place, this is so neat.

• 53:02Elizabeth Day?

  I tidied up before you came.

• 53:05Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, there was a stack of books there that I removed, but I.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  I want to know how much people tidy up before people come around, because I'm always, everything else in in my house is tidy. So like, the downstairs is tidy, the bathroom's tidy. But my room is just, I don't know what it is. I'll tidy it all time and then it just instantly gets really messy again. And I can't think while I've got this like really messy room, but at the same time, I always have a messy room. So it's just this like vicious cycle. And I know about the whole.

• 53:32Elizabeth Day?

  Marie Kondo.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Marie Kondo thing.

• 53:34Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  And I'm scared of that book.

• 53:36Elizabeth Day?

  Me too.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Because I have a feeling it might change my life, but I also know I'm going to fail at that book instantly.

• 53:41Elizabeth Day?

  Basically, the equivalent of your bedroom is my sock drawer. So my sock drawer is just where all the chaos goes.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  You don't sit in there and write, do you?

• 53:52Elizabeth Day?

  No. Yeah. And I just like, even the idea of going through each of my socks being like, does this sock spark joy? I'm like, I just can't. I can't.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  But yeah, tidying my room, just getting it together. But also I had left, you know, I'd moved into this house and I'm like renting a house. That had loads of stuff in it when I got there. So it wasn't actually room for my stuff to go in there because it's all been done really nicely. And it's kind of basically somebody else's house that we're living in. Me and my sister. And so I do have a whole house worth of stuff in my bedroom.

• 54:20Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, that, yeah. And also your untidiness, I mean, is it gross? Like, do you have mouldy plates of food?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  No, oh god, no, it's not dirty.

• 54:28Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  It's not dirty. It's just, I'm really good at like piles.

• 54:32Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  So there'll be like neat piles, but all the way around my room. So I've got inexplicable piles of clothes, really neatly folded and everything, but like six of them at the end of my bed.

• 54:42Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Because there isn't any room in the cupboard at the moment.

• 54:44Elizabeth Day?

  Also, you must get sent loads of free stuff.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, not loads. And actually have basically ended up saying, I don't want any because I don't know where it goes. But also, it's just like when the workload is just so big. I feel like I'm wasting time if I'm tidying my room when I should be writing three scenes. I mean, it sounds so teenage. I'm glad you asked if it was gross because it's not gross.

• 55:03Elizabeth Day?

  Just like to make that clear.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Because I can't deal with gross.

• 55:06Elizabeth Day?

  It's because you're travelling so much as well.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:09Elizabeth Day?

  The packing and unpacking and.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's all that and not being able to throw stuff out. Although I threw three bags of clothes at a charity shop the other day. But I, I got three massive bin bags.

• 55:21Elizabeth Day?

  What is the address of that charity shop? Because people will be rushing that. No, don't get me.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Actually, they're brilliant. They're called I Collects. They just come and pick it up.

• 55:28Elizabeth Day?

  They are brilliant and I have used a similar service. They're really good.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  But that was like three or four in this, but I feel like there's been no dent in my wardrobe. I don't know. I think, you know, when I just wanna start all over again, there's a brilliant, have you seen that play, The Encounter? Simon McBurney's played The Encounter and he, he goes to um, Amazonian tribe, I think it's Amazonian tribe, that no one has ever heard about, but they have this one ritual, which is every single year, everybody in the tribe has to burn everything they own. And you just start again. So everyone starts again every year. Oh my god, I'd love that.

• 55:57Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I had a similar thing. I mean, not quite that drastic, but when I got divorced and I moved out of our shared home and I did that in a way that I was like, I just wasn't thinking straight and I also didn't want to take anything that wasn't just mine. And I ended up with like two cases of stuff and that was it. And it was really untethering, but it was because of that extremely liberating. And I realised that I didn't need that much. And actually moving into this flat that we're talking in now was a really good discipline for me because it's so small. Having said that, I do have a storage unit that I pay ridiculous amounts for. Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 56:36Elizabeth Day?

  Also.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Also so organised to get a storage unit.

• 56:39Elizabeth Day?

  Sometimes I'm like, you know what, I pay for storage. I should just live in the storage unit.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Probably got some really lovely things in there.

• 56:47Elizabeth Day?

  Um, Phoebe, the last time you came on this podcast, you told me an anecdote about Meryl Streep and apple crumble that went viral and people loved it. And if you haven't heard it, do go back and listen to the first ever episode in season one. Have you seen Meryl Streep since?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 57:03Elizabeth Day?

  Meza.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  I can't wait. I hope one day I will. I hope one day. No, I haven't.

• 57:09Elizabeth Day?

  Have you eaten apple crumble since?

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:12Elizabeth Day?

  And who is the most exciting famous person you've met in the last twelve months?

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Well, Hillary Clinton came to see Fleabag. That was pretty cool. I mean, the thing in New York is that all, like, famous people go to theatre in New York. They just go in a way that I don't think they do anywhere else in the world. So, so we'd always get a little list after Fleabag of the people who were coming in. I mean, Nicole Kidman came to see Fleabag and then she left me a note afterwards saying, I'm sorry, I couldn't hang around, had to go back to the kids. And that was a massive highlight. So I didn't actually meet Nicole. But the funny thing was is that they weren't, no one's supposed to tell me who's in the show in the audience before the show starts, because in case I get nervous, that happens at the beginning of the run. Towards the end of the run, I need to know to like, get me to show off a bit, to get the adrenaline up. It's like the end of the run. But so I was doing my warm up and then suddenly there was this like guy in the room.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And I was sort of like, oh, I'm doing my warm up, what's going on? He was like, I'm just, I'm just sweeping the seats for Keith and Nicole. And I was like, I'm sorry, you're sweeping the seats for like bombs? I was like, no one should bomb under Nicole, come on. But yeah, so their, their security had come in to just check the theatre. And that's how I knew that they were in. And it was the night that I did give it a little bit, a little bit extra.

• 58:25Elizabeth Day?

  A little bit more pizzazz.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  I did, I totally did.

• 58:28Elizabeth Day?

  I then interviewed Nicole Kidman for the second time over the phone and I'm obsessed with her. I think she's an amazing woman. And she said that she had seen Fleabag and it blew her mind and she gave me a message to pass on to you. So she's left you loads of messages.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Full circle.

• 58:41Elizabeth Day?

  Well done, Nicole.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  And the fact that she'd come to the play was big. She was a biggie.

• 58:44Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, I love and adore you and now so does everyone else. Thank you so, so much for coming back on this podcast, Mark, a year since we started.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. Congratulations on the podcast, Jesus Christ.

• 59:00Elizabeth Day?

  Congratulations on your creation of art.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  And the book and your art. Fuck off. Fuck off.