IN THE WISTERIA-COVERED GARDEN OF A LONDON PUB, Phoebe Waller-Bridge comes to my rescue. “This is what we’re for, to zip each other’s jumpsuits up,” she says. She’s offering to extricate me from the one-piece outfit I bought on impulse, inspired by the silky jumpsuit she made famous in Fleabag. I hadn’t taken into account the zipper down the back of my version and the impossibility of getting it down every time I have to pee, but Waller-Bridge is two steps ahead. “If you need me to come with you…” she says, nodding toward the loo with impish kindness.
Suddenly, I am on the other side of the fourth wall—the one that Waller-Bridge so archly shatters in Fleabag when she speaks directly through the screen, using the viewer as a diversion from her sexual misadventures, her café business, and her fumbling familial interactions. There’s no television screen between us now. She can actually see me. The show’s mastermind is wearing a red sweater and jeans, her short brown hair nipped back with hairpins. She’s chatting in a voice that’s familiar and confiding, but then it’s part of her genius that so many fans already feel like she knows us in all of our awkward, oddball singularity.
Denne historien er fra July - August 2023-utgaven av Vanity Fair US.
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Denne historien er fra July - August 2023-utgaven av Vanity Fair US.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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A House Divided
The Mellon dynasty has long been known for its old money refinement and discretion. But when TIM MELLON became Donald Trump's biggest donor many members of the family were mystified-and not afraid to talk about it
FUNNY BUSINESS
NEARLY 50 YEARS AGO, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LAUNCHED A REVOLUTION THAT CHANGED COMEDY, TELEVISION, AND THE MOVIES. NOW DIRECTOR JASON REITMAN HAS RE-CREATED THE CHAOTIC HOURS BEFORE SNL'S FIRST EPISODE. LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S 1975!
BAD FAITH
From exiled actors to academics, influencers to intellectuals, VF gets under the hood of the Catholic right's celebrity conversion industrial complex
THE GE NERAL
How ELIZABETH PRELOGAR, America's low-key, high-powered solicitor general, is holding the Supreme Court's feet to the fire
THE BILLIONAIRE'S SECRET
THE GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST KLAUSMICHAEL KUEHNE, BORN IN 1937, IS ONE OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, WITH MORE MONEY THAN KEN GRIFFIN, OR MACKENZIE SCOTT, OR FRANÇOIS PINAULT. WHERE DID HIS FAMILY FORTUNE COME FROM? THE NAZIS KNOW
GIVE AND LET GIVE
MELINDA FRENCH GATES is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.
VANITIES
MAISY STELLA knows how to think outside the box
Party PLANNING
Putin wants Trump to win, of course, and he's got big ideas about a new world order. Think Yalta-on Fiji
Boys and THEIR TOYS
Inside the hypermacho, Bible-thumping alt-tech universe trying to take on Silicon Valley-from El Segundo
STRANGER Things
The Democrats' short hot summer of \"weird\"