Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Great ‘Indiana Jones’ Adventure

There’s a photo of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, taken at an Emmys afterparty in 2019, that captures, better than any other contemporary celebrity photo I’ve seen, the enduring allure and glamour of Hollywood success. In it, the British writer-actress is wearing a glittering low-cut dress, sitting in a high-back chair, a cigarette in one hand, a vodka gimlet in the other, flanked by end tables littered with golden statuettes awarded to “Fleabag,” the ribald, form-breaking, swoon-inducing show she created and in which she starred. Where does a person go from a moment like that? Now, a few years down the line, we know. Waller-Bridge, 37, is co-starring in the just-released “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (This is after previously contributing to the screenplay for a film about another iconic character: the 2021 James Bond effort, “No Time to Die.”) Further out on the horizon, Waller-Bridge, who also created the spy-thriller series “Killing Eve,” is working on a show based on the “Tomb Raider” video game for Amazon Studios. (At the time of publication, though, that show’s progress is currently on hold because of the W.G.A. writers’ strike.) The progression from her prior idiosyncratic, relatively small-scale work to big-action pre-existing I.P. projects is not an obvious one, least of all to Waller-Bridge. “I ask myself this question all the time,” she says, smiling mischievously. “What am I doing?”

Is there another way? Well, I’ve been having these conversations with myself. I’m trying not to overthink it.

This is maybe a slightly cynical question, but — I already like it.

So the way you just described the emotional underpinning of “Indiana Jones”: That reminds me of when I’ll read an interview with an actor in which the person is talking about doing some comic-book movie and says something like, “This is my way of exploring mental illness.” No! It’s a comic-book movie! You make loads of money, and you look really cool!

What ideas are most interesting to you right now? [Laughs.] You’re such a bastard. Because that goes right to the question I’m asking myself every day as a writer. This is what I was thinking about this morning: With A.I., there’s this fascination with this other voice that’s going to come in and be smarter and quicker than all of us — yet we want to hear it. Everyone is terrified of it, but they go on ChatGPT and experiment. There’s this tension between wanting to evolve and go to this next stage and also wanting to go backward and feel secure. We’re not in a period like the ’80s when we were like: “Go! Go! Money and future and tech!” It’s not a supernostalgic time either. We’re somewhere trapped in the middle. So what does it mean to be part of this era? It’s like that old nursery rhyme: You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you’ve got to go through it. I wonder, will there be an A.I. that can compose music so beautiful that we cannot deny that it moves us, and we go to those concerts and buy those tickets, and the novelty is hearing this beautiful piece of A.I. art played by an orchestra? Is it still art if it’s created by A.I.? Is it OK that we’re moved by it? Christ, I don’t know the answer. Maybe we’ll get to a point where the novelty will be that a human being wrote something: This person proved that they were in a box away from any A.I. when they wrote this thing.

What else? OK, another thing I’m thinking about a lot is the role of comedy. Comedy needs to reclaim itself. Are we allowed to just sit and giggle at a sitcom? I feel like there’s a craving for that. But does laughing for the sake of laughing feel like cheating somehow because the world is in turmoil? It’s such an interesting time. I was talking to a friend the other day: Do you remember when a writer got a show on the BBC and that slot was gold? Now people could be like, “I’ve got a show,” but you don’t know where it’s going to go out, you don’t know how many people are going to see it. It’s a completely different relationship with the work. In some ways, it makes you more pure, because you’re like, “I just have to write exactly what I think.”

I don’t want to be crass, but to put it crassly: How does the Amazon money affect what you do creatively? Do you feel like a kid in a candy store? Is it an albatross? It’s complex! Because it’s totally life-changing and extraordinary. I’m so grateful for it. But that feeling of owing something: For an artist it’s unusual. They are so supportive of the stuff I want to do. I’ve got such brutally high standards for myself and now double that because I really like them, so I want to deliver something that they would consider worth it. Landing on “Tomb Raider” made sense because I was like, I know this is going to be fun for everyone, and I can guarantee something Amazonian in terms of the scale of what they want. But the albatross is wanting to do right by it. Whereas before you’re like, no one cares, no one’s watching, no one’s going to give you anything, but you’re going to do it anyway, now you’re like, they’re going to give you everything! It’s such a mad thing to happen.

Can I — [Laughs.]

Why are you laughing? You make me laugh because you start your questions with, “I don’t want to be cynical; I don’t want to be crass,” but you’re asking me the most honest questions. I’m liking it. That’s the real stuff that I think about and the real conversations that I’m having. So I appreciate it.

Are you OK with the feedback? That’s my problem. I have the same thing. I want him to fall on the floor in awe and not be able to breathe because he’s captivated by what I’ve done. That’s an impossible expectation, so that’s why I don’t show him too much. When he loves it, then I’m on top of the world. When he’s not sure, I know he’s right. We’re very careful not to affect each other too much. But it’s kind of fun! It’s like an extra layer of a kind of flirtatiousness: “I’m writing something.” “Oh, yeah? What are you writing about?” “I’m not telling.”

When you sit down to write, and a little devil pops up on your shoulder, whispering in your ear, saying, “Try this,” what kinds of things does it say? I have naughty hand.

What’s naughty hand? Naughty hand is when I’m writing, and I’ll get pissed off at myself for being boring, then I’ll suddenly start writing something slightly angry. Naughty hand is like, “For [expletive] sake, Phoebe, just sort this out!” Really early on, I would deliver a script to a producer, and they’d go, “This is a bit —” and I’d go: “I know! I hate it! This is what I really want to write!” And I’d have another script: the naughty-hand script. I’d be like, “I meant to do that.” And they’d be like, “This one’s really good!” It was like I had to get the one that I thought people wanted out of my system and then be like: “Suckers! Here’s a much better one!”

It’s a window into your psychology: You want to be a pleaser and do the assignment well, but what you actually want to do is something riskier. Oh, my gosh. That’s exactly what it is. But the best thing is when you satisfy both. The journey there can be quite [laughs] — I love the feeling of having done what’s been asked, but I hate the feeling of pleasing.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain about leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley about a dumber America and Cal Newport about a new way to work.

Source: Movies - nytimes.com