Phoebe Waller-Bridge took to Saturday Night Live in the kind of storm we have come to expect from her, but now, a month later, she’s got some new (to us, anyway) thoughts on that experience. Her monologue, which was very much something we’d expect from her, was filled with a conversation about horny women and genitalia.
But, apparently, there was more that Waller-Bridge wanted to include—more specifically, takes on America. While nothing was aggressively anti-American, there were hints of Waller-Bridge’s wit mixed with comments about how society, which we can infer as American society, tends to shy away from talking about sex most of the time. But that wasn’t all she was going to say. According to her, she was planning on tackling a few key American issues but decided against it.
Talking to Vogue, Waller-Bridge opened up about her thoughts on abortion rights issues that didn’t quite make it into her monologue:
Just about the abortion laws, the kind of stuff you can’t get your head around. The fact that the world has gone backward in this way, and actually in some frightening sense, in so many ways, women have a louder voice, are more empowered these days, and then in these other really insidious ways, blatant ways, we’re being marginalized again. How do you fight that? Because if you rant and rave, if you try and make a noise, you’ll be labeled noisy. You have to be careful of that. You have to find ways to protest. I’d really like to write something about that. I don’t know what it is yet. Sometimes you feel it’s braver to say something outrageous, and it’s not always. Sometimes it’s braver to say the vulnerable thing.
Honestly, I wish I could exist in a world where Phoebe Waller-Bridge told me what to do every day. I’d listen to her. But the idea that Phoebe Waller-Bridge recognized that some of the problems that currently exist in America deserve a moment of vulnerability instead of a punchy joke shows her brilliant ability to explore the complexity that surrounds us every day. Fleabag and Killing Eve brought to life complex women without making them jokes or pawns for the men in their lives and through her work, we see her tackling femininity in the 21st century, and honestly, can we get more of her doing just monologues or something? I need it in my life.
(image: Amazon Prime)
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