Few shows over the past decade have made waves like Fleabag and Baby Reindeer. Both started massive cultural conversations, both went on to scoop up a slew of fancy awards, and both started as one-person plays on the back alley stages of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Their common denominator? Falling under the eye of theatre producer Francesca Moody.
Described by The Guardian as a "Fringe super-producer", Moody makes it her business to bring "knotty, thorny, complex ideas" to the stage.
The producer and head of Francesca Moody Productions has hand-reared dozens of shows from the Edinburgh Festival to the West End, from the aforementioned phenomenons, to musicals such as Weather Girl and Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder.
Ahead of the London premiere of her latest Fringe hit Roleplay – the one-woman story of a feminist podcaster who reinvents as a sexfluencer – we sat down with Moody to try and tap into how she spots her next hit.
"I'm always really led by gut instinct," she said, in a blow for anyone trying to replicate the Fleabag formula, "Sometimes you don't even know you're interested in something until somebody presents it as an idea.
"It's also anything that comes from really original perspective, and has a sense of authenticity. Not that it needs to be based in truth, but more that it feels like it comes from a really authentic place. It's about knowing that the artist is saying 'this is the one story that I'm really burning to tell.'"
Her new show Roleplay is the perfect example of this. Written and performed by comedian Hannah Reilly, Moody said the show is bound to ignite conversation.
"The show is about what it means to capitalise and monetise identity – and sexuality – what does it mean to make yourself the commodity?"
She continued: "You want people to come out of the play wrestling with their own ideas and perceptions of those themes. I think it's so much more exciting and interesting when you go to see a play and you come out the other side and you don't necessarily know where you land on it,.
"Because I think none of these things are binary, there is no right and wrong.
"You know, there's this tension because you can be a feminist who empowers somebody and says live your life how you want. But then on the flip side, you can know that only reason that Danni [the main character] is able to make any money from her sex podcast is because men have been perpetrating this misogynistic view of women for hundreds of years."
Moody added that the show especially applies to the wealth of conversation around figures like Bonnie Blue: "What does it mean to criticise or not criticise Bonnie Blue?"
It's hard not to ask Moody about Fleabag in this context, whose superpower was making you love its main character (the great Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in spite of some truly awful decision-making.
She said: "The way that people were empathetic towards Fleabag rings true here. They share that sense of the complicated nature of what it means to be a human being, the grey areas that we live in as people. You know, we are fallible, we are villains, we are heroes all at the same time.
View oEmbed on the source website"You know, sometimes you find the character deeply unlikable, and you don't agree with their choices. But then you also feel incredibly empathetic and extremely sorry for them."
Reilly and director Paige Rattray pitched Roleplay to Moody before taking it to the Fringe this summer, where it enjoyed a completely sold out run. When getting the show on its feet, Moody's method is often to let the creatives crack on.
"I think my job is to let them write the thing that they want to write, and then be there to support them in the moments where they really need it. I don't get into the weeds too early.
"I think it's important so that you let the artists say it the way they want to say it. The great shows are the ones where artists are making the work unencumbered by lots of other people and voices and ideas and concepts, then there's a kind of purity to the work they make."
Likewise, she doesn't get too bogged down into who the work is made for. "When we were making Fleabag, we were thinking about what it meant to be woman living among women at that time, and there was this huge swing going on in gender politics. But I still think that work is universal to a certain extent, we're making female-led stories for women but it works for men too."
As with Fleabag, Moody's newest story is complex and layered and, as she stresses, "crucially, very funny". It seems all too likely that this show could have a life beyond the stage soon.
Roleplay is showing at Soho Theatre from 22 October to 21 November.
For more live entertainment recommendations, check out our roundup of the best comedians and comedy shows touring the UK in 2026 and the best West End shows.