Who Is Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the Creator of Killing Eve and Fleabag? (2024)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the entertainment industry's hottest names. After nailing three Emmy Awards and wracking up credits on everything from her own hit show Fleabag and the first season of Killing Eve as well as the latest Bond film, No Time to Die, she's become quite a player on the Here are all the details on Waller-Bridge.

She's British.

Waller-Bridge was born on July 14, 1985 in London. In 2006, she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She was previously married to documentary filmmaker Conor Woodman and has been romantically linked with playwright and screenwriter Martin McDonagh.

She created and helmed the first season of Killing Eve.

Waller-Bridge's name really catapulted into the public eye with the debut of the critically acclaimed spy thriller Killing Eve in 2018, for which she was nominated from a writing Emmy. Though she stepped down as showrunner following the first season, she stays on the show's producer.

She has a theater company with Vicky Jones.

Jones has been a longtime collaborator and best friend of Waller-Bridge and together the two run DryWrite, a London-based theater company which they created to produce work that would intentionally provoke their audiences. The two met while Jones was directing Waller-Bridge's then-boyfriend in a play and became fast friends and collaborators on shows like Waller-Bridge's television show Crashing.

Her Amazon Prime series Fleabag started as a play.

The character and concept on which the show is based came from Waller-Bridge's one-woman play, Fleabag (directed by Jones) which became a hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013 and won the prestigious Fringe First Award for outstanding new writing. The offer to adapt the show for television came shortly thereafter and the sitcom's first season debuted in 2016.

After a couple of years on hiatus—Waller-Bridge adamantly refused to develop a second season—she ultimately returned to concept with a new, and she says final, season which recently landed on Amazon Prime.

Her brother is engaged to Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery

Waller-Bridge's younger brother Jasper is the co-founder of Day One Pictures, a film and TV production company focused on telling stories about music. In January 2022, he announced his engagement to Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery. The couple reportedly met through mutual friends in 2019 and made their first public appearance together later that year at the Rome Film Festival.

It's a funny twist, considering that Phoebe herself once auditioned to be on Downton. In a 2017 interview Waller-Bridge told The Hollywood Reporter about her Downtown Abbey dreams, explaining her failed audition for the show. “I went in, and I remember it was quite a serious part and I had really been auditioning for comedy for a couple of years and I was really thrilled to come in for this part, so I put my heart and soul into it,” she said. "And I went in and I gave this really heartfelt audition, and when I finished, they were like, ‘We had no idea she was so f—ing hilarious!” ... I had really given myself, and they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re not right.'"

She comes from a creative family.

In addition to Jasper, her sister Isobel is a well-known composer who worked on the music for Amazon Studios’ Vanity Fair, The ABC Murders, and of course Fleabag.