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FROM DOCTOR FOSTER TO DEADLY ASSASSIN
Jodie Comer, best known as Suranne Jones’s love rival in the adultery drama, plays a hitwoman in new spy caper Killing Eve. And in it, she says, anything goes...
How do you attempt to neutralise the world’s most dangerous female assassin, a cold-hearted Russian beauty named Villanelle who kills for fun? Dispatch a timid, deskbound MI5 officer called Eve Polastri, who is more adept at bashing a keyboard than villains. At least, that’s what happens in BBC1’s new comedy-drama Killing Eve – and it might just turn out to be one of the most bonkers but brilliant spy thrillers in years.
‘It’s certainly wrong to underestimate Eve, although plenty do, including her bosses,’ says
Sandra Oh, the 47-year- old Canadian star of Grey’s Anatomy, who plays her. ‘She’s actually pretty smart and maybe, just maybe, a match for Villanelle.’
Taking the role of Villanelle is 25-year- old Jodie Comer, best known as Doctor Foster’s young love rival Kate Parks in the BBC’s hugely successful adultery drama, starring Suranne Jones as the betrayed GP. But in this role Jodie is far more threatening. ‘ Villanelle is lethal whether she’s holding a gun, a knife or even a hairpin,’ she says. ‘She has no moral qualms about what she’s doing. Basically she knows no limits.
‘ The writer of the series, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, said to me before we started filming, “If there’s anything you’d really like to do on television, however unlikely and extreme, now’s your chance to do it. I’ll put it in the script for you because pretty much anything goes with Villanelle.” And I did come up with a few ideas.’
Like the BBC’s Bodyguard, it’s a show dominated by powerful female characters. But at the outset, not everyone was convinced this was a good idea, says Phoebe. ‘We had this early planning meeting where someone actually said, “We can’t have too many women in this,”’ she says. ‘I was taken aback. I said, “That’s nonsense, it’s fine for it to have lots of women on screen provided it’s well filmed and well acted.” Which it is.’
Killing Eve is based on the novel Codename Villanelle by British author Luke Jennings, who’d had enough of watching macho male heroes dominate the spy and crime genres. ‘I thought today’s male thriller heroes were, almost without exception, humourless bores,’ says Luke. ‘There’d been too many wry loner cops with their embittered whisky-drinking and late-night jazz sessions. So why not turn the genre on its head and have some fun? I thought it was time for a change, so I created Eve and Villanelle.’
Luke says he had no problems visualising Villanelle. ‘I woke up and just saw her standing there, fixing me with her icy, sociopathic stare. She’s a child of post- Soviet chaos, as brilliant as she is ferocious, employed by a global corporation as their in-house murderess.’
The corporation is called The Twelve and it has provided Villanelle with a stylish Parisian apartment from which she carries out her deadly trade all across Europe. In the first episode she’s at large in Vienna (the series was filmed in England, France, Italy, Austria and Romania), hoping to seal her latest big-money payday by bumping off a Russian politician. Later, a super-rich Italian is in her sights at his magnificent villa in Tuscany. In the midst of a glitzy party, he’s lured to his death by his unsuspecting grandson. Then later still in London, Villanelle is on the trail of a witness to the first killing, the young girlfriend of the dead Russian.
Close on 30 people are murdered during the eight-part series, and while other characters do kill it’s Villanelle who bags the lion’s share. ‘She actually enjoys what she does,’ says Jodie. ‘She sticks around after she’s done the terrible deed because she wants to see the light going out of her victim’s eyes. It’s pretty horrible, but to her – a psychopath – it’s quite normal.’
The trouble is, sticking around could prove to be Villanelle’s downfall. Her bosses and her handler Konstantin (The Bridge’s Kim Bodnia) are worried that she’s becoming a little too arrogant for her own good and that taking time to admire her handiwork may lead to her being caught.
‘He knows she’s a brilliant assassin but he worries about her,’ says Danish actor Kim, whose character has a sort of father- daughter relationship with Villanelle. ‘He doesn’t want to see her captured or killed in the line of duty. He knows her over-confidence could prove fatal.’
Aside from dogged determination, Eve seems to have precious little else going for her in her hunt for Villanelle. ‘Eve isn’t your typical spy, the kind of person who’ll cross a continent in search of her target,’ says Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created and starred in the BAFTA-winning comedy Fleabag. ‘She’s not trained to within an inch of her life – she can’t do a backflip, pull a gun and shoot three people.
‘And she’s certainly not your typical hardened field operative. She may be out there hunting somebody down, but when there’s a strange noise in her house she runs upstairs and hides! Actually, I think that makes her more human and relatable. People will be rooting for her, and as the series progresses we see her develop a steely determination to track down her quarry.’
The scene where Eve and Villanelle finally meet proves the series is as much about black comedy as it is about killing. ‘Villanelle goes for her weapon of choice and Eve picks up a toilet brush because it’s the nearest thing to hand,’ laughs Sandra. ‘But an Asian woman as the lead part in a TV drama? When was the last time you saw that? It’s a real gift. I so wanted to play this character, even if her wardrobe choices sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Villanelle has great fashion sense and the money to buy designer clothes. Eve doesn’t. So Jodie walks around in beautiful Miu Miu dresses and I get to put on slacks, sneakers and socks.’
Killing Eve proved such a big hit with audiences in the US when it was shown there earlier this year, that a second season has already been commissioned. And it may include an appearance by the screenwriter herself. ‘ I really wanted a cameo in the first series – I wanted to be brutally murdered – but the filming schedule meant I couldn’t do it,’ says Phoebe. ‘I’d have liked to have been blown up or something. Maybe next time…’
‘Villanelle is lethal with a knife or a hairpin. She knows no limits’
Killing Eve, tonight, 9.15pm, BBC1.