Phoebe Dynevor Breaks Down Her Bold ‘Fair Play’ Role and Auditioning to Be James Gunn’s Lois Lane: ‘It Was a Whirlwind’
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Fair Play,” now streaming on Netflix.
When Phoebe Dynevor read the first pages of the script for “Fair Play,” a relationship thriller set in the cutthroat world of hedge funds, she thought, “Fuck yeah.”
The opening moments of the film, from writer-director Chloe Domont, are focused on Emily and Luke, a young couple who sneak away from his brother’s wedding reception for a quickie in the bathroom, only to discover that she’s gotten her period. Now there’s blood on his face and all over her dress. “I hadn’t read that in a movie before,” Dynevor says of the scene. “That was the moment I was like, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere.’”
Not only did the subject matter of “Fair Play” lean into areas that are taboo, but Domont wove a complex narrative. The newly engaged couple’s relationship gets rocked when Emily, played by Dynevor, is unexpectedly promoted over Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) at the firm where they both work, creating the conditions to explore gender politics in the workplace and in relationships, with particular attention paid to male fragility and female rage. All were meaty topics that Dynevor could relate to.
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“There wasn’t much imagination required for this role,” the 28-year-old Manchester, England-born actor says during lunch at the Polo Lounge. She’s dressed in a cozy black sweater and jeans, with flats and dark sunglasses that set off her auburn hair — an inconspicuous look for the posh surroundings. “I didn’t need to try to understand where Emily was coming from. I really believe this is every woman’s story in whatever small way.”
After making a splash at last year’s Sundance (and landing a $20 million distribution deal from Netflix), “Fair Play” debuted over the fall amid the SAG-AFTRA strike, so Dynevor hasn’t had a chance to weigh in on the discourse around it. But she has been reading the comments.
“Seeing the way men reacted to the film versus women was very interesting,” she says. “It made me laugh that men felt very strongly about how they were being depicted badly.”
Dynevor has been acting professionally for half her life — she booked her first TV job at 14 and landed a recurring role on “Younger” in her early 20s. But it was “Bridgerton” that catapulted her into stardom — and it almost didn’t happen.
In 2019, Dynevor was planning to take a break from acting. “I’ve wanted to quit this industry a lot,” she says. Then she got a call to read for Daphne Bridgerton, the debutante dubbed a “diamond of the first water” whose Regency-era romance with the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page), and subsequent sexual awakening, would become the centerpiece of the period drama’s first season. She got the job. “In hindsight,” she says, “I know that hiatus from acting probably wouldn’t have lasted very long. It’s my only thing, really. There is no Plan B.”
The series exploded onto Netflix on Christmas Day 2020, becoming the streamer’s most watched to date. (Three years after its premiere, Dynevor’s season stands as Netflix’s fourth-most-watched show of all time, with 929 million hours viewed.) Practically overnight, Dynevor became an “It” girl, earning accolades — a Satellite Award nomination for her lead performance and a SAG nod alongside the show’s ensemble cast — as well as invitations to Hollywood’s biggest parties. But with the glitz came unwanted attention from the tabloids, which fixated on her brief relationship with “Saturday Night Live” alum Pete Davidson.
“Post-‘Bridgerton,’ there was this feeling of ‘Am I meant to be here?’” Dynevor says, explaining that she’d set out to be a working actor like her mom, Sally Dynevor, who has starred in the English soap “Coronation Street” since 1986. “When I got the success and fame, I wasn’t expecting it, and wasn’t prepared. I didn’t really have a voice or a sense of self, fully. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve been finding my voice and where I fit into this world.”
Booking “Fair Play” was a major step in that journey, in part because of some life advice she got from co-star Eddie Marsan, who said, “Have the most ordinary life you can in order to have an extraordinary career.”
“He told me that at a time when I really needed to hear it, and it stuck with me,” Dynevor says.
Marsan, who plays Campbell, Emily and Luke’s abusive boss, remembers that conversation well, and how exhausted all the noise had made Dynevor. “I’ve seen younger actors where fame has come on very fast, and I’ve seen them panic. But what Phoebe seems to do is just knuckle down and concentrate on the work,” Marsan says. “She’s very keen to keep it real.”
When Dynevor’s name came up in a casting meeting for “Fair Play,” Domont says she was “one of the only people in the world who hadn’t yet watched ‘Bridgerton.’” And then she was blown away by the pilot.
“I was just enamored by her performance,” Domont says. “I love the way distress plays in her eyes. I needed someone who could give me a really wide range — who could play both soft and vulnerable but also fierce, who could bite your head off. I knew that Phoebe could give me all of that.”
Once she booked the role, Dynevor worked with a dialect coach on Emily’s Long Island accent. Music helps her get into a part, so for Emily, Dynevor listened to a lot of hip-hop sung by female artists. “When I need to keep my head up and keep going, I listen to Beyoncé to embody that confidence,” she says.
To learn the finance jargon, she read “Hedge Funds for Dummies” and interviewed financial analysts. “I know nothing about those things. And it’s a very specific personality who can thrive in that world; it’s very hardcore. But I could relate in the sense of loving something so much and it fueling you and getting that high.”
That’s how she’s felt about acting since she was a child, watching her mom on the “Coronation Street” set, and even more so when she starred as Antigone in a school play. “I’m really drawn to women that won’t settle — women who are always asking questions,” she says. “I love that in people, so I love that in a character.”
Dynevor and Ehrenreich also worked closely with an intimacy coordinator to choreograph the film’s sex scenes, which begin with the randy restroom tryst and devolve into a devastating sexual assault. Much like “Bridgerton,” where Dynevor also worked with an intimacy coordinator, here the scenes are integral to the storyline in the way they depict how the sex ultimately becomes about power.
The scene where rough sex becomes rape was very tricky. “We had to make sure that you hear Emily say, ‘Stop,’” Dynevor says, recalling filming the emotionally taxing sequence. “We had to make that really clear, because the audience needed to know: This is the line.”
Talking about sexual assault is not usually a polite lunchtime conversation, but because partner assault is so rarely depicted on screen, she’s been preparing to talk about that moment and the film’s controversial ending, which sees Emily take her power back from a sniveling Luke.
The ex-couple’s intense showdown, which Domont refers to as Emily’s “knife drop” moment, was filmed after the sexual assault scene, which was beneficial for Dynevor’s emotional investment in the arc. “I was able to hold onto that scene, which was very hard to shoot,” Dynevor says. And that fury was very necessary for the intense monologue she’d have to deliver next — cutting Ehrenreich’s Luke with her seething words and quite literally nicking him with a knife.
Then she delivers Emily’s final line: “Wipe the blood up off my floor and get out. I’m done with you now” at a volume barely above a whisper. “There’s this wonderful tension that Phoebe brings to that last moment. You don’t know if she’s going to kiss him or kill him,” Domont says. “There’s a tenderness. It’s the final goodbye before it’s like a light switch, and she’s just done with it.”
Dynevor feels lighter these days. After putting this heavy role behind her, she’s plotting her next moves with a clear idea of the kinds of characters she wants to play. She’s not returning for the upcoming third season of “Bridgerton,” for instance. But she’s got two movies on the horizon — “Anniversary,” where she plays the antagonist, and the spy thriller “Inheritance” — and she aims to begin producing.
She also has a healthy perspective on the roles that didn’t work out, like Lois Lane in James Gunn’s upcoming “Superman: Legacy,” for which she was in the final round of contenders.
“It was a whirlwind and then I realized that it was over, but it was great,” she says, explaining that Lois Lane is the type of role she wants to play. “She saves Superman. She’s the brains; she’s actually the fearless one.”
Dynevor has also worked hard to build boundaries. The personal ones have been easy — like keeping developments with her new “certain somebody,” as she puts it, low-key. (Dynevor has been linked to actor Cameron Fuller, and they made their most public appearance in July at Wimbledon.) “Having a separation is the key,” she says. “Being able to clearly say, ‘This is my job; it’s not my life.’ There’s a line now.” But there’s been a bit of an internal battle about learning how to say no professionally. “It’s bizarre. The working actor inside me is like, ‘What are you doing saying no?’”
But she’s resolute. “I’m gonna say no until something speaks to me,” she says. She wants to feel about any role she takes the way she felt when she read “Fair Play.” “Those moments that make you go, ‘Oh, my God, this is why I do what I do!’ are rare. And that’s the best feeling ever.”