Phoebe Waller-Bridge revealed to Jimmy Fallon how the second season of “Fleabag” came to fruition and that it wouldn’t have happened without the Hot Priest.
On Wednesday, the writer and actress appeared on “The Tonight Show” and talked about what it was like getting Emmy nominations for her two very different TV shows, “Fleabag” and “Killing Eve.” Additionally, she unveiled the reason why she went back on her promise that “Fleabag” would only have one season.
“I thought I had a lot of artistic integrity in not coming back … because the first season had a proper ending in my mind,” she told Fallon.
“I felt like in the first season it was the most interesting version of that girl’s story we were ever going to hear,” she said. “Fleabag talks to the camera a lot, and that was the relationship that was most important to me. And in the first season, by the end, she stops talking to the camera. And I thought, unless I can reinvent a reason for why she talks to the camera again, I can’t see how I can justify coming back.”
That justification came in the form of the Hot Priest, a love interest for Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, who can see her break the fourth wall and talk to the camera when no one else can. Thinking of that behavioral tic changed everything for the 34-year-old.
“When I came up with the trick of another character seeing that she looks to the camera, that’s when the whole thing cracked open again,” Waller-Bridge said.
While Waller-Bridge says there won’t be a third season, we’ll still keep our hopes up for another game-changing revelation from the showrunner.
In the meantime, we’re excited that her other show “Killing Eve” is getting a third season. We’ll definitely be binge-watching that.
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