Jodie Mencan be too scared to hit onme
After winning a Leading Actress Bafta for her performance as sexy psychopath Villanelle in Killing Eve, Jodie Comer has sealed her place as one of Britains hottest talents
It’s nice that people are now taking me seriously
JODIE COMER ON HER SCREEN SUCCESSES
AS SHE tearfully clutched her Bafta and thanked all those who made her win possible, it seemed Jodie Comer couldn’t believe she was actually up on that stage.
Bagging the Leading Actress gong for her role as sexy psychopath Villanelle on hit show Killing Eve has cemented her place as one of Britain’s hottest talents.
But there’s no chance of 26-year-old Jodie letting success go to her head.
The down-to-earth star still lives at home with her parents and younger brother in Liverpool, proudly hangs on to her Scouse accent and likes nothing more than nights out with her mates.
“If I am working away a lot, I just want to come home and do normal things and get back to reality,” said Jodie. “It definitely keeps me grounded. A lot of people from Liverpool are homebirds like me.
“They have a very big sense of pride about where they are from and family is extremely important.”
There are no other actors in the Comer family – Jodie’s dad James, 53, is a sports massage therapist for Everton FC and mum Donna, 54, works for public transport body Merseytravel.
But the young Jodie was always doing accents and impressions, and her nana Frances – who died while Jodie was filming Killing Eve and who she name-checked in her Bafta
BY NADINE LINGE speech – reckoned she was the one who gave her a love of performing.
In 2006, she won a place at the Liverpool Drama Festival, which led to a role in a radio play.
She had a stroke of luck when she did a day’s filming aged 16 with Line of Duty star Stephen Graham – another person she thanked in her Bafta speech.
He spotted her talent and recommended her to his agent, who promptly signed Jodie up.
Bit parts in shows including Holby City, Waterloo Road and Doctors followed, then a bigger part in Justice before her breakthrough role as Chloe in E4’s My Mad Fat Diary in 2013 alongside Sharon Rooney.
Work then came flooding in including the historical drama The White Princess. Jodie also bagged a role in gripping drama Doctor Foster as Kate Parks, the student who has an affair with and then marries Gemma Foster’s cheating husband. Her performance got plenty of reaction from TV viewers – “a woman called me a bitch on the train once,” said Jodie.
Playing kidnap victim Ivy Moxam in BBC Three’s Thirteen landed her a 2017 Bafta Leading Actress nomination.
While she didn’t win on the night, she did end up getting drunk in her hotel room with a certain Phoebe Waller-Bridge – the woman who would go on to write the first series of Killing Eve.
When she got the chance to audition for the show months later, Jodie’s first reaction was horror. She said: “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I was so drunk that night. This is really awkward.’ But I don’t think either of us can remember that much.”
A week after her second audition, Jodie learned she had landed the part of Villanelle, the assassin with a sharp wit and sharper fashion sense who becomes obsessed with MI5 agent Eve Polastri (played by Sandra Oh).
She had to drop her Liverpool accent and learn phrases in Russian, German, French and Italian and got to do some of her own stunts. The show was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic and viewers loved Villanelle and her sociopathic ways – from the first scene where she knocks an ice cream into a little girl’s lap, to stabbing a kill target in the eye with T her poisoned hairpin. he second series of Killing Eve is airing in the States and will be on TV here next month. Her performance has made Hollywood take notice.
She will fulfil her ambition to do a film in next year’s Free Guy, in which she plays a video game programmer and an avatar in the game she created, alongside A-lister Ryan Reynolds.
Jodie said: “What I am really appreciating is that people now want to meet me and have conversations with me and see what I want to do and what films interest me.
“I’ve never been in that position. It’s just nice that people are like, I don’t know, maybe taking me seriously.”
While her career is on fire, in her personal life Jodie is single. Turns out playing a psychopath can be a bit off-putting for men.
Jodie said: “I really don’t get approached at all. When I am introduced to men, sometimes they are a little bit hesitant and, yes, maybe they can be a bit frightened.
“I feel like if I meet someone at the right time that would be great but at the moment I am cool with just being by myself. It’s nice.”