Killer queen
After a brief deliberation – fist bump? quick, slappy handshake? standoffish salute? – the actor Jodie Comer abandons 18 months of professional caution around hellos, spreads wide her arms, and gathers me in for a big, swaying bear-hug. We’ve never met or spoken before. “But I’m quite a tactile person,” says Comer, who grew up in a suburb of Liverpool and whose scouse accent, which sharpens or softens depending on the circumstances and her level of comfort, is in full, glorious evidence
The 28-year-old has knocked off early from rehearsals for season four of TV drama Killing Eve, in which she plays an assassin called Villanelle. She recently got back from an Italian film festival where her second proper Hollywood movie (an epic called The Last Duel) had its premiere. Her first proper Hollywood movie (a knockabout comedy called Free Guy) is still playing in cinemas, an ad for it plastered on the side of the bus I rode in to meet her. By choosing a cafe close to her rented London flat, we’ve managed to confound her numerous competing obligations and come together for an actual tea and biscuit, instead of the video call originally planned by her diary-keepers.
“How long have you been back doing stuff like this in person?” Comer asks, sitting down. “Cos I gotta say, I’m so glad to be here. Present. Not on Zoom. I totally forgot that this was what we used to do. Hot drinks! Biscuits! You become so used to the routines of separation, don’t you?”
Comer is cresting as an actor. She is one of the golden few for
