There are so many reasons to love Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, a show which taught us a lot about life, and made us laugh, cry and question whether the "sexy" priest was actually sexy.
One of the many brilliant things about Waller Bridge's show is how it takes a national-treasure-in-waiting, Olivia Colman, and lets her play, well, a real piece of work. Colman's Godmother is selfish, pretentious and incredibly fond of a cheap shot delivered with a thinly-veiled smile.
"Oh gosh, haven't you got a lovely thick neck," she said to Waller-Bridge's title character while painting a portrait of her, making us gasp and snort at the same time.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
So it's kind of awesome to hear that Godmother became such a classic TV baddie at least partly because Colman wanted her to be one.
“I think I begged Phoebe to be in it, when she was writing the first [series],” Colman told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview.
“But the second one, it felt like she just had a built-in confidence. She thought, Okay, I know what I’m doing, I’m just going to really let rip. And she did. The first episode of the second series, to me, was like a piece of theatre, a piece of writing that I would have studied at school. She’s extraordinary and it’s a pleasure to say anything that she’s written."
Colman then added: "I will be eternally grateful to Phoebe, because she said, What sort of things do you want to say? And I went, could you write me someone who’s a total [spells out a four-letter expletive]. So she made up this person for me. Yeah. I always wanted to play the baddie and she’s written a really good one."
Later in the interview, Colman also revealed that she's asked Waller-Bridge for a role in the upcoming Bond movie that the Fleabag creator has co-written. Fingers crossed that one happens too.