DRESSED TO KILL
Lane change: Hermione Corfield breaks down her murderous character in cat-and-mouse crime thriller premiering on Showtime
MOVE over, Villanelle — Freddy Lane is the new charming murderer in town.
Freddy (Hermione Corfield) is a twentysomething blonde with a shadowy past who quotes philosophers and works as a phone-sex operator. She’s also a killer, and in “We Hunt Together” — a six-episode British crime drama premiering Sunday on Showtime (10 p.m.) — she’s being chased by prickly cop Lola Frank (Eve Myles) and her more jovial partner, Jackson Mendy (Babou Ceesay).
“I hadn’t really read a character like that,” Corfield, 26, tells The Post. “I thought it was incredibly bold writing and a really interesting character study of someone who has such an extreme duality to her. She was funny and engaging and such a multi-faceted character.”
In Sunday’s opener, Freddy shows her duplicitous nature when she expertly pits two men against each other in a dangerous battle in a seedy nightclub. Troubled refugee Baba (Dipo Ola) soon emerges as Freddy’s murderous sidekick after rescuing her from an assault.
The show is a breakout role for Corfield, who’s had small roles in films including “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” and “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.” She was also in the 2017 British TV series “The Halcyon,” set in World War II-era London.
“That was my first lead role in a TV show, but [’We Hunt Together’] was so different to that,” she says She’s aware that Freddy will invite the inevitable comparisons to Villanelle, the cold-blooded assassin played by Jodie Comer in “Killing Eve.”
“I purposefully stayed away from [watching] it,” she says of the BBC America/AMC drama. “I had watched a little bit of it before I knew I was playing this part [and] I do think Jodie is amazing and fantastic. Of course there would be comparisons drawn there, but in my mind, [Freddy and Villanelle] are very different. Villanelle works solo and Freddy has a need to find a partner in crime. A person that, in her mind, legitimizes the violence.”
To establish a level of comfort and familiarity between Freddy and Baba, Corfield and Ola went to a pub and got to know each other.
“I really wanted her to be likable as possible, so that you can buy into her love story with Boba and the human aspect of the murder,” she says. “Freddy is someone who really does want to love and feel what everyone else feels -- she’s just wired differently.
“That was an important balance to find — the human aspect within her more evil qualities.”