The jet-setting assassin Villanelle, played by British actress Jodie Comer in this years breakout hit Killing Eve, has a weakness for fashion. She lives in Paris (which makes it easy) and charges a high price for performing precise, ruthless kills, thereby making her haute couture habit affordable. Throughout the season, Villanelles looks are their own subplot. She slips into a Berlin club wearing a dandified Dries Van Noten brocade suit; she sulkily attends mandatory psychiatric evaluation in a flouncy saccharine-pink Molly Goddard gown—paired, rebelliously, with punky Balenciaga boots. In a gripping scene from the first episode, Villanelle takes time to ask her mark about the designer of an especially sumptuous silk throw he owns before skewering him, through the eye, with a poison-filled hairpin. Show-runner Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who adapted Luke Jenningss novellas into the eight-episode first season for BBC America, has made subverting viewers expectations about on-screen women into a mordant art.
Killing Eve became a word-of-mouth sleeper hit this spring, increasing its audience by 86 percent from the first episode, an unheard-of streak of viewership gains. BBC America was so high on its expectations for the series that it was renewed for a second season before Season One even aired. The gamble paid off. The drama was nominated for two Emmys, including a lead-actress nomination for star Sandra Oh—the first performer of Asian descent in the category. Killing Eve is not just an overnight sensation but a milestone for inclusion in the industry.
Waller-Bridges show entangles the viewer in a juicy cat-and-mouse story that pits two unlikely women against each other. Villanelle pursues, and is pursued by, M.I.5 investigator Eve (played by Oh), a frumpy, married bureaucrat who is titillated by Villanelle. The investigator falls for the assassins daring, flirty methods, and, like the audience, she thrills to the high drama of Villanelles life—the fabulous power, the unbridled violence, the satisfaction of watching a pretty girl repeatedly outmaneuver the world around her. Eve describes Villanelle to the police-sketch artist in purple prose, dwelling on her “catlike eyes” and “very delicate features”; when she first sees photos of Villanelles bloody handiwork she cant help uttering an exhilarated “Cool!”
Unexpectedly, despite the investigators Uniqlo wardrobe, battered anorak, and awful green scarf covered in zebras (a similar one can be purchased on amazon.com for $7), Villanelle is intrigued by Eve, too. At first its just the excitement of someone paying attention to her, but gradually it becomes more complex; Villanelle sees a side of Eve that Eve would rather not show the world. Quite romantically, that side is communicated by her unruly, fabulous hair. Villanelle comes to practically fetishize it, recognizing—accurately—that Eve could be a wilder woman than shes allowing herself to be. In one of the most erotic moments of the show, Eve opens up her lost suitcase, only to discover that Villanelle has stocked it with decadent designer clothing, all in her exact sizes. Swigging wine, she tries on a dress—a Roland Mouret black-and-ivory number—and is stunned at the femme fatale she sees in the mirror. As the shows costume designer, Phoebe de Gaye, put it, Villanelle “wants to manipulate Eve into seeing her own beauty.”
Its this seeing that makes the show so addictive, especially for female viewers. Eve sees Villanelle in the precision of her handiwork; Villanelle sees Eve through the tangle of her hair.
Killing Eve plumbs feminine allure in new and interesting ways, as Eve and Villanelle find cozy, familiar methods of cornering the other. Villanelle barges in on Eve to eat her leftover shepherds pie; Eve politely stops in for tea and cake at the home of Villanelles ex-lover. The most taut moments come when Eve is alone but immersed in Villanelle, be it when shes wearing the high-fashion clothes the assassin gifted her or trashing her well-appointed apartment. Eve appears to almost welcome the incursion of Villanelles ridiculous, petulant personality—but shes increasingly made aware that the killers seductive qualities are just the surface of an actual psychopath.
Theres something to be said for women watching other women—and seeing past the surface, to appreciate whats beyond mere superficial styling. When Eve and Villanelle first glimpse each other, its in a mirror in the womens bathroom, but each takes note of the others reflection. The series core is less two adversaries battling each other than it is two women shadowboxing with the parts of themselves they have, unwittingly, seen reflected in the other.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Sonia SaraiyaSonia Saraiya is Vanity Fair's television critic. Previously she was at Variety, Salon, and The A.V. Club. She lives in New York.
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