BBC’s Killing Eve is back for its third season and things seem a little familiar. Villanelle is killing people when she’s not luxuriating in her posh apartment in a beautiful European city. Eve Polastri is self-isolating as best as she can after being shot in the back. Ok. That’s a little different.
Still, it’s a good time to take a look back at where the characters and their bloody, toxic story started. Whether you’re binging the series for the first time or the tenth (catch up people!), here are ten things you didn’t know about the first season of Killing Eve.
Based On A Book
Killing Eve took a lot of people by surprise when its first season debuted in 2018. Even more surprising is the off-kilter series is based on a series of ebook novellas by British author Luke Jennings published as a serial between 2014 and 2016. The novellas later were stitched up into the novel Codename: Villanelle, published in 2018. The series stays pretty close to the book, though the literary Villanelle is hunting down the gangsters that murdered her dad, as opposed to being a for-hire assassin.
Over A Hundred Women Auditioned For Villanelle
It’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role of Villanelle besides Jodie Comer, who brings an incandescent kineticism to the role of the violent assassin, but over a hundred other actresses hoped to. And it’s a little hard to square the idea that Killing Eve producer Sally Woodward Gentle wanted someone who could disappear in a crowd. Comer would never get lost in any crowd, but she has a chameleon-like quality in her appearance (and her voice – the accents) that made her a shoo-in.
An International Production 
In keeping with its spy-thriller roots in the books, the first season of Killing Eve was an ambitious international production. Filming took place in a number of locations throughout continental Europe, including London, Paris, Tuscany, Berlin, and Bucharest (among others). Typically television productions film in one or two dedicated locations and apply some creative set-dressing to make people think they’re somewhere else due to cost limitations, but the show spared no expense.
Fleabag Wrote It
One reason the first season of the series crackled the way it did will come as no surprise: the first season showrunner and head writer was none other than Phoebe Waller-Bridge, acclaimed and decorated writer of Fleabag.
RELATED: Fleabag: 10 Funniest Lines That Break The Fourth Wall
Killing Eve producer Sally Woodward Gentle drafted Waller-Bridge after optioning the rights to the ebooks, primarily for her manifest wit and talent. The combination paid enormous dividends right away. Waller-Bridge produced a magic crackle in the dialogue and plot, putting a new spin on a fairly familiar trope of the female assassin.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge Almost Played In The Show
Waller-Bridge, who also performed and provided the snarky voice of L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story, briefly considered acting in the first season of Killing Eve herself. According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the producers tried to talk her into playing a role in the first season. Phoebe Waller-Bridge toyed with the idea of conforming an existing character closer to her sensibility, but couldn’t quite imagine herself in the series, so she ultimately declined and unfortunately, deprived fans everywhere of a snarky death at the hands of Villanelle.
In Style
A big feature of the show is Villanelle’s ever-evolving looks. She changes clothes as often as she kills someone, and both tend to get more and more ostentatious. Her chameleon-like nature in adopting different names, accents and wigs bleeds over (no pun intended) to her own personal fashion sense. According to costume designer Phoebe De Gaye, Villanelle doesn’t obey any logic when it comes to fashion (or the law) which leads to outfits like the huge pink pouffy dress she wore to what was basically a psychiatric evaluation in the first episode.
First Scene
The first scene Jodie Comer shot in Killing Eve was actually the scene in which she wore the bubblegum pink pouffy dress. In the scene, Konstantin, her handler for the shadowy no-good extra bad cabal known as The Twelve, takes her to an analyst in Paris. The analyst tries to see if Villanelle still has the soulless detachment necessary for her brutal and bloody work. Comer wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t sure if she was doing a good job finding the character, but safe to say she did.
Sanda Oh Didn’t Know Who She Was Playing
When Golden-Globe winning actress Sandra Oh first auditioned for the role of MI6 agent Eve Polastri, she initially didn’t think she was up for a lead role. Her experience in Hollywood had ingrained a reflexive sense that she would always be typecast as the girlfriend or someone’s friend, and she was stunned when she realized that the producers wanted her for Eve.
RELATED: Killing Eve: 5 Deaths That Broke Our Hearts (& 5 We Actually Enjoyed)
Her comic sensibility – and the much more subtle uncertainty she brings to the dynamic, as opposed to the openly reckless Villanelle – truly made their relationship catalytic in the first season.
Aunt Petunia Is Eve’s Boss
Eve is recruited into a special (and secret) task force to identify and capture Villanelle by MI6 operative Carolyn Martens, played by British actress Fiona Shaw. Shaw has had a long career in theater, cinema, and television, but she may be most recognizable as Harry Potter’s aunt Petunia Dursley. Shaw brings a dry, no-nonsense attitude to the situation, grounding both Eve’s eager conspiracy theories and Villanelle’s fanciful bloodsport. She and her son, Kenny, form the nucleus of the team to bring in Villanelle and discover the truth behind The Twelve.
The Kitchen Scene
When producers settled on Sandra Oh as Eve and Jodie Comer as Villanelle, the next step was to audition them together. The chemistry between the two characters was key to the success of the show, and to test the sparks between Oh and Comer, they auditioned what would be their first actual meeting on the show. The frightening, funny scene in Eve’s kitchen in episode five of season one features a wholly unmatched Eve being stalked by Villanelle, who is too smitten maybe to act on her best (worst?) instincts.
