The disgraced 2000s comedian Phoebe Waller-Bridge won’t apologise for being inspired by
Before 2016, very few people had heard of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but after she wrote and starred in Fleabag, a TV show tinged with genius, a lot of people knew her; however, the following year, the world changed completely.
Unlike what would happen three years after that, this wasn’t a pandemic, but it was nonetheless something that spread fast around the globe and changed lives forever almost instantly. The #MeToo movement began with accusations about movie producer Harvey Weinstein and then began to include men in powerful positions throughout the entertainment industry, and then other industries.
Careers were finished in a matter of hours. Some apologised, some managed to bounce back, but some, especially those who happened to be at the peak of their careers and were involved in the first, high-profile waves of accusations, definitely did not. Even almost ten years later, there are two comedians, for example, Aziz Ansari and Louis CK, who can’t seem to get out from under the weight of their respective scandals, although they are now able to do things like tours and specials.
Waller-Bridge was just starting to become very famous when it all happened; she had just written Killing Eve, which would be another hit show starring Jodie Comer, and was so quickly in demand that she found herself cast in 2018’s Han Solo: A Star Wars Story and within a year was drafted in to co-write the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die. Aside from that, in the three years after Fleabag aired, she had won two Golden Globes, three Emmys and a Bafta. She was insanely hot property.
Around that time, she was asked by The Guardian about Louis CK, and although the furore around him had yet to die down, she still spoke about how she had been inspired by him, saying, “He seemed to see the world through a female perspective, and so much of his comedy was about how gruesome men are and how many women have to deal with gross guys. No one was talking that way at the time, you know, the idea that a man goes on a date and thinks he might not get laid; a woman goes on a date and thinks she might be murdered.”
Louis CK had become one of America’s leading stand-up comics throughout the 2000s, winning multiple Emmys and Grammys himself for his one-off specials and his semi-autobiographical FX show Louie, which had run from 2010 to 2015.
Rumours about his behaviour had started emerging for a couple of years before 2017, when five women accused him of sexual misconduct. CK apologised and admitted guilt, but it didn’t stop him from being dropped by his manager, by FX and by Netflix, having an upcoming movie cancelled, and all his content removed by HBO, as well as all personal appearances cancelled.
Waller-Bridge acknowledged his wrongdoings, and when asked if she was disappointed in him, said, “Yes, of course. I was very disappointed. But it won’t take away from how much his work inspired me”.
Most recently, Waller-Bridge has been busy working as a show-runner for the forthcoming Lara Croft reboot Tomb Raider for Prime Video, which will star Sophie Turner as the iconic video game character. We could see that this year, but it’s most likely to hit the streaming site in early 2027.
