Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the joy of writing outrageous, amoral women I’ve always been drawn to dark, unpredictable, unknowable characters. I love performing baddies as much as watching them and I […]

I’ve always been drawn to dark, unpredictable, unknowable characters. I love performing baddies as much as watching them and I had a macabre sense of play as a child. I was a committed tomboy always playing “man on the run”, or “boy being kidnapped”, rather than making daisy-chains or throwing tea parties. I have never been interested in playing Juliet, though I can appreciate the brilliance and beauty of the role from the stalls, my instinct as an actress is always to undercut and be irreverent. Something a role like that really does not require.

As an audience member I’m most gripped when watching the flawed, the broken, the angry characters. People we’re taught to avoid in real life, but are enthralled by on the stage or screen. We all are. Iago, Hannibal Lecter, anyone in Game of Thrones. Despicable characters who turn on a sixpence. I adore the mystery of these people. How they dare to do the things they do. We cuddle up next to people we trust and gleefully watch people we don’t. Thrilled and appalled by their arrogance, their lack of morals. Just because we don’t “like” them doesn’t mean we can’t relate to them in some way.

After gasping through two series of House of Cards, witnessing Frank and Claire Underwood enforcing their marriage and their empire through whatever means necessary, my husband turned to me with a loving smile, pointed at the two of us and whispered “Under­woods”. I nodded solemnly. We of course despise their actions, but can relate to their commitment to each other. It was a genuinely romantic moment.

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Flipping stereotypes

I haven’t written anything like a great villain – I hope to one day – but when I started to write I was instinctively penning nice, straight-up kind of men and contradictory, bemusing, provocative, un­apologetic women, who were often labelled quickly as “unlikeable” but entertaining. I got a thrill from flipping the stereotype. I found a buzz in putting these often outrageous, sometimes amoral women on the stage, however small.

As the show started garnering attention, I received a few questions about my decision to write an “unlikeable” character. I was genuinely taken aback. I hadn’t sat down in front of my computer with the aim of creating a despicable character. Even worse, I didn’t see her as unlikeable myself, just broken and defensive.

By the time Fleabag had to be written for the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013, I was primed and hungry to write a character straight from the darker corners of my heart. It felt thrilling, and oddly dangerous to write a woman who to me felt very real, very angry, and very dark-humoured. I wanted to write about a darker side of female psychology as I saw it then.

Putting front and centre someone who sexualised everything to the point of her own exhaustion; someone who seduced and dismissed people, chasing the affirmation of their desire then scarpering before it turned into love or rejection; someone who believed that her worth really was measured by her sexual power, and that she knew this as the truth no one else was brave enough to admit. Someone who believed that fundamentally people were a disappointment, that lust overruled love, and that her status as a woman in the world diminished once she passed a certain age.

I wanted to create a character who was trying to convince the audience that she was a true cynic in a bid to hide her broken heart beneath. Jokes were, obviously, essential for this set-up to work.

As the show started garnering attention, I received a few questions about my decision to write an “unlikeable” character. I was genuinely taken aback. I hadn’t sat down in front of my computer with the aim of creating a despicable character. Even worse, I didn’t see her as unlikeable myself, just broken and defensive. Perhaps my penchant for the baddies had filtered through without me even realising.

‘It may be weird, but it wont be boring’

But really, people “liking” the character of Fleabag was the least important or interesting outcome of writing her. To like or not like the character is a personal choice for each audience member to make on their own. My responsibility lies with making sure an audience will be compelled by her. For me, this is the promise a writer makes with an audience: “It may be weird, but it wont be boring.”

After all, I’m writing to provoke emotions in an audience, to make them feel something about a character I am writing or performing; I’m not writing characters who are trying to win personality contests. If I was they would instantly become safe and uninteresting. Just as people who chase popular approval in real life are bland company, so are characters created by authors craving the same thing for them. It’s more important that a character feels authentic and real than whether or not they are friendship material.

But soon, inevitably, I started questioning my own perception of Fleabag. I started to wonder if that is all people are thinking when they see it. Wondering whether or not they could see past the character. Then we took the play to Seoul, in South Korea. It may surprise you to know that I performed the play in English with Korean surtitles.

Spartacus moment

After the show I met a group of women who had come to watch. There was no translator present so we struggled to communicate. I couldn’t even make out if they had enjoyed it or not. Eventually, lacking any other form of communication, one woman held me by the shoulder, looked me dead in the eye, pointed to herself, and said: “Fleabag”. Everybody laughed and nodded. Then they all started pointing to themselves and saying “Fleabag”. One after the other, pointing, “Fleabag”, “Fleabag”. It was my own little Spartacus moment in a theatre in Seoul and it was more than enough for me to smile and nod, turn around and weep into my own armpit.

They weren’t telling me whether or not they liked her, they were telling me that she reached them, and that must always be the goal.

It will be interesting to see how the character is received on the small screen. Of course I hope people like the show, but I won’t be obsessing about whether or not they like the character. The wonderful thing is, if you really don’t like her, you don’t have to watch her. It’s only a television show after all.

‘Fleabag’ is available to watch on BBC Three from Thursday at 10am