TV’s sexiest PSYCHO killer who’s got style
RTÉ2 thriller Killing Eve is ten times smarter, gorier and funnier than any drama this year – plus it boasts two top Irish stars and a leading lady who’s well on her way to being a new fashion icon
ABLONDE assassin, angelic in looks but deadly in temperament. A rogue MI5 agent, obsessed and seduced in equal measure by her enigmatic nemesis.
And a high-octane, utterly addictive cat-and-mouse game, guaranteed to hook you in from the start.
It’s no wonder Killing Eve, the compelling new thriller, has enthralled audiences — first in America, where it debuted in June, and now in Ireland, where RTÉ2 is the first European broadcaster to premiere the show.
So here’s all you need to know about this year’s best drama.
WHY ALL THE FUSS ?
BASED on a series of novels by British author Luke Jennings, Killing Eve tells the story of Villanelle, a beautiful but ruthless femme fatale who becomes intrigued by Eve — played by Canadian actress Sandra Oh — a frustrated and scatterbrained MI5 security officer who is transferred to a clandestine unit of MI6 on a top-secret mission to hunt down Villanelle.
Her husband Niko is played by Galway actor Owen McDonnell, best known to Irish audiences as Garda Sergeant Jack Driscoll in RTÉ’s Single-Handed.
And the producers looked to Ireland again to recruit south Armagh’s own Susan Lynch as the mysterious Anna, Villanelle’s one-time language teacher in Moscow whose life is tragically interwoven with that of the enchanting psychopath.
As well as Villanelle’s enviable designer wardrobe, of which more later, part of the appeal is in the beautiful locations. Much of the drama was shot around North London, but the cast also travelled to Paris, Bucharest and Tuscany. It’s part spy thriller and part black comedy. One minute you’ll be reeling at one of Villanelle’s cold-blooded assassinations, the next you’re laughing at her one-liners and the way she teases her handler like a naughty child. Then there’s the minutiae of everyday life in the secret services — office politics everyone can relate to, with actress Fiona Shaw playing Carolyn Martens, the icy-calm boss with a dry sense of humour. The plotting is fiendishly clever, with our TV critic calling it ‘thrilling’.
THE HOMEBIRD STAR
BY FAR the star of the series is Jodie Comer, a young Liverpudlian actress who was little known until now, but whose turn as the psychopath Villanelle is already opening doors for her in Hollywood.
Aged 25, Jodie still lives at home in middle-class Liverpool, in the same red-brick semi she grew up in, with mum Donna, 54, dad Jimmy, 53, and younger brother Charlie, 23. ‘I’m a real homebird,’ Jodie said recently. ‘I honestly cannot imagine not living with my mum and dad. I like having these two worlds — I get to travel and visit cool places, but then go back to reality.’
Jodie’s love of drama started at St Julie’s Catholic High School, where she attracted attention with her uncanny ability to slip into a character, or accent, entirely unlike her own. In Killing Eve, her Scouse twang is eclipsed by Villanelle’s husky French-Russian voice.
Teachers at St Julie’s remember a girl with ‘prodigious talent and diligent work ethic’.
‘She was a really big part of life at the school,’ recalls Jo Walls, head of performing arts, who taught dance when Jodie was a student. ‘She was academic but also very creative.’
In 2006, Jodie won the Liverpool Drama Festival. It led to her first paid job — a BBC Radio 4 play — and soon after that, an agent, at global agency International Talent. After bit parts in Holby City, Waterloo Road and Silent Witness, she got her first break in Channel 4’s My Mad Fat Diary. But it was her next role, in which she played an abduction victim in BBC thriller Thirteen, that earned Jodie a Bafta nomination.
In 2015, she won the part of Kate Parks, the student having an affair with Simon Foster, the errant husband of Dr Gemma Foster, played by Suranne Jones, in the eponymous, popular drama.
In 2016, Jodie was named as one of the British Film Institute’s Stars of Tomorrow and last year was cast in The White Princess, the sequel to the BBC’s The White Queen. The script for Killing Eve came her way shortly afterwards. When she saw writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s name on it, she says, she ‘knew she had to do it’. Jodie threw everything into the role, decamping from Liverpool for locations in France, Italy, Germany and Romania; having intensive language lessons (she speaks French and Italian in the series); and even learning to do some of her own gory stunts.
But as the series receives universal acclaim, and filming begins for the much-anticipated second run, Jodie
admits that what matters most is winning her family’s approval.
‘We’re a very close family,’ she says. ‘They’re really pleased for me, especially my brother.
‘He’s two years younger and I care more about what he thinks than anyone else. Whatever happens, I can’t upset our Charlie.’ Her attitude to fame is, as one would expect, incredibly level-headed. ‘A lot of things have happened by chance,’ she said recently. ‘I’m a big believer in fate, and it’s working out well so far.’
WARDROBE TO DIE FOR
AMERICAN Vogue called Killing Eve ‘the most fashionable show on TV’, with outfits — particularly those worn by Villanelle — better suited to a high-end catwalk than bloodspattered murder scenes. Her exquisite designer wardrobe, estimated to be worth tens of thousands of euros, is part of the plot: Villanelle is based in Paris, and charges high fees for ruthlessly slaughtering people, to fund her love of clothes.
She wears a bubblegum-pink tutu-style dress with Balenciaga boots to meet her employer in Paris, dons a brocade Dries Van Noten suit to carry out a hit in a Berlin club and stabs a man in the eye in Tuscany using a vintage hairpin — but not before checking with him who designed his silk throw.
As with many elements of the femalefriendly production team, the wardrobe mistress is a woman: namely Bafta-winning Phoebe de Gaye, who was also behind Jodie’s costumes on The White Princess.
CHILLING MUSIC
HAUNTING at times, upbeat at others, the soundtrack for Killing Eve is just as seductive as what’s on screen. Irish composer David Holmes, who worked on the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy, and music supervisor Catherine Grieves, behind the soundtrack on the bigscreen production of Les Miserables, worked to bring the sounds of the series to life.
‘We wanted a powerful female voice in the music from the beginning,’ Catherine explains. ‘Villanelle and Eve are strong, complex women, and we wanted the music to reflect this.’
Pop songs alternate with eerie, more obscure tracks such as Killer Shangri-La, by Spanish band Psychotic Beats, and ‘K’ by US band Cigarettes After Sex. Fans can listen to the soundtrack on Spotify, and there is talk that it could be released as an album.
DEATH WISH
ACTRESS and playwright Phoebe WallerBridge, previously best known for the critically-acclaimed BBC sitcom Fleabag, is the brains behind Killing Eve, having written and produced the eight-part series.
Phoebe, 33, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to have small roles on stage and screen, including in Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady in 2011 and Broadchurch in 2015.
Divorced from Irish filmmaker Conor Woodman after four years of marriage, she is now in a relationship with Irish playwright and screenwriter Martin McDonagh, director of Oscar-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.
Fleabag, a comedy about a young woman struggling with modern life, started out as a play, which was how Phoebe crossed paths with Luke Jennings, author of the novellas on which Killing Eve is based, who came to watch a matinee in 2015.
As Fleabag — in which Phoebe stars — transitioned to TV in 2016, behind the scenes she was starting work on Killing Eve, determined to twist the traditional male spy thriller into a tale of female empowerment.
‘There was a meeting at one point where someone said: “We can’t have too many women,”’ she said recently. ‘I was like, “What the f*** are you talking about? Not if it’s written and shot well.” ’
She has injected both the dialogue and plot with her characteristic wry humour and witty repartee — and says her only regret is not casting herself in a cameo role.
‘I wanted to be brutally murdered, but the schedule meant I couldn’t do it,’ she admits.