- Laura Carmichael, Downton Abbey, 2010-2015. Her first auditon. ”Don’t,” said her agent, “fuck it up.” Hey, this is the future Fleabag you’re talking to… “”It was a really moving scene… it was meant to be sort of profound and moving and emotional and I went in and I performed the scene and honestlyI was likl: I’ve nailed this!” Except the director was “pissing himself laughing” and said: “I had no idea this character was funny.” Phoebe told him: “Neither did I. What? [Pause] Anyway, I didn’t get a callback.” By the time the Downton series became a 2019 film, PWB had been in a Stars Wars (unfortunately, it was Solo), created Fleabag, and was rewriting the 2019 Bond: No Time To Die. Just never needed Lady Edith Crawley… although, of course, Crawleys are always so good for you.
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Sandra Oh, Killing Eve, TV, UK-US-Italy, 2018-2020. “What fun we will have!!” said the email from Fleabag’s writer-actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge to Luke Jennings, The Observer’s dance critic turned sudden best-selling author with his Villanelle creation. Together, they cooked up a series unlike any other on the box. First off, it began not at home but on BBC America, eventually landing on the Beeb’s iPlayer via BBC 3, finally allowed cinyo BBC 1. And all this led by two blazing actresses as MI5 agent Eve Polastri trying to capture an assasin known as Villanelle. Then, suddenly, as they become4 obsessed with each iother, it became so much more than women trying to be Bond. (Soon enough, with Phoebe’s additions to No Time To Die, it was Bond trying to be Phoebe!). The glorious leads were Sandra Oh as the agent, Jodie Comer, chosen from, 100-plus contenders, as the killer and…
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Jodie Comet, Killing Eve ,TV, UK-US-Italy, 2018-2020 …Phoebe loved them, both so much, she thought of playing one of them. Great idea. (Only thing better would have had her playing both!). Rolling Stone’s Jenna Scherer called it: “a stylish story of obsession and psychopathy that’s disarmingly warm and lived-in… dry wit, razor-wire tension, sex appeal and the looming threat of violence ”- hilarious, bloody, unclassifiable, idiosyncratic, underminding every TV rule. Of as Sandra Oh put it: “People are ready for something new, and here it is.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 3