Fleabag Sian Clifford: ‘Show was so good we couldn’t help watching ourselves on TV’

Fleabag star Sian Clifford says the cast were glued to their screens for the second series — despite not usually watching their own work.

The actress, who plays Fleabag’s sister Claire, said she normally cannot bear to watch herself on TV.

But during the second series, which finished last night, she regularly tuned in and swapped messages with co-stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the title character and creator, and Andrew Scott, who plays the priest.

She said: “Andrew will kill me for this but none of us can stop watching it. Me, Andrew, Phoebe, we’re constantly swapping messages saying, ‘What’s wrong with us?’ It’s the show. There’s not a wasted second or line in it.”

Clifford praised its depiction of her relationship with Fleabag. She told Grazia magazine: “I think the show reflects 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.”

She welcomed the decision to end the BBC show with last night’s episode which Waller-Bridge has described it as “the final curtain”.

The episode won praise from critics and viewers alike, many of whom shared their heartbreak that the show was over. The Daily Telegraph called it as “a near perfect work of art”, while screenwriter Jack Thorne described one moment as “the line of the century”.

Bafta, which honoured Waller-Bridge for the first series, described the show as “short-lived but perfectly formed”.