BAD TREE, BAD APPLE?

Suzanne introduces Villanelle’s Russian birth family in episode 5, including her mom Tatiana (Evgenia Dodina, Lusia in drama movie Past Life) who put her in an orphanage and told her two brothers she died in a fire. “I was really interested in the relationship she has with her mother. What I was really interested in was exploring it from the mother’s perspective. This idea that Villanelle had been ‘born bad’ and yet the reality being that Villanelle’s mother herself is someone who has a facade, a veneer that’s incredibly convincing. Was Villanelle actually violent as a child, and did she always show tendencies that were genuinely terrifying? I was really interested in those questions,” says Suzanne.