L3-37, the droid from Solo: A Star Wars Story, is more known for her spunk than her good looks.
But in real life, she's played by the gorgeous and accomplished British playwright Phoebe
Waller-Bridge.
Here's a look at some of her other work.
Stage to screen
Born in West London in 1985, Phoebe Waller-Bridge first came to prominence as a stage performer,
making her debut in 2009 at London's Soho Theatre.
She started out as strictly a performer, but soon branched out to writing and directing
her own plays.
As her stage work received more attention, Waller-Bridge also began a career on screen
with small appearances in TV shows and movies, starting with bit parts in films like The
Iron Lady and Albert Nobbs.
Her first major breakthrough came when she joined the award-winning series Broadchurch
during its second season, playing a straight-laced junior barrister named Abby Thompson.
The series significantly raised her profile as an on-screen talent on the international
stage.
"I looked through the file on the way up the train.
There are discrepancies."
"What sort of discrepancies?"
"Your sort."
One-woman show
As Phoebe Waller-Bridge began scoring better and more substantial roles in films and television,
her stage career continued to grow as well.
According to The Guardian, she and friend Vicki Jones founded the theater company DryWrite
in 2007.
As part of the company, Waller-Bridge wrote and produced a series of short plays called
Good.
Clean.
Fun. in 2014.
Waller-Bridge's most consequential creation during this time was a one-woman show called
Fleabag, which she wrote and first performed in 2013.
The stage production proved a great success, making a major impression for its tone of
filthy frankness.
Even as Waller-Bridge became more successful in other arenas, the stage version of Fleabag
continued to tour around the United Kingdom and beyond, eventually featuring other actresses
in the role.
The success of Fleabag and other projects brought Waller-Bridge her first serious awards
attention, winning a Stage Award for Best Solo Performance for Fleabag, and the distinction
of Most Promising Playwright from the Critics Circle Theatre Awards in 2013.
Crashing into notoriety
In 2016, Phoebe Waller-Bridge took to TV with the comedy series Crashing, which she created
and starred in.
The six-episode series centers on a group of young Londoners living together in an out-of-use
hospital as sanctioned "property guardians," providing "live-in security" for the abandoned
building in exchange for reduced rent.
Waller-Bridge played Lulu, a ukulele-wielding weirdo trying to carve out a place for herself
in an unconventional environment.
"Uh, homeless people!"
"I sometimes feel bad if they have scabs on their faces-oh!"
"What?"
"I think my tampon just came out a bit."
Waller-Bridge has said that the series showcases the compromises young people make in order
to make a living in a big city.
She told the Guardian,
"Six people in their 20s living in a flat - that kind of Friends set-up – is not really
relatable anymore.
Everyone I know is struggling with where to live.
It's just become part of reality that most people don't expect to be owning their own
place by the time they're 30 any more."
World-famous Fleabag
Although Crashing was a strong start, Phoebe Waller-Bridge's major career breakthrough
happened largely thanks to her next project, Fleabag, a television adaptation of her one-woman
show of the same name.
The show portrays the performer as a nameless young woman referred to only as Fleabag, navigating
life in London in a frank and profane way.
"My farts used to be like 'pah', and now they're just sort of fighting their way out."
"I haven't farted in about three years."
The six-episode show won a large number of awards both for the production as a whole
and for Waller-Bridge herself, who was lauded for her writing and her performance.
Naturally, a second season was commissioned and is in the works for a 2019 release.
Killing Eve
In 2016, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was hired to develop a TV series adaptation of the Luke
Jennings-written novella series, Codename Villanelle.
The result was the eight-episode series Killing Eve.
The series stars Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer as a government agent and assassin wrapped
up with each other in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Killing Eve premiered in April 2018 to massive critical success, with specific praise for
the series' tension, humor, and off-beat tone.
"Did you have a party or something?"
A second season of the series is in the works, although Waller-Bridge has announced that
she'll be stepping back from her role as lead writer to simply be an executive producer
for the next season.
L3-37 lifestyle
It was more than just a thriller show that made 2018 Phoebe Waller-Bridge's biggest year
yet.
In May, she starred in Solo: A Star Wars Story, bringing the droid pilot L3-37 to life with
biting wit and energy.
The character, a one-of-a-kind independent robot, was one of the more notable creations
of the Star Wars spinoff.
L3-37 was created via a combination of CGI, motion-capture, and live-action effects, with
Waller-Bridge standing in for the wiry droid that would take her place in the final movie.
She spent the production in full-body suits with plastic robot parts attached to her frame,
which gave her a real physical presence in the movie.
The human element
Phoebe Waller-Bridge didn't get her role in Star Wars thanks to any passionate fandom
for the series.
On the contrary, she earned the role despite a lifelong indifference to the franchise.
Prior to scoring her part in Solo, Waller-Bridge had never seen a Star Wars movie.
You'd think that that lack of knowledge would make an audition for the series stressful
enough, but it turns out that Waller-Bridge took things a step further.
On the Graham Norton show, she revealed that her lack of Star Wars knowledge almost ruined
her audition.
"This character's amazing, she's a revolutionary, she's really cool, and the dialogue was amazing.
But it kind of said just in one of the stage directions, 'droid.'
So I was like, 'droid, droid…
What's a droid?'"
Waller-Bridge says she didn't put the robotic nature of her character's identity together
until she was already in the middle of performing the audition.
After delivering a very human take on the character, she was asked if she could try
it more "droidy," at which point she said she realized,
"It's a f---ing robot."
Doctor...
Who?
Star Wars isn't the only geek property that Phoebe Waller-Bridge's name has been attached
to.
Following the success of the Fleabag TV series, rumors swirled that Waller-Bridge would next
make history as the first female to play the role of the Doctor in the beloved British
program Doctor Who.
The rumors began after the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, announced that he would be
leaving the series in 2017.
Some fans, having long argued for a woman in the role after decades of male Doctors,
began speculating that the Fleabag star would cash in on her newfound notoriety by taking
over the role.
Bookmakers in the UK took bets on who would replace Capaldi, and Waller-Bridge was a favorite
for the role.
The role ultimately ended up going to Jodie Whittaker, who previously starred with Waller-Bridge
on Broadchurch.
"You're a woman?"
"Am I?
Does it suit me?"
Regardless, Waller-Bridge didn't take the decision as a snub.
She told TV Guide,
"[It was] so cool to have my name in that mix."
The next job
Post-Solo, the future seems to be full of opportunity for Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
While the underperforming Star Wars movie isn't currently slated for a direct sequel,
that doesn't really matter for Waller-Bridge.
Her true purpose is returning to the series that gave her such a global platform in the
first place, working to write and produce the next season of Fleabag.
2018 also saw some changes in Waller-Bridge's personal life, as she divorced her husband
of four years and began dating In Bruges director Martin McDonagh.
Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, she said she plans to follow the second season
of Fleabag with an extended break, the first she's taken since her career took off.
"Since Fleabag, I've been in a bedroom under a duvet, writing."
Now that she's reached a place of success, she's finally ready to enjoy it, travel the
world, relax, and seek inspiration for new projects to come.
"Jogging."
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