Phoebe Waller-Bridge Talks Tomb Raider, Doing Right by Lara Croft
Lifelong fan Phoebe Waller-Bridge has opened up about adapting Lara Croft for her upcoming Prime Video series.
Back in April — before the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike — Waller-Bridge sat down with Joy Press of Vanity Fair. During the newly-published interview, Waller-Bridge discussed developing the upcoming Tomb Raider series, as well as her teenage addiction to the original video games. “My parents were very smart because they didn’t actually limit me. They could sense that I was going to just game myself into the ground, and I did,” Waller-Bridge said. “I packed the PlayStation away, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to not do that because I’ve got to write and read and do other stuff.'”
Despite hanging up her PlayStation controller, Waller-Bridge maintained a love for the character of Lara Croft. “She had an attitude. She was very deliberate in what she wanted to do,” the Solo: A Star Wars Story alum said. “That all changed when they realized that they could market her to be a sex symbol.” Nevertheless, Waller-Bridge dove back into Tomb Raider during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. So, it seemed like fate when Amazon asked her to pen a small-screen adaptation.
“God, it literally felt like that teenager in me saying: Do right by her, do right by Lara!” Waller-Bridge recalled. “The opportunity to have, as we were talking earlier, a female action character … Having worked on [James] Bond and having worked as an actor on [Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny], I feel like I’ve been building up to this. What if I could take the reins on an action franchise, with everything I’ve learned, with a character I adore, and also just bring back some of that ’90s vibe?”
Press asked Waller-Bridge if she was hesitant
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