Jodie Comer has said the record-breaking drama Killing Eve should end on a “good note” after the next series rather than continuing until it is “kicked out the door”.
The BBC spy thriller, starring Comer as the psychopathic assassin Villanelle and Sandra Oh as British intelligence officer Eve Polastri, is approaching its fourth and final series.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar, the Liverpool-born actor, 28, admitted she tried to avoid thinking about the show’s conclusion.
Comer, who received the editor’s choice award at the Harper’s Bazaar women of the year awards on Tuesday, said: “I’m trying not to think about it too much, honestly. It’s sad, you know? I’ve been with this character for a really, really long time.
“I would rather we ended on a good note and kept our integrity, instead of going on and on, and being kicked out the door.”
Comer said there were many layers to Villanelle : “She’s multifaceted and you can’t really pin her down. She’s instilled a sense of fearlessness in me. Through playing her, I’ve had to shed my own self-consciousness.
“Villanelle’s style is loud and a little bit mismatched. She dresses for herself, which I adore. I’m happy when I’m comfortable, I want to explore fashion but ultimately, I want to feel like myself. Villanelle would probably hate me.”
The actor said she hoped to appear in a science-fiction project and work with the French film director and screenwriter Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival.
“I’d love to do some very grounded sci-fi and I really, really want to work with Julia Ducournau,” she said. “What I love about her is that she clearly has such a distinct voice and her films are so unexpected.”
Killing Eve follows Oh’s Polastri as she attempts to track down and arrest Comer’s Villanelle, but as the pursuit unfolds the pair develop a mutual obsession with one another.
In 2018, the first season set a record for BBC iPlayer when it notched up 10.8 million requests in seven days. This record was later beaten by the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
Based on the Villanelle novel series by Luke Jennings, each series has been led by a different female head writer, with the first penned by the Fleabag creator, Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Emerald Fennell was head writer for season two, Suzanne Heathcote worked on season three and the fourth and final series is led by Laura Neal, who previously worked on the Netflix comedy-drama series Sex Education.