Phoebe Dynevor is one of those up-and-coming young “It” actresses to watch. Viewers best know her as Daphne Bridgerton in Netflix’s Bridgerton. You know, that lucky B who got to mack it on screen with the #3 on my hall pass list, Regé-Jean Page. Phoebe tends to avoid the public eye and is fairly quiet about her personal life. We know that she dated Pete Davidson in 2021 and she’s been open about her struggles with anxiety. Phoebe recently did an interview with Elle, promoting her upcoming movie Fair Play. Fair Play, which drops on Netflix on October 6, is described as an “erotic corporate thriller.” In the interview, Phoebe talks about a lot of her acting journey, breaking taboos for women, how unprepared she was for fame, working on her anxieties, and a lot more. It’s long, but a good interview. I definitely recommend checking it out if you’re a Phoebe fan.
There’s still progress to be made for women: Fair Play is intense. It’s a thriller set within a relationship that tests just how far we’ve come. You think you’re evolved? What about when you’re faced with a power struggle in your own relationship? “We have this idea that the world is so progressive and there’s been so much change in terms of women and the #MeToo movement,” Dynevor says, “but there’s still so much progress to be made and so many things that haven’t been done or are still taboo.”
Modern femininity clashes with traditional masculinity: “The thing that was really interesting to me is how modern feminism is clashing with traditional masculinity,” she says. “I think we’re progressing, but in a lot of ways that’s counteracted by the people holding on to traditional masculinity. We’re at this weird time when there’s a lot of polarizing opinions and feelings, and it made it even more exciting to tell this story.” When asked for specifics on her personal ties to the subject matter, though, she prefers to let her work do the talking. “Look, there are millions of examples. I don’t know if I really want to share any of them,” she says. “Just being a woman in the industry, working from a very young age, relationships, you name it—every woman, I think, will relate.”
Aging has changed her perspective: I ask if, as a successful woman, she’s ever had to minimize herself in that way, and she says yes. “But I’m getting toward 30 now and the opposite is happening, where I’m trying not to do that anymore, and it’s a very nice feeling,” she says. “As you age, you get a wider perspective on things. You start to understand your purpose more.”
She was naive about fame: When Bridgerton premiered on Netflix on Christmas Day in 2020, Dynevor was entirely unprepared for just how successful the show would become. “I was really naïve. I don’t think there was a period of my life as an actress when I thought about fame. My only goal was to work as an actress and not have to have any other jobs,” she says. “And so I just didn’t expect it to change my world in the way that it did.”
The Petey D Months: Shortly after Bridgerton debuted, she began dating Pete Davidson. (This was post-Ariana, pre-Kim in the actor-comedian’s serial dating timeline.) She again had no idea what she was getting into. “It just goes back to being naïve—I didn’t think anyone would care,” she says of the public fascination with her six-month-long relationship with Davidson. “I was just being a young woman and dating and somehow that provokes a conversation. There were lots of hard lessons I had to learn through basically just having a personal life. You realize, ‘Oh, I can’t live my life in the way that I used to. I have to keep my cards slightly closer to my chest.’ There was a time, for example, when I’d post anything on my Instagram, and now I’m very, very careful about what I put out into the world.”
On sudden paparazzi attention: Those “very surreal” six months were also the first time she’d had to deal with paparazzi in a major way. “This whole world that I was opened up to was really intimidating. Having men outside your house with cameras is super scary when you live on your own,” Dynevor says. “There were men who would wait outside my house with cameras, and it was the same men a few times. I don’t want to go on the record and say that I was being stalked, but when you have paparazzi who are waiting outside your house, it definitely feels like that.”
Working on her anxiety: It was also hard to handle because her home is her happy place. She’s lived in “the middle of nowhere,” a quiet neighborhood in north London, for four years. She feels “away from it all” when she’s there and loves how she knows people’s names at her local pub. She’s been open about struggling with anxiety in past interviews, but says she’s been working on it a lot and talking to someone, which has helped. “As a woman in this business, all those anxieties are heightened because of other people’s opinions. My brain can so easily spiral, and I just have to bring it back to, What do I want to do? What do I want to say? Where do I feel happy and cozy?” she says. “The more you prioritize the simple things in life, the easier the outside noise becomes.”
I have to agree with Phoebe about focusing her priorities on simpler things to quiet the outside noise. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in things that seem important but actually aren’t. They’re just distractions that we’re drawn into at the moment. At the end of the day, they don’t really add anything but extra stress and a loss of sleep (come on – we’ve all gone down a rabbit hole and stayed up way too late). For me, I find that unplugging and doing things like going for a walk or working on a puzzle with my kids or even cleaning helps shut off the outside noise. I also liked that she talked about gaining a wider perspective on things as you age. This is absolutely true! I wish Phoebe luck in her career. The article has me really intrigued about Fair Play now. I may have to watch it when it comes out on Netflix.
She sounds like a lovely young woman who has her head on straight. I bet she’s going to have a long and brilliant career (looking down the road at Phoebe as a Helen Mirren-like figure in decades to come).
She talked about her nepo baby bonafides in the interview, quite well actually. I feel like she dodges it a bit in the States because Corrie isn’t as well known.
The pictures are lovely.