KILLING EVE: Sandra Oh & Jodie Comer Face Off

BBC America announced today that Jodie Comer has been cast as a co-lead in the upcoming thriller series Killing Eve. Her co-star? Sandra Oh.

Based on the novellas by Luke Jennings, Killing Eve centers on two women: Eve (Oh) is a bored, whip-smart, pay-grade security services operative whose desk-bound job doesn’t fulfill her fantasies of being a spy. Villanelle (Comer) is an elegant, talented killer who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her. BBC America hypes, “Killing Eve topples the typical spy-action thriller as these two fiercely intelligent women, equally obsessed with each other, go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse.”

We last saw Jodie giving a tremendous performance in the first half of Starz’s The White Princess, then trying to keep the show on track as the wheels came off in the second half of what turned out to be its one season run. I was sorely disappointed with how that show limped to the finish line, but Jodie continued to impress me. Now she’s playing a villain opposite Sandra freaking Oh!

We’ve seen what Sandra can do on Grey’s Anatomy. Her’s is also the performance that I remember first in Under the Tuscan Sun, that early ’00s movie with Diane Lane. Sandra played the best friend, an acerbic pregnant lesbian having relationship problems. Despite being saddled with all of that and, like, 15 minutes of screen time, she was a fully realized character who was simultaneously sympathetic and the purveyor of tough love.

So these two are going head to head in a spy thriller. With a decent production, we could be witnessing the birth of an awesome female spy genre series. Are you in?

Killing Eve begins production shortly for a 2018 debut.