As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fairs HWD team is diving deep into how some of this seasons greatest scenes and characters came together.
THE SCENE: KILLING EVE, SEASON 1, EPISODE 5
At roughly the midpoint of Killing Eves eight-episode first season , MI-5 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and the woman shes been hunting, globe-trotting assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer), share their first real interaction. Set in Eves kitchen over some microwaved Shepherds Pie, its a sequence Oh describes as a dance—Fred and Ginger spinning madly. The director of the episode, Jon East, calls it a home invasion which, technically, it is—Villanelle has broken in without permission. Comer says from her characters perspective its just a nice meal between friends while series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge imagines it as a wolf (Villanelle) coming to have tea with a mouse (Eve).
The food, the table, the two acting dynamos, and the much-anticipated confrontation between hunter and the hunted may prompt some movie buffs to think of the famous diner scene in Heat where Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro exchange barbs over coffee. (Thats a comparison, for the record, that hadnt occurred to Waller-Bridge though she was delighted by it.) However you want to describe, its the kind of powerful scene that signals to the viewer that Killing Eve is more than just a great show, its potentially a classic. Comer, Oh, East, and Waller-Bridge spoke with Vanity Fair about all the glycerine, fake meat, and sexual awakening that went into this show-stopping Killing Eve face-off.
How It Started
Waller-Bridge wrote the emotionally complex and uncommonly long two-hander out of order and in a rush months before it was shot so that actress Jodie Comer could have some material to work with during her audition. Though some slight material was later added to the scene, her initial, nine-page raw take on the meeting of Villanelle and Eve is almost identical to the finished product. “Phoebe just threw it out there,” Oh says. “she just came up with it.” With Oh already cast as Eve, Comer only had two days to memorize the nine pages of dialogue which would determine if she was the right actress to play Ohs foil Villanelle.
In order to make the younger actress feel more at ease, Oh brought in props including cups, water, cutlery, and—because she couldnt find a meat pie on short notice in Los Angeles—a blueberry pie for Comer to chow down on. Villanelles relationship with food is vitally important to her character generally and to this scene specifically. Oh, Waller-Bridge, and Comer all point at that the assassin is devouring •everything* in the scene, including, suggestively, the pie. While some performers, mindful of long hours and repeated takes, might nibble on their food, Comer says that in both the audition and the final take she really went for it: “I had to be rolled out of the audition room.”
On the day of the actual shoot, Comer was eating a Shepards Pie made with a corn-based substitute for the beef because, as she put it, she didnt want to “be in meat” all day. Fake meat has its advantages, but is also extremely dry and when the actress forked down a mouthful the wrong way, tears streaming down her face, she had to hold down a coughing choke while Oh got through her lines. Comer wont be eating Shepherds Pie again any time soon.
For Sandra Oh, however, dryness was the least of her worries. In the show, moments before the kitchen scene, Villanelle drops Eve into a bathtub and runs water on her in order to calm her down. That means Ohs character is wet and cold for the rest of the confrontation. The effect was achieved by dumping an entire tub of “crappy, cheap” gel on Ohs thick hair and spraying her down with glycerine between takes in order to maintain the sopping wet look over 11-plus hours of shooting. Both the pie and the glycerine further enhanced the initial dynamic of the scene: a voracious Villanelle on the prowl and a vulnerable Eve on the back foot. But Waller-Bridge was disinterested in keeping the power dynamic on one note for too long.
Setting the Scene
The location here is key. Director Jon East—who shot episodes 3, 4, and 5—decided to position the kitchen confrontation from Eves point of view. While the show at large is evenly split between assassin and investigator, this interaction set inside Eves home means the camera treats everything from her perspective. In a two-person scene with so much dialogue, the instinct is often to add a lot of movement and dynamic camera work in order to keep the momentum going. That proved unnecessary here given the caliber of the performances and the dialogue. The stillness of the camera, often positioned tight on Ohs face, was meant to reflect Eves own stillness in the scene. “If youre up against a panther in the jungle you wont make sudden moves,” East observes.
There was little-to-no rehearsal required either, though East had budgeted days for it, because Comer and Oh had much of the scene down pat after the audition process. So East went with whats called a rehearse/record approach and other than a brief run through to position his shots, let a fresher take play out on camera. This, Comer said, meant each actress was kept guessing as to what the other might do.
But while a high-stakes first meeting between villain and hero might be a familiar one for TV and film fans, Waller-Bridge says she laced this scene with domestic niceties in order to set it apart from the “spy genre cliché of someone being tied to a chair in a metal room with a gun to their head or a conversation behind bars.” Its not the first time Killing Eve, a uniquely female take on familiar espionage tropes, blended every-day mundanities with life-or-death drama. In Episode 1, Fiona Shaws character Carolyn initially recruited Eve while shopping for a pint of milk.
But while the addition of grocery shopping and reheating leftovers grounds Killing Eve in reality, this scene is hardly a case of putting two women in the familiar feminine sphere of the kitchen. Neither Eve nor Villanelle are exactly domestic goddesses. (Its Eves husband Niko, after all, who made that Shepherds Pie.) Theyre each a little out of their element and grasping at a bit of normalcy.
A Sexier Take
But just because these two women defy conventional feminine constructs in a number of ways, that doesnt mean Waller-Bridge is afraid of exploring those facets as well. A pivotal moment in the scene hinges on a clothing choice with Villanelle suggesting Eve slip out of her wet dress and into something a bit more comfortable. “Youre terrified, its sexual, Im fearing for my life,” Sandra Oh explains of the complex play of emotions she was tasked with conveying. It was a very vulnerable moment for the actress. “Im cold, Im wet and I had to get naked. Jodie didn't have to get naked! Shes like the gorgeous young 24 year-old but you know I was like, Pastie it up!”
So much of this middle section of Killing Eve is about Eves own awakening into her sexuality as an occasionally unstylish woman in her 40s. The wet designer dress shes wearing is a gift Villanelle sent her as is the perfume the killer later suggestively sniffs off her neck. (East had his usually still camera push in very gently here in order to mirror the invasive nature of that sniff.)
The entire scene is meant to underline a bit more overtly the sexual attraction/discovery that Waller-Bridge built in from the very beginning. “I love that it hits people at different moments,” she says of the idea that some viewers might not have grasped the queer aspect of the show until Villanelle leaned into Eves neck. “I knew that the first moment they see each other. I labeled that moment as, Love at first sight. But I didnt want it to be constrained to romance or to lust or anything like that. Theres something waking in Eve every day that she spends imagining what this woman is doing.” Waller-Bridges desire to keep the connection between Eve and Villanelle reading as both sexual and something else and never too obvious or on-the-nose, resulted in a slightly tamer version of that stripping down scene making it into the final edit.
Yes, Villanelle still tosses Eve a very suggestive look to go with a comment on her naked body. “Villanelle knows the power of a compliment with Eve,” Waller-Bridge explains. “Like telling her to wear her hair down, thats shes got a nice body. I mean, does any woman ever want to hear anything else? That youve got great hair and a great body?” But Jon East says that in a different cut of this same scene, Comers look was even more appraising and openly lascivious. He explains the difference in the final cut as “microchanges” and “millimeters of small movements right around the eyes.” But the version that made the cut also highlighted the disorienting innocent-seeming helpfulness that Villanelle occasionally couples with her more sinister moves. That politeness, Comer observes, is a coin that Villanelle is constantly flipping.
The Give and Take
Because Waller-Bridge—who gained notoriety for writing complicated, unpredictable women in her previous shows Fleabag and Crashing—is disinterested in straightforward storytelling, Villanelle isnt the only one flipping coins. The series creator constantly praises her actresses for dishing up two such layered takes on classic character tropes: “Were so lucky with Jodie and Sandra because they could be a klutzy spy chick and a kind of crazy, manic pixie assassin fairy.” But Waller-Bridge is also able to identify something inside herself that keeps Killing Eve watchers on their toes: “The moment something feels predictable, theres a roar in me to just go to the most surprising place, I dont want to bore myself.”
Thats why, just as Ohs character is regarding Villanelle with what seems like sympathy for the tear-soaked sob story the assassin is dishing up, she drops an abrasive “bullshit.” Even in that victory, Eve is also crying for her dead friend Bill (David Haig) and Waller-Bridge points out how much strength Oh and Comer both access in a moments of deep emotional exposure: “Theyre most powerful not when theyre being strong or bad-ass with each other, its when theyre vulnerable.” Eve is correct to call bullshit here and suddenly its the killer who is on the back foot. There are a number of other small victories for Eve in the scene who reveals she knows more about Villanelles past than the assassin expected.
But the most enjoyable tone flip still belongs to Comer when, just as Villanelles leaning into the possibility of unburdening herself about her past and potential experience with sexual assault, she drops a genuinely funny, stinging assessment of Eves wardrobe.
Waller-Bridge says that because she was forced to write this pivotal scene so early in the process of breaking out the season, she was able to lace a number of its elements—like Villanelles fondness for uncomfortable jokes—back through earlier episodes. It also helped block out the rhythm of this season. Killing Eve swings big in terms of action and carnage in its first four episode because Waller-Bridge knew she was aiming towards the relative stillness of this season. Every terrible thing Villanelle has done in order to get in front of Eve in that kitchen is enough to raise the stakes on the scene without needing any violence between the two women beyond a barely-used paring knife.
But it also means that as a half-way point in the season, this scene will also likely act as the calm before another storm. Whatever comes next for Villanelle and Eve, theyll always have the hum of the microwave and the memory of Shepherds Pie.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.
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