“All myths need a change in their DNA”

It is a beautiful closing to a saga that for many of us basically defines, like many other experiences, what cinema is”, smiles Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The actress, the showrunner, the screenwriter is considered a fundamental name when it comes to current series: not only because of the success of Fleabag, but also because of her ability to alter genres, to introduce a new, different look that discards commonplaces and, with passion, generates what is most necessary: ​​new stories. “There is something that I would like to be understood” says Phoebe Waller-Bridge and continues “never in my life did I imagine that I would be part of an Indiana Jones movie, of a universe that I consider truly foundational of cinema, that is, of those sagas that When you literally think of a movie theater, you close your eyes and they are one of the movies that are mentally projected. My passions when it came to movie adventure time were The Goonies and, of course, Indiana Jones. So the idea of ​​being there, with Harrison Ford, the truth is that he still feels a bit like a dream, something that he didn’t really live.” But that’s the way it is: Phoebe Waller-Bridge is Helena Shaw, the companion of an Indiana Jones who has entered his third age, played again by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate. She is not the only one amazed: Shaunette Renée Wilson, an actress with crucial roles in the Black Panther saga and in series like Billions and The Resident, feels the same as Waller-Bridge: “What Phoebe says is true. It’s really amazing when you stop, and you see that you are there, that you are on an Indiana Jones set, and Ford appears dressed as the character. Everything has a dreamy air that is difficult to process. You feel that you did something well, and at the same time, that at any moment someone can come and tell you that it’s over, that it’s over. It’s very unreal, even today, to process being in an Indiana Jones movie.”

Waller-Bridge is the winner of several Emmys for her Fleabag, one of the leading series when it comes to thinking about a real renewal of ways of telling and seeing, of generating comedy and drama, of being a classic that is known to be modern. . For now, the world is waiting for the next big series from her, but Waller-Bridge has worked in the field of giants. For example, she was part of the scriptwriters for the last James Bond movie, No Time to Die. And when it comes to reflecting on what can be altered from the classics, Waller-Bridge, of course, is smarter than the permanent stomping on Twitter: “It’s not so much about altering the character. I mean, creations like 007 or Indiana Jones already have their universe defined. One thing that I liked very much and that I had hardly noticed in Jones is that he always grumbles, that he doesn’t want to be there, that he doesn’t want to be an adventure. He is a reluctant hero, who would rather not take all those risks but is driven by his passion. In that aspect, it is almost a permanent comedy, which filmmakers like Spielberg or Mangold now manage to make it an adventure with a smile. But what I was going to have to do with the fact that it is about altering her world without destroying it, there is intelligence: for example, let’s not put a romantic motive (something that happens in all the Joneses). Let’s play in another way, let’s get that idea that today perhaps looks stale, and we think of the character from another place. But they don’t have to get upset, they don’t have to stop being what they were. Intelligence comes from watching how you move the tiles around them. Not to reconfigure them to say things more consistent with how the world sees certain ideas today.” Renée Wilson adds to this idea: “It also implies being able to see new faces, new characters, feel new ideas on screen. My character might not have existed in other installments, but that’s not something that irritates me. I am glad that today it happens and that this implies a modification. It doesn’t seem interesting to me to seek to rewrite classics because of what we think, luckily, today. As Phoebe says, I feel it’s best to add to that current equation the ideas that are going to change the world of the character, and that he or she can stay the same. You see Helena, and you see her desiring men who cross her path, and it’s a small thing, but not that much: feminine desire was not part of this saga, and now it’s there, as a comedy, defining the freedom of a character, opening possibilities. Indiana at his age may be in another place, but Helena wants to have fun and that implies, as they said, adding to a world, not subtracting from it. Indiana’s melancholy collides with Helena’s passion. There is a new formula that helps to expand a universe and not to limit it”.

Renée Wilson talks about the idea of ​​legacy, about what it means to add a film to a saga that defines a cinematic ideal: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate is a film to be seen in the cinema. It may sound like a point of sale, but I see that it is our age: would we see Indiana Jones on a small screen? never That’s what impresses: you felt part of a larger-than-life legacy, as they say, that has to be appreciated for the medium it was dreamed of. The scale is huge, because the character is huge. What do we want from our stories if we don’t want to be dazzled? And Waller-Bridge adds: “Everyone knows my work on the platforms, and without them it would be impossible to tell certain things. Perhaps what we can understand is that this act of cinema continues to be, whatever you see, something quite powerful. I wish I could show the things I always tell in a movie theater. I feel that the fact of the cinema is something that has marked me, as a storyteller, that there is always that ambition: not so much to reach the big screen, but to achieve that feeling”.

Helena’s ways

In the realm of rumors, the most powerful is that Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character Helena would be made into a series for Disney+. But far from those rumors, Waller-Bridge is a fan. And she has never proven otherwise when it comes to Indiana Jones. For this reason, one of the moments that stands out, of many, is her character and her connection with the actresses who have had roles in the aga: “For example, I feel that there is a very strong connection with the previous female ones, and that is important. She, of course, is a different voice, not better, different. The series has always had strong female characters. But a fun conversation is that Indy has always been the mystery in their eyes. And now it’s the other way around, my character is the mystery, we don’t really know what she wants and for what. There is one of those healthy alterations that we talked about”. And the fan’s heart exploded when she met, of course, John Williams, the composer of the character’s classic melody: “It’s kind of hard to process that John Williams writes a song for her character. And it’s hard to stand in front of him and not really melt into praise, celebrate how his work has redefined what cinema is to a great extent, as it has inspired us. I only dared to say: ‘Thank you for making a song for my character.’