Killing Eve
Season 3 SABC3 (*193) 21:00 Drama
Playing a vicious assassin is one thing; performing body-breaking stunts to make the action scenes look realistic is an entirely other proposition on drama series Killing Eve. Just ask lead star Jodie Comer and her stunt double Penny Ashmore. “I’ve been working on the show since season 2 when the action scenes were a bit more demanding,” explains Penny, who looks so much like Jodie that they could be twins.
“The producers contacted my agents looking for a stunt double and they immediately sent my portfolio. I was cast without even having to audition – the footage that the producers saw, as well as my headshots, convinced them on the spot,” says Penny, who’d only been in four independent productions before she joined Killing Eve. “I studied at the Royal Central School Of Speech And Drama, so I’m a classically trained actress. But there’s something fun about being in action scenes with choreographed fights and being able to shoot guns and work with weapons. I’m not a tomboy by any stretch, but I love this work.”
As for Jodie, she was happy to hand over the punching and kicking sequences to Penny. “I broke almost all of my nails in season 1. I actually stopped getting them done because the tips would be snapped off. So it was worthless. Now Penny gets to throw punches for me,” says the 29-year-old actress. “I had to learn the choreography moves and it’s a lot of hard work. You don’t know how much work it is being a stuntdouble. I’d much rather learn lines and have to play out scenes onscreen then having to come to work every day and get beaten up,” she says.