It is so nice to meet you.
You, too.
Thanks for having me.
This is very surreal.
That's your accent.
Yeah.
Sandra Oh said when I meet you, I'm
going to be surprised by your accent.
So you're from Liverpool.
Yes.
Yeah.
Liverpool.
OK.
Home of the Beatles.
Yes, exactly.
But I'm so shocked to hear that because I just don't--
in Doctor Foster, you had an American accent, right?
No, she was British.
Oh, she was British.
Yeah.
Maybe I--
Didn't do a good job there.
No.
[LAUGHTER]
No, she was British.
She was from London, yeah.
And so now, you play a Russian assassin in this.
And you have all kinds of accents in this.
Yes.
And languages.
That was a big part of the character.
When I auditioned, they were like, you know,
she speaks a lot of languages.
And obviously, in the audition process, I was like, oh, yeah.
Fine.
Like, not thinking about it.
And then, when we got to set, I was like, oh, this is real.
Yeah.
It's an intense character.
Yeah.
It's a really intense character.
So a little bit of-- if you haven't seen Killing Eve,
just this cover of Entertainment Weekly is--
Fancy.
Yeah.
Showing you kissing a knife.
Yeah.
That was my decision.
Yeah.
Well--
You can imagine.
It's good for the character.
That's amazing, that cover.
Yeah.
It was a great day.
Yeah.
So all right.
Tell everybody-- explain who you are.
You have so many different characters
within your character.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I kind of had to view Villanelle
as an actress in many ways.
She puts on these personas.
She dresses up.
She uses the accents and the languages.
And it's all a ploy to kind of trap her victims
and lure them in.
But it's a wonderful aspect of playing her.
It's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
I've seen the first two episodes of season two.
Oh, great.
And I'm just--
I can't wait to see the rest.
It's such a great show.
Thank you.
And you get to do-- now, there's a lot
of like climbing buildings and riding motorcycles.
Do you do a lot of that?
Do you like doing--
No.
I'm so uncoordinated, and I'm not agile at all.
I have an incredible stunt double, Jessica.
But there were a lot of outtakes of me.
You know, it might be written in the script
like she pulls out a knife very smoothly.
But then, there's like 15 outtakes of me
trying to do that convincingly.
So yeah, a lot of it's smoke and mirrors.
So what is the day on the set that you were eating pasta,
and that was the most dangerous day?
I don't understand that.
Yeah.
Well, that was in series two.
She was being her usual self, showing off
and trying to prove a point whilst shoveling
mouthfuls of pasta.
And it came to my close up, so I was really going for it.
Bear in mind I was eating pasta from 9:00 AM,
and this was about half 4:00 in the afternoon,
so it was a lot of pasta.
And it was particularly dry and rather large.
And surprisingly, it shot down the back of my throat mid-take.
And the actor opposite me kind of
thought I was making a really weird acting choice and was
like--
Watching you choke.
Watching me choke.
Yeah, it was all on camera.
And then, everyone kind of realized
that it was actually a very serious moment
and kind of ran in to help me?
And did someone give you the Heimlich?
What happened?
No.
Well, just before that was about to happen, it passed.
But when I told my brother, my brother
was like, I just love the fact that of all the things
that could potentially kill Villanelle, it was--
It's that.
Yeah.
It was a mouthful of pasta.
Well, Sandra Oh's character should know that and feed you
pasta.
Yeah.
I mean, someone should tell her.
So do you-- do you visit Los Angeles often?
I have done over the past three years.
Do you like it?
I like it.
I don't think it likes me.
Why is that?
Every time I'm in LA, something really strange happens.
Like what?
For instance, the first time I was here, I had to-- well,
kind of got kicked out of my Airbnb
because I wouldn't sign a subtenant agreement form.
The second time, I got bed bugs, so I
was going to loads of meetings head to toe in bites,
which is really attractive.
And then, I was here in January, and I
had to get all my wisdom teeth removed.
Emergency dental surgery.
All of them at once?
Like, what happened that you all of a sudden--
They were impacted.
It was right before the Golden Globes,
so I was being a bit of a party pooper at the Golden Globes,
which wasn't like me.
So that's when I knew something was--
something was wrong.
God, that's horrible.
Yeah.
So touch wood.
Nothing's actually happened--
Yet.
--this time.
Yet.
Good.
Well, I want you to get away from me as soon as possible.
[LAUGHTER]
But I really-- I couldn't wait to meet you because,
like I said, I loved you in Doctor Foster,
even though I forgot which country you came from.
And I absolutely adore Killing Eve.
It's just such an amazing character.
Thank you.
It's just so incredible.
So I can't wait to see the whole thing.
Thank you.
Killing Eve airs Sundays at 8:00 on AMC and BBC America.
We'll be right back.