Nick Hern Books

In theatre, people come to you, or your characters. In TV, characters arrive in people’s living rooms, their kitchen tables, and are often even taken into bed with them! It’s a very intimate way of communicating with an audience and a privilege to experiment with.

I have a horrible feeling I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, mannish-looking, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist.

There was one I was most intrigued by – ‘Funny/Not Funny: How do you make an audience laugh in one moment, then feel something completely and profoundly different in the next?’
It was this tightrope that I wanted to walk with Fleabag. When we were developing it for the Edinburgh Fringe, I was obsessively looking for ways to surprise the audience, to sneak up on them just when they least expect it.
I knew I wanted to write about a young, sex-obsessed, angry, dry-witted woman, but the main focus of the process was her direct relationship with her audience and how she tries to manipulate and amuse and shock them, moment to moment, until she eventually bares her soul.