Sian Clifford: ‘Fleabag Is Magical. There’s Not A Wasted Line In It’

Five minutes into talking to Sian Clifford – Fleabag’s sister Claire – the actor gets a lump in her throat. ‘This is going to make me emotional, sorry,’ she apologises. When we meet it is exactly six days before the sixth and final episode of Fleabag series two airs, effectively ending the nest comedy of its age. Sian has just stepped off the Grazia set in a plush London townhouse overlooking Tooting Common. ‘Maybe we will come back to it,’ she says. ‘But to me, it’s done.’

Sian knows precisely the power of the final scenes. She has sat nervously on their secrets, holding her tongue for several weeks now. ‘That Phoebe had the balls – or the ovaries, I should say – just to end it and go, no, that’s it. Everyone was asking on Twitter about the end and so I said, “It’s perfect.” And they said, “Oh, it’s happy?” No. It’s perfect because it’s poetry.’ Sian has followed Fleabag’s trajectory since inception. She met her great friend, Fleabag’s creator, star and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge at RADA, a time she describes for both women as ‘pretty much hellish’. they were undergraduates in the same class. In a further parallel, they both grew up in the leafy West London suburb of Ealing, ‘though we didn’t know each other there and she’s from a much wealthier background than me’.

The two best friends made a pact with one another as students. ‘A sort of silent commitment,’ she explains, ‘that we would help each other out. We’ve backed each other all the way. I mean, I’m only here now because my friend fought a very hard battle to get me an audition.’ Thirteen years later, that pact stands. Sian performed in just about every one of the plays Phoebe wrote for her independent theatre company, Dry Write, while honing her irresistibly unique, hard and spry dramatic craft. Sian watched Phoebe perform a 10-minute skit of the nascent Fleabag, when the idea was a mere foetus. It was Sian who suggested Phoebe take it to the Edinburgh Fringe. She watched her perform it as a one-woman show at The Soho Theatre London, and was at the off-Broadway debut when the show premiered in New York earlier this year.

When the BBC came knocking to adapt the show for television, it was Phoebe who insisted her friend Sian, a fabulous theatre actor with two leads at The National under her belt but virtually unknown on screen, was absolutely perfect for the role of Claire, Fleabag’s outrageously uptight, neurotic, control freak elder sister. Of course, she was right. Sian’s Claire is the nest passive-aggressive metropolitan overachiever in British drama since Milly in is Life. ‘Oh my god, I love Claire,’ says Sian. ‘She follows the rules. She’s never learned how not to. She is part of my soul.’

Since its dynamic, unnerving and hilarious opening epistle on anal sex, Fleabag has hit raw new nerves with its fanatical audience. Dramatically, it is the definition of an iron fist in a velvet glove. At a BFI screening of the first episode of this series, Sian says they knew it was working when they heard strange, animal- like noises as the audience tried to swallow its laughter at a particularly awkward joke landing in the centre of Claire’s public miscarriage. ‘It was magical,’ she says. ‘We couldn’t believe it. People are so invested in it.’

Without giving away too much for the spoiler-averse, Fleabag’s concluding half-hour honoured every one of its bold plot swerves. Each character was given closure. But one question everyone has been asking throughout both seasons is, why has Claire insisted on staying with her awful husband? ‘Because he made her laugh once,’ she says. ‘Many of us stay in situations that don’t serve us because we don’t want to confront the fact that we’ve failed.’ The symbolism of Claire’s disastrous haircutin the previous week’s episode was a moment of particular personal pride for Sian. ‘She is exceptionally good at her job and she feels responsible for everyone,’ she says. ‘But she’s breaking apart because of it. She’s so brittle. And there’s something that gets released with that haircut. I couldn’t even tell you what it is she’s let go of. I think we all have varying degrees of breaking point. Not everyone reaches it. But Claire reaches hers and I’m so, so glad that she did. Yes! Come on, Claire!’

It was Sian who decided on Claire’s lopsided attempt at an asymmetric power cut, shedding her Samson-like perfect locks. Here is every probability that she’ll become a 2019 Halloween costume because of it. ‘Oh, I hope so,’ she says. ‘I designed that with our hair and make-up designer. There were some initial ideas, much shorter, and I said, “Ugh, no, I don’t think that’s right. I think something A-line and weirder.” She pulled up a picture and I was like, “Yes!” then we spent a day with it on, just going, what is that? I have a timelapse video that I need to put together and get online of it getting cut.’ More than anything, the haircut explains Claire’s character. ‘I would argue that the haircut is the first time she has taken a risk in a very long time. And done something for herself. And look what happens. It’s terrible.’ Do we get extra Grazia points for noticing the salon the sisters go to to complain is Taylor Taylor London in East London’s Spitalfields? ‘Oh, you spotted it?’ she says in mild disbelief. ‘How brilliant.’

It was on seeing Sian in the character’s unseemly wig that Phoebe interjected the pitch-perfect line about Claire looking like a pencil (Sian doesn’t remotely, in real life). ‘That line appeared on the day, out of Phoebe’s extraordinary brain.’ She says a lot of Fleabag changed in its creation, both on set and in the edit. But the central tenets of the relationships remain solid. ‘I think it rejects sisterhood better than anything else I’ve ever seen. It’s such an accurate depiction of how in one breath you could murder your sister but, also, you would never, ever leave them.’

Because she knows the material so well (‘I can literally recite both series by heart’) and because it is the work of her best friend, Sian is possibly at an even better vantage point to eulogise its genius than its creator, at least in public. ‘Phoebe’s one of the greatest living writers of our generation,’ she says, ‘if not the greatest. ‘I think she’s challenging the form of television, in a way that it hasn’t been shaken up, probably since The Office. Certainly, in terms of comedy. Fleabag is its own genre. It isn’t comedy. It isn’t drama. It isn’t even tragi-comedy. It’s a new thing that didn’t exist until Phoebe decided to put pen to paper.’

She says that, normally, she can’t stand watching herself on screen, but that something unusual has happened with Fleabag. Since she was given the second series, she, Phoebe and the newly ordained hottest priest on the planet, Andrew Scott, keep sharing messages about it. ‘Andrew will kill me for this,’ she says, ‘but none of us can stop watching it. Me, Andrew, Phoebe, we’re constantly swapping messages saying, “What’s wrong with us?” Andrew, I know, doesn’t watch any of his stuff. But we cannot stop.’ She says this isn’t ego. ‘It’s the show. There’s not a wasted second or line in it.’ And of Andrew becoming the new national pin-up by donning his cassock? ‘I mean, we already knew that,’ she laughs. ‘Phoebe just wanted to share it with the world.’

Sian’s clearly had the time of her life on the Fleabag roller coaster. ‘I’ve seen the whole beautiful, mad journey,’ she says calmly. ‘I’ve got lots of friends who’ve been through this transition, so I’ve been well- versed. They’ve had tough times. I’ve been very lucky. It’s funny. I’ve spoken to a lot of friends about all the failures and disappointments that I’ve experienced in my career. I’ve been a professional actor for 13 years, so there have been many. There have been a lot of triumphs, too, but predominantly in theatre. So, for it to happen in this way, you couldn’t ask for anything better.’ And how is that? ‘My friend gave me a break.'

Stylist: Rachel Davis, Hair: Miguel Perez, Makeup: Amanda Grossman, Sian wears: Yellow suit by Pallas at Fenwick, Earrings at Fenwick, White T shirt by ALC at Harvey Nichol

Read more: an extensive list of the best moments between Fleabag and the Hot Priest: