amy morgan, 30 Star of Touch. “I don’t just want to play comedy wench or wide-eyed ingenue, I want vicky jones, 38 to play the kind of parts these three Co-creator of Fleabag and two want to write” writer of the new play Touch. “Women have every right to have sex as and when they want. I’ve had a great time” times a ladette A generation of young writers are redefining the way female sexuality is portrayed. The creators of the hit show Fleabag tell Katie Glass what happens when feminism and porn culture collide. Portrait by Matt Holyoak

n a boho restaurant in a hipster enclave of west London, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Vicky Jones and Amy Morgan are sitting on mismatched furniture, quaffing champagne and debating whether to order the duck profiteroles. “I don’t want to pressure anyone — but I definitely want them,” Waller-Bridge grins. I’d suggested we keep this meeting casual and low-key. By the time the photoshoot ends we’re three bottles in. ISuperficially, Waller-Bridge is everything you’d expect if you have watched Fleabag, the darkly comic BBC show she wrote and starred in, and which she originally co- created as a stage play with Jones. Waller- Bridge played the eponymous Fleabag, a glamorously shambolic twentysomething woman chaotically negotiating modern London life. It screened on BBC3 last summer, then BBC2 in the autumn, while Amazon aired it in the US. Last month, Waller-Bridge picked up a Bafta for the role. Phoebe Like Lena Dunham’s Girls before it — and Sex and the City and Bridget Jones Waller-Bridge, 31 before that — Fleabag’s appeal lay in how Writer and star of Fleabag it reflected the experiences of a generation and co-producer of Touch. of young women, as we watch Fleabag “I’d just like my tits to be that ricochet between one-night stands, much bigger — does that breakdowns, feminist retreat centres and make me a terrible feminist?” her stepmother’s penis sculpture exhibition. Most of all, though, Fleabag’s genius was

The Sunday Times Magazine • 31 in reflecting a contemporary shift in the way five years of their life for a perfect body. kind of parts these two want to write.” many young women talk and think about Fleabag and her sister shoot their hands up Six months after our first meeting I catch sex. Joining a new wave of outrageous and “having a healthy — only to find they are alone. up with the girls at the Soho Theatre for a explicitly honest women, such as the One groundbreaking aspect of Fleabag reading of Touch. I can report that it is comedian Amy Schumer (who wrote relationship with was how it tackled porn and porn culture’s hilarious. As promised, it is a romp through Trainwreck), Taylor Schilling (Orange Is the effect on young women — a subject, until Dee’s sex life — dates with arrogant young New Black), Annie Mumolo and Kristen porn is hard. Fleabag then, usually discussed in relation to men. men, lesbian encounters, kinky Tory boys, Wiig (Bridesmaids), and Dunham. Waller-Bridge watched porn from her early bullying boyfriends, social media and “We loved Girls,” Waller-Bridge says. has watched so much twenties. “I think having a healthy dating apps. Like Fleabag, Touch has depth, “It was such a huge defining moment for relationship with porn is a hard thing to as Dee grapples with conflicting motives. people talking about women’s experiences do,” she says. “Fleabag’s problem is she has In one scene, debating whether to let a man truthfully. It had a huge impact on us.” of it, she is totally watched so much of it that she’s become spank her, she muses: “I like bossy men … Today we’re meeting to discuss Touch, a desensitised by sex. She’s watching so but it doesn’t sit well with my feminism.” play Waller-Bridge and Jones are producing desensitised by sex” much, she believes that her own value is Jones is fascinated by such paradoxes. through their theatre company DryWrite. based on how sexually attractive she is. The On the one hand she feels that women are Jones wrote it. Morgan — best known for gratuitous”, she says. “It’s the language, the world is about being young, beautiful and liberated by sexual openness — “It’d be sad appearing in ITV’s Edwardian drama Mr unabashedness, not apologising and not f***able, that’s her philosophy — even if a woman lived her whole life and didn’t Selfridge — will play the lead. being embarrassed that’s shocking.” though deep down she desperately wants pet peeves Fleabag, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (right), in her try something she wanted to try sexually; They are still working on the script, but She and Jones believe women’s somebody to prove her wrong.” guinea pig-themed cafe with her best friend, Boo (Jenny Rainsford) there are so many things!” — on the other, their excitement about working together is emancipation is inextricably bound to their Flea was actually Waller-Bridge’s family she’s suspicious that some experiences sold palpable. Hanging out with them feels like sexual liberation — a sentiment that has nickname, but she insists the show is “not If Touch seems a follow-up to Fleabag’s play Dee. But she begged Waller-Bridge as sexually empowering are a con. When having a sleepover with three girly mates. appealed to screenwriters since Ingmar autobiographical” — just “really, really twentysomething story, perhaps it’s and Jones to be involved. “I’d do anything her friends took pole-dancing classes, she They shout over each other as they debate Bergman. If for Bergman that meant personal”. “There were times in my life I felt because DryWrite have grown-up. Now 31, for these two. I’ve always loved their stuff. declined. Still, she admits that when they all feminism, the pros and cons of dating apps Summer with Monika, for millennials such really Fleabaggy — I think if you’re not Waller-Bridge is married to the It’s hard to know where Phoebe stops and went to Glastonbury, she was begging and crack jokes about porn. as Jones, Waller-Bridge, Dunham et al, it writing from yourself people can feel it.” documentary-maker Conor Woodman. Vicky begins,” she laughs. them to teach her their moves. “So, it’s Thrillingly, Jones and Waller-Bridge’s means oversharing intimate details of Fleabag’s outlandishness perhaps felt more Jones is 38, and — after years of internet She met Waller-Bridge in 2012, when they complicated,” she laughs. friendship seems rather similar to that of characters’ sex lives. Most striking about surprising given Waller-Bridge’s own rather dating — has for several months been with were performing Hay Fever in the West Since our first meeting, Waller-Bridge has Fleabag and Boo, her best friend in the show. Fleabag, however, isn’t how promiscuous middle-class background. Ex-Rada, her a guy she met on OkCupid. End with Olivia Colman (whom Waller- become a Bafta winner. And a star. She’s Waller-Bridge shares Fleabag’s naughty she is, but how complex. Not just a sexually previous roles include appearing in the “[Touch] is about where I’ve been in my Bridge later convinced to play Fleabag’s met her heroes, including Lena Dunham, cackle and dishevelled elegance — and of swaggering ladette, she is also emotionally Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady thirties,” Jones says. “The panic of ‘OMG, bitchy passive-aggressive stepmother). It who emailed her after watching Fleabag course her vintage pin-up looks. Jones, like fraught, broken by grief, and riddled with and playing a young barrister (who sleeps I’m never going to meet anyone,’ then was an awakening for Morgan: “That’s “saying she really loved it. I went to have a Boo, is blonde, gentler, softer, calmer. anger — all of which fuels her casual sexual with someone to get information) in the ‘I don’t care, I don’t want to be in a when I realised I was a feminist,” she says. drink with her — me, Vicky and Lena in “The things that happen in the show encounters. Ultimately, it is Fleabag’s ITV drama Broadchurch. relationship.’ ” She feels it’s a conflict that “I’d probably always been a feminist, but New York — it was so cool,” she cackles. never happened to us, but they were hugely contradictory feelings about her sexual Fleabag seems to have been born out of haunts many women. “We may be I entered a world of conversations, people “It’s a bit of a whirlwind. A lot of it doesn’t inspired by our relationship,” Waller-Bridge adventures that make her story so poignant, Waller-Bridge’s frustration at traditional feminists, we may be working hard, we may asking me how I felt about feminism. I don’t feel real.” explains. “There were lines that I stole and chimes with real women’s experiences. female roles. She says she got sick of have careers, we may in many ways be think anyone had even asked me about it She is taking her own advice for staying verbatim from things Vicky said in real life.” The show also had a knack for trooping to auditions that were always for perceived to be successful, but if we don’t before.” That Christmas she went home to grounded: “When something great Jones and Waller-Bridge have known humorously skewering young women’s “the girl everyone wants to f*** or the girl have that relationship, we think we’ve failed. Bridgend and was watching the news with happens in your career you should get each other for more than a decade since paradoxical positions on feminism. In one no one wants to f***”. So she wrote herself There were plenty of nights when Phoebe her parents when she burst out at the telly: straight back to work.” Right now she is Jones (a Birmingham University politics scene, Fleabag explodes to her father: a more interesting role. and I would come home and end up talking “This is misogynistic bullshit!” “They hardly leaving the house, having been graduate) was fired from directing a play “I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, Part of what made Fleabag so brilliant was about being single. It’s about women in looked at me, like, ‘Are you all right?’ ” For commissioned by BBC America to write an that Waller-Bridge was starring in. Waller- perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, its nuance. The show posed questions — those cycles. And how Tinder and internet Christmas, her dad bought her a book on eight-part spy thriller, Killing Eve, about a Bridge walked out in solidarity. They spent depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can feminists watch porn? Is sending sexts dating has made it worse. I think women the suffragettes, “which was adorable”. She psychopathic assassin. She also has a role in their twenties on nights out, sleeping can’t even call herself a feminist.” degrading? — none of which was answered. feel bad about themselves because of that has since joined the Women’s Equality Party. the new Han Solo film and a second series around, crashing back home, debating the “Well, you get all that from your mother,” “We’re more interested in asking the culture. I don’t really have an answer, but Touch will be Morgan’s first modern role of Fleabag has just been confirmed. “The

issues that trouble modern women, such he deadpans. questions than having the answers,” Capital ark Media. right: I just wanted to look at the nature of that.” in a CV dominated by period parts. “The story itself I haven’t decided on yet.” as, “I’d just like my tits to be that much On another occasion, a feminist lecturer Waller-Bridge says. “The truth is massively m Jones read Nancy Jo Sales’s book most joyful thing is that Amy hasn’t been She has even been touted as the next and bigger, does that make me a terrible asks her audience if anyone would give up conflicted anyway,” Jones adds. “The best L American Girls — an examination of how out of a corset for about 10 years,” Waller- Doctor Who — a rumour she says is untrue, eft: eft: feminist?” — as Waller-Bridge says, you can do is talk honestly about it.” L social media impacts on teenage girls — Bridge laughs. “She burns so brightly in a but adds: “It’s a brilliant time to have a gesturing at her breasts. Their new show, Touch, follows a woman and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch corset, we were, like, ‘Imagine Amy out of woman [as the Doctor]. The show is crying They formed their theatre company in in her early thirties, torn between while writing Touch. The play examines the a corset!’ And our brains exploded.” out for it. It’s a character that lends itself so 2007 and began writing about issues embracing sexual freedom and craving a subtle ways women are undermined by Morgan feels it’s important “to feel like brilliantly to being played by any gender.” affecting young women. Waller-Bridge relationship. Dee (played by Morgan) dating apps, and makes several digs at them. you’re doing parts that you want to play ... It leads me to wonder aloud: could originally wrote Fleabag for DryWrite when abandons her life in Wales, where her “The things about [dating apps] that have I don’t just want to play ‘comedy wench’ Fleabag have been played by a man? she was 26, taking it to the Edinburgh friends are all coupled-up, for a poky flat in made them easier to use also make them or ‘wide-eyed ingenue’, I want to play the Waller-Bridge laughs. It turns out she has air and Make-up by Jo Clayton. Jo Clayton. by air and Make-up festival. It was nominated for an Olivier London and a messy sex life. H false — things like swiping or the minimal seen it done. For her birthday, Waller- and won her the Critics’ Circle award for “It’s something I think about all the things you put about yourself,” Jones says. Bridge’s husband made a tape of his friends agazine. agazine. most promising playwright. The BBC time,” Jones says. “Women have every right m “It all gears more and more towards porny performing Fleabag’s lines from the show.

es es “Tinder and Internet snapped it up. to embrace and enjoy a free sex life and have m instant gratification, tits out, face made-up “It was really striking. The bravado didn’t No doubt what made Fleabag appealing sex as and when they want, and I’ve had a looking like you’re ready for sex.” seem that extraordinary in the men’s to young women also made it shocking to great time doing that, but on the other hand Morgan agrees. “I’ve been single for dating’s made it mouths, but the vulnerability really did.” others. Plenty of people found the show when women have sex they want love and about three years. I did download Tinder. This feels very revealing: indicating the way crude. Certainly, DryWrite’s work never some future to it.” I think I went on one date. It doesn’t matter worse. I think women sexually open women — such as Fleabag shies away from exploring the grubbier “There are some women who are quite how much you talk to someone on a phone, and Dee — are judged more harshly than aspects of young women’s sex lives. Fleabag sexualised and get off on having one- you don’t know until you meet them. I may feel bad about men. Also, it suggests that while DryWrite’s sleeps around, sexts men and is addicted to night stands,” Waller-Bridge says. “In as well just meet someone — that was my stories focus on young women, they reveal porn. Yet Waller-Bridge denies that the my twenties, dear lord — I wasn’t looking conclusion in the end.” themselves because something about all of us n show was crass. Nothing graphic was ever kindred spirit Lena Dunham, whose frank for love …” “But when you’re 33, it’s Morgan, a gorgeous, baby-faced 30-year- depicted onscreen and details were “never and funny TV series, Girls, inspired Fleabag different,” Jones interrupts. ti the sunday for holyoak Matt page: previous old Welsh blonde, is rather too young to of that culture” Touch, Soho Theatre, London W1, July 6-Aug 12

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