Phoebe Dynevor is officially free from the Bridgerton-verse, and her first big project will be October’s Fair Play, a Chloe Domont movie where she and Alden Ehrenreich chronicle a power struggle within their relationship. It might’ve been fun to see her do an aggressively modern photo shoot, because that is such a well-known period piece and something more contemporary might help recontextualize her as more than just Duchess Daphne With The Tiny Bangs. In the end, it makes the photo spread feel a little dull to me, although that also might be because it misses a fire in her eyes.
The profile is exactly what you expect. Dynevor must have had coaching on talking points, because Fair Play contends with her character outperforming her partner at work, and she uses variations on “as a woman in this industry” four times. I get it; I would be terrible at that, and she hasn’t had to do a ton of these yet. It just jumped out at me as a quirk. As did this:
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.” Later on, when we circle back to the film’s themes, she says she connected most with Emily in how hard she works to protect Luke’s feelings. “Emily is really trying to make herself small to make him feel masculine,” Dynevor says. “And I saw so much of myself in her for that reason—really going above and beyond to protect his fragile ego.”
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.
Hmm, a Bridgerton blind item, do we think?!?
