Newly anointed Emmy-winner Phoebe Waller-Bridge made her Saturday Night Live debut this evening, kicking off the show with a monologue that touched on the obsession with Fleabag‘s Hot Priest, played by Andrew Scott.
“Fleabag came from a very personal place for me,” Waller-Bridge said. “It began as a way to get Andrew Scott to dress up as a priest and tell me that he loves me. It took me six years and two seasons to achieve it, but I did it.”
She went on to address the public thirst around the character.
“I called the character ‘Priest’ in the script, but everyone started calling him ‘Hot Priest.’ Obviously Andrew is hot, but this priest character caused such a horn-storm,” she said. “Andrew and I were trying to figure out what it was about him that was driving women so mental, and we boiled it down and realized it was because he was doing this one thing: listening. Really, really listening.”
Waller-Bridge also joked about the assumption that the show is autobiographical.
“People often assume that I am like the character in Fleabag, simply because I wrote it: sexually depraved, foulmouthed, and dangerous. And I always have to say to them, ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right,'” she quipped. “In fact, every project I write has a degree of truth, and every project is different. I’m not a sex addict because I wrote Fleabag, but I did write Killing Eve, because I’m a psychopath. And my most exciting ex-boyfriend wrote nothing, but was both.”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge talks Fleabag, Killing Eve, and the Hot Priest Hornstorm. 🙏 #SNL pic.twitter.com/EBuu0xgZHy
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) October 6, 2019
Watch her monologue, which included jokes about neglected genitals and women’s sexuality, in the video above.
Fleabag is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. SNL airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.