Sian Clifford has revealed that a list of big stars was lined up to play Fleabag’s sister on screen - but creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge insisted that she had to take the part.
The actress, 38, said that despite her friend Waller-Bridge’s insistence that she play Claire, she still had to do a “gruelling audition” that was “very painful.”
"This has recently been disputed but I can assure the listener that there was a list of people with a profile to go for Claire that Phoebe ignored and said ‘it has to be Sian, I’ve written a part for her,’” she told Angela Scanlon’s Thanks A Million podcast.
“I then went and did a gruelling audition,” she added. “It was very painful.
“With any kind of filmmaking, there's a level of risk and people get very anxious about investing their money in people or things they're unsure about. And this was just to make the reading, not even the real deal.”
She noted that ahead of the audition she had “been playing Claire as she appears in that lecture hall scene more or less for five years.”
Clifford, who most recently starred as Diana Ingram in ITV drama Quiz, added: “[Claire] appeared in this sketch of sisters Phoebe wrote in 2009.
“I'd played that scene with another actress initially and then eventually I did it with Phoebe.”
She said that although it wasn’t “insulting” to audition for a role she had already performed, she felt “fatigued by the industry and having to prove myself.”
Clifford, who had been ready to swap acting for producing before the success of Fleabag’s first series, added that she is still proving herself now, which is “still as frustrating, if not more.”
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