Phoebe Waller-Bridge tackled stage fright by telling audiences ‘F*** you!’

11 June 2023

Phoebe Waller-Bridge tackled her theatre stage fright by telling audiences “f*** you” backstage.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge tackled her theatre stage fright by telling audiences ‘f*** you’ backstage

The 37-year-old was thrust into the spotlight thanks to her stage version of hit BBC show ‘Fleabag’ in 2012, but a year earlier she had to conquer her nerves when appearing in a West End production of Noel Coward’s ‘Hay Fever’.

Phoebe told the Sunday Mirror about how a more experienced actor gave her the key to overcoming stage fright: “I suddenly got stage fright. And this amazing actor could see I was getting nervous.

“He took me out (behind the curtain) and I could hear the buzz of the audience.

“He said, ‘This is what you do if you are feeling scared. You stand behind the curtain, take a deep breath and you just go: “F*** you, you are lucky to have me. And you say it as loud as you can and we did it every night. Sometimes doing that feels great’.”

Phoebe, who has been dating Oscar-winning playwright and screenwriter Martin McDonagh, 53, since 2018, is about to makes her big-screen film debut as Helena Shaw in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’.

She plays the goddaughter of archaeologist Indiana, played for the fifth time by Harrison Ford, 80, and helps him hunt down a legendary artefact.

Along with writing the BBC’s dark comedy ‘Killing Eve’ starring Jodie Comer, 30, as an assassin, Phoebe was drafted in to doctor the script on the last James Bond film ‘No Time To Die’.

Phoebe is worth more than £20 million partly due to the global success of her ‘Killing Eve’ drama.

She has signed a production deal with Amazon said to be worth at least £16 million, and accounts for her firm PMWB show her earnings leapt from a bottom line of almost £520,000 in March 2019 to a turnover of £11.3million in the next set of accounts.

Phoebe’s firm is listed as lodging cash from “television programme production activities”.

The writer – descended from aristocracy and whose granddad was a baronet – won two Golden Globes for Fleabag and is only the second woman to have a writing credit on a Bond film during the 57-year history of the franchise.

Daniel Craig, 55, who has played 007 since 2006, has said it was his idea to enlist the actress.

She has denied she was told to address Bond’s so-called “toxic masculinity” and added: “They were just looking for tweaks across a few of the characters and a few of the storylines.”