NEW YORK _ When Phoebe Waller-Bridge was making "Killing Eve," the spy thriller she created for BBC America, she kept a draft email on her phone. It listed jokes, ideas and observations she hoped to use in the second season of her other current series, the darkly comic "Fleabag."
When she finally pulled up the email on her phone, she was shocked that 60% to 70% of what she had written down involved religion, faith, morality in the modern world _ "lots of hilarious jokes about that," says Waller-Bridge, who bursts with expressiveness. A rapid-fire talker with big eyes, nimble brows and the bobbed hair of a silent film star, she also uses wild hand gestures, cartoonish voices and an array of evocative sounds to make a point.
"I just find it so moving, that sense of faith, belief, certainty," she says over lunch near Union Square. "As a generation it's not very cool to believe anything. But the appeal of basic Christian principles _ which is basically be nice to people, don't be a dick, don't kill anyone _ does get lost."
Adapted from her one-woman stage play, the first season of "Fleabag" was a delightfully filthy portrait of a single London woman (never named but identified as Fleabag in the credits) who narrates her wild bedroom escapades directly to the audience. Writer and star Waller-Bridge lures the audience in by playing the role of oversharing best friend, then guts them with a shock revelation about the grief and guilt underlying her character's outrageous sexual bravado.
The long-awaited second _ and, she insists, final _ season of "Fleabag" arrived this month on Amazon and once again flouts expectations. Now earnestly trying to right her past wrongs, Fleabag struggles when she unexpectedly falls in love with the Catholic priest (Andrew Scott) officiating her father's wedding. What might have played like a soapy stunt _ libidinous vixen seduces a celibate man of the cloth _ is instead rendered as a deeply humanizing and poignant story of two people derailed by their profound connection.
Critical praise for the quiet perfection of "Fleabag's" end run has almost managed to rise above the clamor over the uneven final season of "Game of Thrones." But it is just one of many reasons the 33-year-old Waller-Bridge seems to be everywhere at the moment.
The second season of "Killing Eve" winds down Sunday. She is punching up the script for "Bond 25," the latest James Bond film and, one presumes, bringing female perspective to a franchise that could sorely use it. And she's executive producing and starring in "Run," a comedy picked up last month by HBO and created by her best friend, Vicky Jones. Finally, after a sold-out off-Broadway run in New York this winter, Waller-Bridge will bring a revival of the stage version of "Fleabag" to London in August.
"Then we're done," she says of her Fleabag alter-ego. "I swear!" But you almost hope she's lying.
