BRIDGERTON and FAIR PLAY Star Phoebe Dynevor Covers ELLE’s October 2023 Issue

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For the October 2023 cover of ELLE, Dyvenor discusses her newest role in FAIR PLAY, (out October 6), her background research for the movie and how working in Hollywood prepared her well for the role, and how she wants to keep making movies that explore complex issues and start a conversation: “As a woman in this industry, there are a lot of voices and opinions; it helps to focus on what my younger self would have wanted. And to have creative control, and to be telling stories like this, is everything I ever wished for. That’s the kind of gift that came out of the whirlwind.”

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On the premiere of Fair Play in Park City and listening as reactions from the crowd swirled around her: Women rushed over to tell her how much the film had meant to them. Afterward, Dynevor sat awed and overwhelmed in the back seat of a car next to her costar Alden Ehrenreich, who plays her fiancé Luke, when he turned to her and said, “This is what it’s all about, right?” “And I was like, ‘Yes, yes, it is,’” Dynevor recalls. “It was my first film festival, my second-ever film, and I was still aware of how unique and special that experience was, and how it might not happen again or for a very long time.”

On background research for Fair Play and how working in Hollywood prepared her well for the role: Dynevor read Hedge Funds for Dummies to prepare. She also spoke to men working in finance, but truthfully, her years in the entertainment industry were all the preparation she needed. “I felt like I knew enough about working in a very male-dominated environment,” she says. “There is an extra pressure being a woman in this industry, but I also think that it motivates me to work on stuff like Fair Play and to feel like, Oh, I can have a say at moving the needle—a very tiny, tiny say, but we use those things to our advantage if we can.”

On questions and ideas that Fair Play brings up in relation to modern feminism and traditional masculinity: “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… The thing that was interesting to me is how modern feminism is clashing with traditional masculinity,” she says. “We’re progressing, but that’s counteracted by the people holding on to traditional masculinity. We’re at this weird time when there are 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 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.”

On being unprepared for just how successful Bridgerton would become when it premiered on Netflix on Christmas Day in 2020: “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.”

[Photo Credit: Mark Seliger for ELLE Magazine]

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