Phoebe Waller-Bridge joins His Dark Materials cast as Andrew Scott’s daemon

RadioTimes.com understands that Waller-Bridge’s role (a female osprey daemon named Sayan Kötör) will essentially be a small cameo performance in the BBC fantasy drama, but Scott (who plays John Parry) was still extremely excited to play opposite her.

“So much of what’s beautiful to me about the books and the series is the relationship with the daemons,” Scott said during the His Dark Materials panel released by Comic-Con @Home, the online version of San Diego Comic-Con.

“So I do have a relationship with my daemon – and I think this is the first time we’re revealing this, but my daemon is going to be played by somebody who is very close to me in real life, which is a young performer and a writer called Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of her?” he deadpanned.

In the world of His Dark Materials (and Pullman’s books) daemons are essentially human souls personified as sentient animals, with a close mental and physical bond between human and daemon that plays into many storylines within the series.

And Scott said that the close working relationship he developed with Waller-Bridge during the making of her acclaimed BBC series Fleabag (where he played love interest The Priest) helped feed into their interaction in the series, where she lent her voice to the computer-generated daemon.

“I’m really thrilled about that, because it’s all about companionship and friendship and loyalty, and that’s what I feel about Phoebe in my real life,” Scott said. “So it’s wonderful that that’s happening.”

We’re sure that Fleabag fans would agree – and for Scott, it was just one of many attractions about joining the His Dark Materials world for season two.

“It was really exciting – everybody just went ballistic about the first season. It’s always a little bit intimidating to come in, and you don’t want to mess it up,” he said.

“But it was really brilliant, and I got to work with incredible actors. Lin [Manuel-Miranda], a lot of my stuff was with Lin and we had such a good time, we really did, it was a total joy to do that.”

From battling his inner demons in Fleabag to working alongside them in His Dark Materials, it’s certainly been a bit of a journey for the former Hot Priest - though frankly, we're a little disappointed his daemon didn't turn out to be a fox after all...

His Dark Materials returns to BBC One and HBO in autumn 2020