Phoebe Waller-Bridge revealed how the second season of Fleabag came to fruition and that it wouldn’t have happened without the Hot Priest.
On Wednesday, the writer and actress appeared on The Tonight Show in the US and talked about what it was like getting Emmy nominations for her two very different TV shows, Fleabag and Killing Eve.
Additionally, she unveiled the reason why she went back on her promise that Fleabag would only have one season.
“I thought I had a lot of artistic integrity in not coming back ... because the first season had a proper ending in my mind,” she told host Jimmy Fallon.
“I felt like in the first season it was the most interesting version of that girl’s story we were ever going to hear,” she said. “Fleabag talks to the camera a lot, and that was the relationship that was most important to me. And in the first season, by the end, she stops talking to the camera. And I thought, unless I can reinvent a reason for why she talks to the camera again, I can’t see how I can justify coming back.”
That justification came in the form of the Hot Priest, a love interest for Fleabag, who can see her break the fourth wall and talk to the camera when no one else can. Thinking of that behavioural tic changed everything for the Phoebe.
“When I came up with the trick of another character seeing that she looks to the camera, that’s when the whole thing cracked open again,” she said.
While Phoebe says there won’t be a third season, we’ll still keep our hopes up for another game-changing revelation from the showrunner.
In the meantime, we’re excited that her other show Killing Eve is getting a third series. We’ll definitely be binge-watching that.