The Untold Truth Of Jodie Comer

Jodie Comer is a chameleon, and she plays one on TV, too. The actress received widespread attention and praise for her layered and charming portrayal of Villanelle, the female assassin being hunted down by Sandra Oh's character in the hit BBC America series Killing Eve.

The show was renewed for its third season in 2019, which was a big year for the Liverpudlian actress. In May 2019, the star won a BAFTA award for leading actress, and, in September of that same year, Comer won the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for Killing Eve. Additionally, the TV femme fatale would begin work opposite Ryan Reynolds in the action-comedy Free Guy. Clearly, Comer has truly broken out into Hollywood.

With a career that's on fire and likely to continue to grow, Comer had a life before she found fame that's a bit of an enigma — one worth unravelling! The is the untold truth of Jodie Comer.

Sometimes Jodie Comer can get a little carried away when she's portraying the enigmatic assassin Villanelle on BBC America's Killing Eve. So when the actress, who is not afraid to give it her all with her performances, began actually choking during a scene, the actor opposite her thought she was just acting.

Comer detailed the incident in an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in April 2019, saying, "[Villanelle] was being her usual self, showing off and trying to prove a point whilst shoveling mouthfuls of pasta. And it came to my close-up, so I was really going for it. ... And it was particularly dry and rather large. And surprisingly, it shot down the back of my throat mid-take. And the actor opposite of me kind of thought I was making a really weird acting choice and was like... watching me choke."

Soon, everyone on set realized Comer was actually in trouble and rushed to her side. The actress said that she laughed with her brother about the incident after the fact, saying, "Of all the things that could potentially kill Villanelle... it was a mouthful of pasta."

Playing an assassin on TV comes with a lot of faux blood on Jodie Comer's hands. The actress has murdered so many characters as Villanelle on Killing Eve that she can't keep track of all her victims. 

While appearing on Late Night With Seth Meyers in April 2019, the actress talked about her inability to keep count of Villanelle's victims and revealed there is a "kill wall" behind the scenes. She said, "I'm sure the actors will be thrilled to hear this, by the way. Yeah, so whenever we had an actor who was ... who suddenly left us, we would put a big red cross through their face, and turn them upside down and put them on a separate wall. And we slowly realized that the death wall was so much bigger than the remaining cast."   

She noted that it's "hard to keep tabs" on all of Villanelle's victims, especially because the show introduced the character so late in her life: "We've literally joined her life so late in the game that I'm like, 'Can you imagine all the people [she's killed] prior?'"

Before she landed the role as an unstoppable female assassin playing a cat-and-mouse game with Sandra Oh on BBC America's Killing Eve, actress Jodie Comer had to endure a part-time job that she hated. The job? Working the check-out line at Tesco, a British grocery store chain.

The actress talked about her experience in an interview with Glamour UK in June 2019, when a fan asked Comer for advice on dealing with a job and boss she disliked. Comer responded by saying, "Quit." This turned into a discussion about Comer's job at Tesco, a job where she always had to work the Saturday shift. She said, "I used to have a part-time job and the woman hated me. I mean, I hated the job as well. ... I think it was probably because I was hungover..." 

Thankfully, Comer got to leave the cashier job behind because, as it turns out, she's a talented actress!

Fandom can be an interesting thing. Fans are passionate, loyal, and sometimes a little extreme toward their favorite actors. Playing a character like Villanelle on a hit TV series has brought forth some interesting fans for Jodie Comer. While most fans just stop and stare at the star, there was one fan interaction that went a little too far.

During an interview on The Graham Norton Show in April 2019, Comer said, "I had one recently that was really strange. Someone asked me for a photograph and I was like, 'Yeah, sure,' and was posing for the photograph. And then she quietly just whispered in my ear, 'Will you strangle me?'"

The actress was startled by the odd request, and she shared that her publicist, who was standing with her at the time, told the woman, "No." Comer, unsurprisingly, did not fulfill the fan's request to strangle her. But we bet Comer's Killing Eve character, Villanelle, would have gladly done as she was asked.

One of the reasons for the success of BBC America's Killing Eve is the incredible chemistry between the show's two female leads, played by Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer. On screen, the pair walk the line between lovers and enemies, but, in real life, things aren't so complicated.

Comer fondly examined her relationship with Oh in an interview with Elle in March 2019, and she detailed her most memorable moment with her co-star. Comer said, "I think the most memorable moment that I had with Sandra was not necessarily on set. I always remember so vividly the first time that I met her in L.A. for my chemistry read. She was so welcoming and so generous."

The actress continued, "I think that that whole experience of meeting her for the first time and playing through the scenes and really feeling like we had kind of found the beginning of something, I think that is really significant in my memory of Sandra." 

Jodie Comer originally hails from Liverpool in the United Kingdom, but the actress has spent some time living in Los Angeles for auditions and appearances. Despite being a successful star, Comer hasn't had an easy time navigating life in L.A.

While appearing on The Late Late Show With James Corden in April 2019, Comer opened up about some bad luck she experienced in L.A., including scams and bed bugs. The actress shared, "I feel like I'm allergic to L.A. in some way." She explained, "The first AirBnB I went to ... she asked me to sign a sub-tenant agreement form and give my bank details and everything, to which I politely declined and left. And then my second AirBnB ... had bed bugs."

The actress, who was auditioning for roles at the time, received over 100 bug bites all over her body. Comer noted, "Yes, I did count every single one of them." Aside from the terrible housing situations, Comer thinks that "L.A.'s great!"

Jodie Comer knows how to party, but one night of hard partying at the 2017 Emmys almost jeopardized her chances of getting cast as Villanelle in BBC America's Killing Eve — at least, that's what Comer worried would happen.

At the 2017 awards show, Comer met Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and the pair partied together into the night. Waller-Bridge was also the Season 1 showrunner for Killing Eve, so, when Comer was called in to audition for the series a few months after their girls night, she thought she had made a fool of herself.

She told Variety in 2019, "We were both really drunk, until silly o'clock in the morning, and kind of forgot about it. ... Then months later I got the Killing Eve audition. You know when you get the fear when you can't remember from a hangover, and you're like, 'Oh, God, was I doing an embarrassing dance? Did I do something cringey?' I panicked, but we spoke on the phone, and she was like, 'We were in the same boat. It's all good.'"

Jodie Comer is close with her family, who reside in Liverpool in the United Kingdom. So it was a bit of a surprise that the actress didn't bring her family with her to the 2019 Emmy Awards. Comer apparently didn't want to drag her family to the event because she assumed she wouldn't win — but she did.

She told Variety in 2019, "It's nice to bring your parents to these things," adding, "But I just said, 'Oh no, sit this one out. Now's not my time.' I'm probably not going to ever live that one down with them, or they'll be coming to every single thing now!"

The star beat out Laura Linney, Viola Davis, Robin Wright, Mandy Moore, Emilia Clarke, and Killing Eve co-star Sandra Oh for outstanding lead actress in a drama — something that left Comer in a "complete state of shock." She told Variety, "But it also happened so fast. ... You want to soak it up, not rush it, and take it all in. I feel like I blabbered on a lot!"

The universe can sometimes send something a person's way at the worst possible time. For Jodie Comer, her audition for the BBC America series Killing Eve came when she was dealing with a hangover. However, the actress didn't let feeling under the weather ruin her chances of doing an awesome job at her audition.

In an interview with BUILD series in April 2019, Comer recalled the audition, saying, "I just remember I was on holiday in Barcelona. I'd been to a musical festival actually, so I wasn't in a hurry. I was on like a five-day hangover, and I was like, 'Okay. Right. I've got this 13-hour flight to L.A. — I've got to do it. I've just got to deliver.'"

The actress continued, "I just knew what I needed to do. And then, to be honest, it was being in the room with Sandra [Oh] where it all kind of came together, within five minutes of us meeting each other." The audition went well, Comer landed the part, and the rest is history.

Jodie Comer's Killing Eve character, Villanelle, can be a little over the top sometimes, which was something that worried the actress when she initially took the role. 

When asked what scared her most about Villanelle during an interview with the Los Angeles Times in September 2019, Comer explained, "I think what scared me the most was the tone of the show. There was this constant humor undercut in the dark moments, and Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] and Harry Bradley, and Damon — the directors — they always encouraged me to take risks and really kind of push moments, which sometimes felt unnatural, or maybe a little bit more than what I would usually do."

Comer continued, "I remember when it first came out and I thought, 'Oh god. She could be a complete caricature.'" The actress worried about "overplaying" the part, but she found a happy balance playing a believable character who could also be "bold" and "outrageous." 

When Jodie Comer got called back to audition for Killing Eve opposite Sandra Oh in Los Angeles, the actresses were surrounded by props. The duo had to act out eight pages of the script, and Comer's character had to eat pie — something the actress actually did over the course of the day it took to do the audition. 

The actress detailed the experience in an interview with BUILD series in April 2018, saying, "I had to eat in the scene, so they got this blueberry pie. So by the time I left the audition, I'd gone halfway through it. They literally had to roll me out." 

Comer didn't spit any of the pie out during the audition because her character, Villanelle, "devours life." Comer went on to say that she's never played a part where "the person eats so much." Luckily for Comer, all of the pie-eating did not go to waste because she got the part!

Audiences and critics know Killing Eve is a huge hit for BBC America now, but no one could have predicted the show's success before it aired — especially one of the show's stars, Jodie Comer.

The actress opened up about the show's surprise success in an April 2019 interview with On Demand Entertainment, saying, "I think it was such a gorgeous surprise to everyone. We obviously had confidence in, you know, in the people behind the show, and the writing, the cast, the crew, but you can just never, you can never guess how something's gonna resonate with an audience, and it kind of went worldwide."

The actress told On Demand Entertainment that she was still living in the United Kingdom when the show premiered in the United States, so she didn't realize how successful it had become until co-star Sandra Oh informed her. By the time the show was filming its second season in the UK, Comer noticed fans were watching them in the streets and asking for photographs.

Killing Eve, a series that follows an assassin and the MI5 security officer set on taking her down, was so successful that it was renewed for a second season after only one episode aired on television. Critics were drawn to the powerful performances delivered by the show's two leads, Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, and the chemistry between the on-screen duo was undeniable.

The actresses are supportive of each other's work on the show, but Comer admitted to Vanity Fair in April 2018 that she never watched a single episode of Grey's Anatomy, the hit series on which Oh previously starred. And Comer is thankful she wasn't a fan of Oh prior to meeting her during her audition for Killing Eve because it would have made her more nervous.

Comer told Vanity Fair that Oh made sure she had all the props she needed to audition for the part of Villanelle, saying, "Sandra's the most professional person I've ever worked with."

As a child, Jodie Comer loved to talk and do impressions — much like her Killing Eve character, Villanelle. The actress told Town & Country in April 2019, "I didn't really go to a local drama school until I was maybe 11. ... I was very extroverted, very in touch with my emotions. I loved to talk, and I was probably a bit of a nuisance in the classroom because I never shut up."

Comer realized she had a tremendous acting ability when she was 12 and performed a monologue at a local drama festival. The show had dozens of other kids performing and her father — who'd never seen her act before that moment — was worried she wouldn't be very good.

But Comer was very good. In fact, she won the competition after performing a monologue on the Hillsborough disaster. On her father's reaction, she told Town & Country, "I remember seeing my father's face after I finished. He was just, 'Whoa.'"