Redefining Women in a Waller-Bridge World
We’re continuing our #compasswomen series, accompanying our open tribute to the Great Leader of the Resistance. This time, we come bang up to the minute with the 2019 Renaissance Woman’s favourite heroine. The BBC 3 series Fleabagand particularly its creator and writer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, have become part of the Zeitgeist. If you missed the critical acclaim of season 1, you will surely not have missed the fanfare for the newest outing – recently completed on the BBC.
The title character of Fleabag herself has been converted into a phenomenon and not without merit. Women across the country are heralding the long-awaited arrival of a primetime screen character who so wilfully, brashly and steadfastly represents a role very rarely seen on network television. A relatable female.
“Fleabag is ME!” has been the echo around my own particular social media algorithm. “All Hail Fleabag!”
While I can see exactly why the excitement has reached fever pitch in this regard, it is for an entirely different reason – almost the opposite – that I so happily binge watched this series, before turning my attention to PWB’s second calling card Killing Eve and now excitedly bashing this love letter out on my keyboard.
I am not Fleabag. I am not that person at all. There is no personal resonance in the heart-breaking, hilarious, terrifying and, frankly, outrageous scenarios in which she finds herself. But isn’t that the point? Phoebe Waller-Bridge has recognised, FINALLY, that female characters onscreen, as with their real-life counterparts, are complex. I am not a 30 something single woman suffering from heart crushing grief partnered with a complicated relationship with guilt. A woman who carries overpowering emotional baggage, while wearing the most incredible wardrobe, slapping you with a killer turn of phrase and falling over on her endless gazelle like legs. I am not a gazelle.
I am also nothing like her sister, her father, her best friend or Her Priest but these are such richly developed, carefully fleshed out characters that in all of them, in every single one of them, I see life as we live it. Complicated, messy, heart breaking and heart lifting life.
The genius of Waller-Bridge, in Fleabag and across all of her output to date, is that she knows that people are complex. Not just women but men too. We are not all one thing, one emotion, or one note. Fleabag is a creation of such variety that while I admit that I am not specifically THAT 33-year-old women, there are so many facets of her character that made me go ‘YES! That!”
I can’t specifically see myself in her, but I hear my thoughts echoed back to me. I have felt ways in which she has felt and we all carry some kind of baggage around with us, whether we are conscious of it or not. In Fleabag, we finally get to hear and see the diverse mental gymnastics that we all exercise every single day. And it was funny. Man, was it funny. I wish I could tie up a sh*thole conversation with someone by deploying an arched eyebrow, a wry look to camera and a cut throat zinger as I turn on my heel and walk away.
It’s not just Fleabag either. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is genius at creating these flawed, complicated characters who we take to our hearts because we think we know them. She has created such complexity in her characters, particularly her lead characters, that we can all recognise elements of ourselves in somebody who would otherwise be completely unrecognisable. Again, she has nailed the same party trick in Killing Eve – a series she adapted from the already successful novels written by author Luke Jennings. While the lead characters as written in the novels are by no means one dimensional, in her writing and development of the characters for the BBC series, PWB has given them five dimensions. Ten even.
Distinct from internet theories about the autobiographical nature of her title character in Fleabag, Waller-Bridge has never, to the best of my knowledge, been a sociopathic assassin. Or indeed a frustrated MI5 desk jockey who obsesses over serial killers. And yet. The complexity, the multifaceted angles, the grey areas of their personalities are so perfectly written. I understand the mechanical workings of Villanelle as little as I empathise with Eve, but my God, I know what it feels like to feel under-appreciated. I know what it feels like to love/loathe your job, or to blindly fumble the unknown road markings of a relationship. Yes, I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve been let down and I’ve let people down and we see that so clearly too.
Online entertainment sites recently reported that Waller-Bridge will be co-writing the next Bond film and I for one, cannot wait. Real people, with real shades of personality, with killer lines and expertly mounted car chases ending with murder using a MontBlanc fountain pen. Are you kidding me?! She’s perfect for it.
PWB writes amazing screenplays. She creates amazing characters. She builds complex worlds. But she is not a great Female Writer.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is an incredibly talented, ridiculously hard working, fantastically observant *Writer* (and Actress and Performer and she probably cooks well too). Full stop.