It looks as though the Jones family is getting a new member. Ish. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Indiana Jones 5 character has finally been revealed and it isn’t, as some surmised, his canonical daughter, Sophie. Instead, Waller-Bridge will play Helena, Indiana’s goddaughter and an entirely new character in the franchise.
“She’s a mystery and a wonder,” as Waller-Bridge described her character to Empire, with the film’s director James Mangold adding that she’s “slippery, charming, the girl next door, a grifter.” The character will no doubt prove to be not just an assistant to the famed adventurer/archaeologist but also a thorn in the side, as Mangold says she is largely based on Jean Harrington, Barbara Stanwyck’s scheming but delightful con artist in Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve.
Some may be disappointed that Waller-Bridge isn’t playing Sophie, Indy’s daughter in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and mother of his grandchildren Spike and Lucy, but perhaps the production felt that the scoundrel-like nature of Helena needed a whole new character to handle the moral ambiguities.
In any case, the actor seems nothing short of delighted to handle whatever the role requires. She describes accepting the role as a virtual no-brainer once she read the script. “It was the fastest I’ve ever read a script; I came out of a sort of haze afterward. I just couldn’t believe how much fun I had and how moved I was by it. And then I had a Zoom and screamed, ‘YES!’ at them all.”
Waller-Bridge also seems to relish the physical demands of her role, a marked difference from her best-known performance in Fleabag. “Honestly, I just loved it,” she told Empire. “When you’re playing a character who throws herself on the back of a vehicle, there’s no acting around that. You just have to bloody do it.”