by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
The thing about Phoebe Waller-Bridge is how down to earth and honest she is. One thing I’ve noticed about her, however, is she doesn’t have the UCB chops that a lot of American TV stars have. She’s more of a writer and traditional actor.
You notice it the most when she’s on a show like Late Night and Seth Meyers obviously really wants to do a form of improv with her and she can seem a bit slow on the take. She’s naturally funny, of course, but it comes out more naturally for her in the context of sitting in front of a laptop and thinking about it.
Having said all that, I have a hunch that she’s going to get sucked into the Hollywood community in a pretty big way. She’s recently divorced and there are plenty of single — and powerful — Hollywood leading men who love to have her by their side as they walked down the red carpet. The one guy who might find her a catch would be Bill Murray. He’s a bit old for her, but they would be an instant Hollywood power couple. (I’m too lazy to look at Wikipedia to see if he’s single.) I mean, the one guy I could see falling hard for Ms. Waller-Bridge is Jon Hamm. Hamm is a very funny guy and it seems like he would enjoy having Ms. Waller-Bridge a comic foil in both public and private endeavors.
I could see Hollywood producers have a bit of a struggle figuring out what to do with her because she’s not a traditional Hollywood beauty, but I can think of plenty of roles she would be perfect for. She’s got a unique comic voice that will serve her — and the audience — well for potentially decades to come.
One other thing is now that she’s hosted SNL, she’s a part of the SNL hivemind and there’s a good chance she might linger in its orbit as events warrant. She’s probably met a lot of the big wigs of SNL during the course of preparing for the show and those contacts will be beneficial to everyone involved going forward.
Anyway, what do I know. No one listens to me.
