INDIANA JONES
Who is Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the actor who plays Helena Shaw in the latest Indiana Jones movie?
In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Harrison Ford is joined by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, an actor and screenwriter best known for the hit series Fleabag.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who stars alongside Harrison Ford in the new movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, says she was intimidated by the prospect of acting alongside a Hollywood legend. However, Ford found a way to put her at ease.
“I was a little nervous and I said to him, ‘If I get a little in my head and if I’m just rubbish at any point, you can tell me,’” Waller-Bridge told an interview with BBC Radio this week. “He just rolled up his script and smacked me round the head with it, and was like, ‘Does that help?’ It helped so much, it was hysterical!”
In the Dial of Destiny, the fifth and final instalment of the Indiana Jones action-movie franchise, Waller-Bridge plays Helena Shaw, the lead character’s goddaughter. Set in 1969, just after the moon landing, the film sees Shaw join Jones on a mission to recover an ancient dial from the hands of enemies who are out to use the artefact’s time-travel capacities to change the course of history.
Creator and star of “achingly beautiful” Fleabag
Waller-Bridge, 37, is best known for writing and starring in the hit comedy-drama series Fleabag, a show about a young woman dealing with the death of her best friend, Boo - and her role in causing the accident that killed her.
Fleabag, which ran for just two seasons, was critically acclaimed. “I came into the series expecting a raunchy black comedy, and got that, but with the added bonus of something achingly beautiful when it wanted to be,” the prominent TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote after the release of the first season in 2016.
Fleabag won two Golden Globes, three Emmys, a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild award. While it is most widely known as a TV series, it actually started out in the theatre, as a one-woman play also written by and starring Waller-Bridge. The stage production won accolades, too, including a Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Killing Eve, James Bond...
A graduate of the UK’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the London-born Waller-Bridge also created and played the lead in the comedy series Crashing, and was a writer and executive producer for the spy series Killing Eve. Her other TV credits include a part in the crime drama Broadchurch, and a 2019 appearance as host of the late-night US sketch and stand-up show Saturday Night Live.
On the big screen, Waller-Bridge’s resumé features roles in the Iron Lady, Man Up, Goodbye Christopher Robin and Solo: A Star Wars Story. What’s more, she was a screenwriter for No Time to Die, the 25th instalment of the James Bond film series.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was released in the United States on 30 June.