I spent the last 10 minutes looking for a word to describe what Phoebe Waller-Bridge is to the entire entertainment industry. ‘Seductress’ is wrong, ‘enchantress’ is too froofy, ‘Jedi’ is embarrassing. I actually flirted with ‘Veela’ but I couldn’t live with myself if I used it. They’re totally besotted with her and want her to be everywhere and do everything and… that’s correct?
She picked up two Golden Globes last night: Best Performance By An Actress and Best Television Series, Comedy/Musical, and everyone was as predictably delighted - as they always are when she wins everything. Even me! I am, per Lainey (and everyone) contrary, I talked about Russian Doll and On Becoming A God In Central Florida all year long, and yet I was beaming along with everyone else, because she’s just… maybe a bit magic? What is it?
Part of it has to be that she might be genuinely humble? In her speech she said the win was due to Andrew Scott (Hot Priest to you) because ‘he could have chemistry with a pebble’. Lovely and humble and sweet but - she wrote the thing. She created a world where we, and Fleabag, could fall for a Hot Priest, and have it be weird and sexy, equally, and it shouldn’t work but it does. But it doesn’t feel like false modesty when she says it’s all due to him? I even spent time watching Donald Glover present her with an award at the BAFTA Britannia awards, which I did not even know existed, and he basically talks for six minutes about how she’s exactly as cool and nice as we all think she is, which, I didn’t think Donald Glover could be sincere for six minutes, and I mean that as a compliment.
Somehow, she’s working constantly on everything cool, nobody is sick of her, and everyone who touches her loves her, including her costars. Did you see Olivia Colman’s tears of joy when she won? And look at her with Sian Clifford here. They’re delighted with each other.
The worst part is if she read all this fawning she’d be disgusted, entirely correctly. I’m horrified by my sycophant-speak, but every time I think I’m over it there’s something else. Like, remember how she’s a total star-maker, and Sandra Oh got a whole new wave of fame and opportunity in Killing Eve? PW-B’s new pilot for HBO is called Run, it stars Merritt Weaver and Domhnall Gleeson, and recently cast Canadian actress Tamara Podemski, so she’s about to turn another Canadian into a household name.
She’s got to be a bad driver or subsist on the blood of virgin dragons or something. There has to be. There probably isn’t, but just let me have this.
