Woman Crush Wednesday: Sian Clifford Kills it in HBO Max Series ‘Two Weeks to Live’

Happy November, everybody! What better way to kick off a month full of giving thanks and trying to fend off the increasingly colder weather than by celebrating a Woman Crush Wednesday dedicated to a dynamic and incredibly talented woman whose onscreen work warms our hearts and fills us with gratitude every time we see her?! So, without further ado, give it up for November 2020’s first WCW, the spectacular Sian Clifford! 

WHO’S THAT GAL: Sian Clifford

WHY WE’RE CRUSHING: Clifford stars as the overprotective survivalist mother of Kim (Maisie Williams), Tina Noakes, in Two Weeks to Live, which drops on HBO Max this Thursday, November 5th. Venturing to a local pub, action is set in motion by a practical joke played on Kim of a fake video depicting a nuclear explosion apocalypse and that everybody had just two weeks to live. Kim – raised to believe the end times were close – sets off to kill the man who murdered her father in front of her when she was a child. Don’t miss out on Clifford’s great work in this must-watch six episode crime-comedy miniseries.

WHERE YOU’VE SEEN HER BEFORE: Clifford spent much of her early acting career working onstage in live productions both on and Off West End in London, before transitioning into on-screen work in 2012 with her first professional role as Ida Thomas in sci-fi documentary series Dark Matters: Twisted but True. From there, she had a string of smaller or one-time roles in shows like Midsomer Murders and short films like Paddy, all the while still doing theater work, before getting her big break in the breakout, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Phoebe Waller-Bridge comedy-drama series Fleabag in 2016 as the titular Fleabag’s (Waller-Bridge) more put-together and serious sister, Claire. 

Things started to take off for Clifford from there, with work in short films like 2017 drama Fry-Up, 2018 comedy-drama Dodgy Dave, and 2018 comedy-drama White Lies, and television series like drama Vanity Fair, in which she starred as Martha Crawley in 2018. Then Clifford reprised her role as Claire in a 2019 sophomore season of Fleabag that was even more critically-acclaimed and award winning than the first, and which saw her nominated for both the Emmy Award for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and the Critics’ Choice Award for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series that same year. 

Since Fleabag: Season 2, Clifford has been working in film and TV more than ever, with roles in movies like 2019 crime-comedy adventure A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life, and shows crime-comedy Hitmen, crime-drama Liar, and crime-drama mini-series Quiz, all in 2020. With all of this fantastic recent work, we can look forward to whatever is next for Clifford, and the many years of credits and accolades that will surely be coming her way! 

WHERE YOU’LL SEE HER AGAIN: Luckily, you don’t have to wait too long to see Clifford again on a screen near you. She will star as Dr. Unsworth in The Duke, a comedy-drama set for a 2021 release, which retells the true tale of Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old taxi driver, who steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London in 1961. Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, and Matthew Goode are also set to star in this highly-anticipated new film. 

For even more from Clifford in the meantime, check out her Twitter, Instagram, and meditation platform, Still Space.

Watch Two Weeks to Live on HBO Max