Phoebe Waller-Bridge wasn’t prepared for the pressures of fame.
The 33-year-old actress shot to international prominence on the back of her starring role in ‘Fleabag’, the comedy-drama series set in London, and Phoebe feels her success exposed her family to unwelcome stress.
She shared: "They were actually taking the brunt of the profile of the show getting bigger.
"They were being asked all the questions about the show … Basically, there was just a communication breakdown with my family."
Phoebe was actually performing in New York when ‘Fleabag’ was broadcast in the UK.
And so she wasn’t fully aware of its popularity and how it would impact her day-to-day life.
She told the Observer newspaper: "I’d underestimated, as we all had, what impact it was going to have and that people were going to want to talk about it so much and like it so much.
"And I was essentially just so far away from everybody and in a different timezone doing the play … I hadn’t really connected with my close friends and family when it went out, so they then had this strange explosion of this show happening."
Phoebe – who also created the show ‘Killing Eve’ – revealed she draws inspiration from her own deepest fears.
She said: "I’m drawing on really personal things and things that echo in real life, but I write about my biggest fears.
"I write about losing my best friend or losing my mum, or not communicating with my dad, or not getting on with his new partner, and all those things are my worst fears: whereas actually my mum’s alive and well, my best friend is alive and well and we have an unbelievable relationship, my relationship with both my siblings is incredible, I get on really well with my stepmother and my dad; but it’s the ‘what if?’"
Phoebe Waller-Bridge: I wasn’t prepared for fame
