...as is Richard Gadd

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s dominance of the awards season has become so complete that she has just been nominated for her fourth and fifth major gong today alone.

The West End revival of her one-woman play Fleabag, which spawned the hit BBC series, has been nominated for an Olivier Award, while she’s in the running for best actress.

It comes hours after Fleabag was nominated for three Royal Television Society Awards, for best comedy, best female comedy performance and best comedy writing.

Her ‘hot priest’ co-star Andrew Scott is also in the running for an Olivier for his performance as a washed-up matinee idol in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter at the Old Vic.

And Inside No 9’s Reece Shearsmith is up for best actor in a supporting role for A Very Expensive Poison at the same theatre.

Fleabag – which was previously nominated for an Olivier award in 2014 when it was staged at Soho Theatre –  is up for best entertainment or comedy play alongside Emilia, Magic Goes Wrong, and the newly opened stage version of Ben Elton’s The Upstart Crow starring David Mitchell.

And comedian Richad Gadd has been nominated for outstanding achievement in affiliate theatre for his show about his stalking ordeal, Baby Reindeer, which ran at the Bush Theatre in West London. 

He said: 'This has been the most incredible journey and thank you to the most wonderful team in the world for all of their effort and brilliance. I am blessed with the greatest people around me on this show.

'It has been so hard bringing this part of my life to the stage, at times brutally painful, but facing fear and working through the trauma of yesterday has been a hugely powerful and cathartic experience for me.'

The awards will be handed out on April 5 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, at a ceremony hosted by Jason Manford.

Published: 3 Mar 2020