Phoebe Invincible

Actor Andrew Scott, A.K.A. Hot priest, says Phoebe Waller-Bridge is nothing less than good at life. To this, we'd add that she's a captivating writer and actor, as well as a smasher of things, including but not limited to expectations, the fourth wall, stodginess, and pointless decorum. On a long ramble through London, she talks about the journey from Fleabag to Indiana Jones, pausing only to greet birds and besotted fans

- By Joy Press. Photographs by Alasdair McLellan

IN THE WISTERIA-COVERED GARDEN OF A LONDON PUB, Phoebe Waller-Bridge comes to my rescue. “This is what we’re for, to zip each other’s jumpsuits up,” she says. She’s offering to extricate me from the one-piece outfit I bought on impulse, inspired by the silky jumpsuit she made famous in Fleabag. I hadn’t taken into account the zipper down the back of my version and the impossibility of getting it down every time I have to pee, but Waller-Bridge is two steps ahead. “If you need me to come with you…” she says, nodding toward the loo with impish kindness.

Suddenly, I am on the other side of the fourth wall—the one that Waller-Bridge so archly shatters in Fleabag when she speaks directly through the screen, using the viewer as a diversion from her sexual misadventures, her café business, and her fumbling familial interactions. There’s no television screen between us now. She can actually see me. The show’s mastermind is wearing a red sweater and jeans, her short brown hair nipped back with hairpins. She’s chatting in a voice that’s familiar and confiding, but then it’s part of her genius that so many fans already feel like she knows us in all of our awkward, oddball singularity.