“Veep” actress Sally Phillips believes British TV is still sexist, it’s just “so much more hidden” these days, she said in a BBC Radio 4 interview.
On Tuesday, the comedian told the station’s flagship “Today” program: “It used to be that there just aren’t any women with their own shows — or just a few … and now there are. But their progress is just so slow through the ranks.”
Phillips plays Selina Meyer’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) frienemy Minna Häkkinen on the critically-beloved HBO political comedy, though she was apparently speaking specifically about British television during the radio interview.
“We’ll just compare two people, both of whom are considerably talented,” Phillips said, according to comedy blog Chortle. “Aisling Bea who is an amazing Irish comedienne, she went to one of the top drama schools. She’s a very gifted writer, she’s been writing with Sharon Horgan and got an established track record.”
“[Bea] had her first script read at the BBC when she was 26,” she explained. “She’s now 34 and she’s just made her taster tape — that’s a 20-minute non-broadcast tape.”
“Whereas Rob Beckett, who’s the other captain on ‘8 Out of 10 Cats,’ he’s again a very talented guy but he’s been given multiple platforms and had a pilot commissioned, even though he never went to drama school and doesn’t write,” she continued. “So it’s just much slower, much harder going for women and you wouldn’t at first notice.”
Another challenge for women, per Phillips, are female-driven projects being lumped together in the eyes of television executives.
“All of us have had scripts turned down because they’ve gone, ‘We’ve already got a women’s thing,’” she said.
Tuesday’s edition of “Today” was an all-female episode to mark the centenary of the act of parliament which gave some women the vote. Read more from the Chortle writeup here.