Baby Reindeer and Fleabag producer Francesca Moody on the magic of the Edinburgh Fringe

Francesca Moody | Vicky Double

“I was on a train from Norwich to London when I first read Baby Reindeer, and I didn't look up until I got into Liverpool Street Station,” says Francesca Moody. “In fact, I sat for five or ten minutes on the train after it arrived, because I couldn't bear the idea of not finishing it. It had that kind of fizzy sense you sometimes get with shows. There's a gut instinct of, I don't know how we're going to do it or where I'm going to find the money, but we must make it happen.”

For many years Moody’s name couldn’t be seen in print without the words ‘Fleabag producer’ alongside, following her involvement with the ground-breaking original 2013 Fringe run of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s later global phenomenon. A Fringe producer ever since – latterly with her own company Francesca Moody Productions – she’s had hits which have transferred successfully to London and beyond since then, including 2022’s Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder.

Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd | Netlflix

Yet following its hit Netflix adaptation, Richard Gadd’s 2019 solo Edinburgh play Baby Reindeer is now as linked with Moody’s name as Fleabag (although she emphasises she produced the theatrical versions, not the onscreen ones). “Baby Reindeer represents exactly what we try to do with all our shows, and why we keep returning to the Fringe,” says Moody. “We see the long-term journey for something, from the Fringe to off-West End to West End to a TV show.”

Raised in Oxfordshire and a self-described “textbook extrovert, a natural attention seeker”, Moody studied acting at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Her first Fringe was in 2006, on work experience with Scamp Theatre aged 17, and she’s been a fixture ever since, working front of house at C Venues and Assembly to producing with Paines Plough, including their Roundabout venue at Summerhall.

She produced her first Edinburgh play in 2011, the year after drama college, and two years later was invited by old college friend Vicky Jones to be assistant producer on Fleabag, which her company DryWrite was considering bringing to Edinburgh. When the original producer had to leave she was promoted, and her knowledge of the Fringe was invaluable.

“There's something about the idiosyncrasy of the Fringe microculture,” says Moody. “Knowing the venues, where you go, how you talk about a show, how you work with marketing – I was able to leap into producing a show there when I was very young.” It is a practice she’s honed, and if her Edinburgh shows aren’t a guarantee you’re watching the next Gadd or Waller-Bridge, her name is a definite badge of quality.

“Francesca produced the first play we wrote together, Square Go, in 2018 at a time when nobody else would touch it,” says playwright Kieran Hurley, co-writer with his fellow Scot Gary McNair of this year’s VL, a sequel to their previous work. “So when we had the idea to revisit the same characters in VL, we knew we wanted to take it to Francesca first.

Kieran Hurley, co-author of VL | Contributed

“VL stands for ‘virgin lips’, but it also stands for so much more. If you're a VL it means you've never been kissed, but it also means you're a sad wee loser wi’ no mates who's getting battered every day for the rest of your life.” In the play, Max and Stevie are two 14-year-old friends desperately trying to escape crushing social stigma as they navigate the violent chaotic hormonal pressure cooker of an ordinary Scottish secondary school.

“It's a rambunctious, silly, nostalgic and relatable comedy about the painful absurdity of being a teenager, that’s nevertheless having a serious conversation about the terrible lessons our society teaches young boys about how to be men, how to relate to women and girls, to themselves and to each other. We’re trying to have a conversation about how what we teach the boys of today shapes the men of tomorrow.”

 

Moody’s second show this year, Weather Girl, is directed by Tyne Rafaeli, who also directed Moody’s debut Edinburgh production The Ducks back in 2011, and who introduced her to writer Brian Watkins, the creator of the Prime Video series Outer Range.

Dark comedy Weather Girl | Michael Wharley

“It's a dark comedy about a California weather reporter who has a mental breakdown because of climate change,” says Watkins. “She journeys down a spiral of American strangeness and discovers something unthinkable in the process. At its core I wanted to ask what's behind our impulse to wreck the places we love, to capture what feels like a very contemporary yearning to be connected to the physical, to the earth and land in more meaningful ways, and how that's complicated by the fact we're consuming ourselves with our consumerism.

“The play is a runaway train you can't get off as it laughs into the dark. The main character attempts to perform a miracle with a few insufficient tools – a green screen, a karaoke machine, some wet chicken – evoking the feeling of grappling with climate change, and maybe also bringing a play to Edinburgh. It has a gonzo speed and humour from the very beginning.”

Writer and performer Todd Almond’s I’m Almost There, meanwhile, emerged after Almond – star of Girl from the North Country on Broadway – met Moody at the press night of Fleabag’s most recent West End run. “I can’t overstate the value of having a mind like Francesca’s giving you approval and encouragement,” he says.

“I’m Almost There is about the demons we all have that tell us to be alone, to be wary of happiness, and that we probably aren’t the kind of person who can be loved. It’s a comedy, I swear! I structured it like Homer’s Odyssey; our unnamed hero is just trying to get to the front door, but he keeps getting waylaid by adventures in self-doubt. It's important for me that stories like this exist—they make us feel less alone, ironically.

“I don’t think self-doubt is unique to gay and queer people, but it’s the experience I knew as a kid in small town America in the 90s, so I’m only too happy to make some comedy and music out of my life. It’s saying, ‘Hey, you know what? Just opening your door and stepping into your life can feel as epic as Homer, it’s worth it.” 

Edinburgh is where Moody and a lot of her clients made their names, but it means more to her than just a place of work. “It’s a really magical, gorgeous city,” she says. “It's a walking city – you can go up Arthur’s Seat and you can get to the sea in the same day, if you want. If it wasn't so far away from my family, I'd probably live there.

“From a Fringe perspective, it's got a quality that’s hard to replicate anywhere else. Many cities have tried to do a version of what the Edinburgh Fringe is, and they’ve never quite managed it. As somebody who works in the cultural sector, I also love knowing that everyone's at the Fringe to experience culture, when for so much of the year you’re trying to justify the work or convince people to see it. It’s always a pleasure to step into that.”

VL, Roundabout @ Summerhall, 8.10pm, until 26 August; Weather Girl, Summerhall Cairns Lecture Theatre, 6pm, until 26 August; I’m Almost There, Summerhall Main Hall, 2.25pm, until 26 August