Sian Clifford is not Claire from Fleabag. I mean, she is: over Zoom, even with her glasses on in quite un-Claire hoop earrings, she’s instantly recognisable as the older sister, that seething ball of duty, ambition, suppressed rage and barely acknowledged love.
I’m assuming here that you’ve watched Fleabag, or at least know of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s multi-award-winning, juggernaut tragi-comedy of lust, grief, family and feeling lost. Even if you spent the past six years under a rock, you would have struggled to miss the “hair is everything” scene, where Claire’s steely facade is breached by a ferociously asymmetric bob that makes her look “like a pencil”. It struck a deep chord in British womanhood (and far beyond), but there are other bits of Claire I love more: the glitter of happiness when she says working in Finland is “cold and beautiful and dark”. The tense glances, the flashes of anger, amusement and affection that flit across her face, controlled but so close to the edge. Her statement, “I take all the negative emotions; I bottle them and bury them and they never come out. I’ve basically never been better.” She’s perfect. Clifford’s 2020 Bafta win – female performance in a comedy – came as a surprise to no one but her (in her acceptance speech, she looks genuinely shellshocked).
