‘Killing Eve’ stars ready for another round of obsession
“You should never tell a psychopath they’re a psychopath — it upsets them.”
So deadpanned the disturbingly likable assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) to dogged intelligence agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) in the breakout first season of BBC America’s “Killing Eve.”
To recap the darkly comic thriller: In a global game of cat and mouse, the women raced through London, Paris and Moscow as they obsessed over outsmarting — and impressing — the other.
Disheveled brainiac Eve, a people-pleasing bureaucrat until she was recruited by MI6 bigwig Carolyn Martins (Fiona Shaw), initiated the chase. Then a flattered and fascinated Villanelle began to stalk Eve.
An element of sexual attraction pervaded Season 1, which ended as Eve pretended to seduce Villanelle but stabbed her instead. Instantly regretful, Eve ran for bandages while her victim fired a few shots (she missed) before escaping.
When the wildly popular series returns Sunday, it will dive into the dire consequences of that twist of the knife.
“One of the biggest questions for Season 2 is: How does someone get back from an act like that?” new executive producer Emerald Fennell says. “We are so used to seeing violence that we forget just how truly harrowing it would feel to push a knife into someone’s body. Or to have a knife pushed into you in a moment of total trust and vulnerability. We wanted to give that incredible moment the fallout it deserved.”
Comer says of the show, “What I love is that we now have people who want to be a part of the show and be killed. Like, that is a thing. And I think that is what is so lovely … that people have enjoyed it so much that they want to come in and meet an awful death.”
Outside of the hit series, co-star Oh found time to host this year’s Golden Globes (while also taking home a trophy for best actress in a drama series).
“I was petrified,” she says. “And then I was relieved and ecstatic. You know, then I was ecstatic in a way of like all the stuff that I could not feel leading up to it, I felt so vividly. Like afterward at the party, I didn’t need one drop of alcohol. I didn’t even want it because I was so high. I was so high. It was magnificent.”
