killing it

Everyone’s favourite TV assassin makes her Hollywood debut – in a blaze of action-hero glory, no less. Jodie Comer talks stardom, Scouser pride and sexist double standards with Alley Pascoe

- Jodie Comer

Jodie Comer, with her armfuls of best actress awards, pages of critical acclaim and her place on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, still calls her childhood bedroom home. It was in this house in England’s Liverpool that Comer covered her walls in indie-pop band posters and ticket stubs from local gigs, listened to Bruce Springsteen with her dad and watched Judge Judy with her mum. These days, a “tacky” plastic chandelier lamp is the last remnant of her childhood interior design taste: tasteful paisley wallpaper has replaced the Blu-tacked teenage memories, and her 2019 Bafta award now takes pride of place. With a rich Liverpudlian laugh, the 27-year-old actor tells the story of her parents – Donna, a transport worker, and Jimmy, a sports massage therapist – nicknaming the Bafta Billy and taking it on a pub crawl around their home town. “My mum has a table with my Emmy, my magazine covers and a couple of other things. It’s like a little Jodie shrine,” she says.

Comer’s parents certainly have reason to be proud. Their daughter’s career-catapulting role as Villanelle (aka Oksana Astankova), the Russian-born, expertly trained killing machine, in Killing Eve was one of the reasons BuzzFeed crowned the series “the perfect show for these wild times”. And it wears the jewel-encrusted tiara well. Watching the genre-defying spy drama is like sitting front row at an haute couture runway show where the models are trained jujitsu fighters, and the Dom Pérignon is laced with an undetectable hallucinogenic. The accents! The fashion! The sociopathy!