Sandra Oh set to deliver ‘devilish sunshine’ with Killing Eve season three
Sandra Oh is set to bring some “devilish sunshine” into people’s lives, with the third season of Killing Eve brought forward due to the COVID-19 outbreak and country lockdowns.
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Sandra Oh is delighted to be bringing some “devilish sunshine” into people’s lives.
When the news emerged last week the third season of Killing Eve had been brought forward by two weeks — as a coronavirus-induced lockdown treat — social media lit up with excited fans desperate to know what happened to Oh’s left-for-dead MI5 agent Eve Polastri and her frenemy assassin Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer.
“This is a very stressful time, so the service we provide is to entertain people and to help them not to feel so alone … to divert their attention into a fantasy land for a little bit with characters they care about and are interested in following,” Oh told News Corp Australia. “Particularly right now, this month in North America, and I am sure for you guys as well, is a really tough time.
“So, if we can throw out some extra fun and devilish sunshine then I am really happy that we can provide that.”
The last season of the critically acclaimed, award-winning spy thriller, based on the Luke Jennings’ Villanelle novel series, ended on an almighty cliffhanger.
An international game of cat and mouse, in which Eve and Villanelle’s strange mutual obsession deepened (while each was being played by shadowy forces), ended up with a showdown in Rome in the final episode.
British agent Eve killed a man with an axe to save Villanelle and then when she rejected the deranged professional killer’s fantasy happy ending for the pair, was shot and left for dead. Season 3 picks up with Eve having thrown in spy game in favour of making dumplings in a restaurant kitchen, and is living a solitary, booze-soaked existence in a squalid flat.
“She is starting to become more like the type of character who has nothing to lose and that can be frightening and dark and fairly nihilistic,” Oh says of Eve’s transformation between seasons.
“The difference between her at the beginning of the entire show, where you have a winning naivete, which has been wrenched through a meat grinder and she is living with her own interior consequences of what it meant to hack a man to death with an axe … I think it really changes you,” she explains.
“She is licking her wounds and she is recovering in ways I don’t necessarily think people would relate to as recovery. But I do feel like she is recovering and still becoming her true self.”
Killing Eve has become a pop culture phenomenon since the first series, written by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, first aired two years ago last week.
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It quickly became a hit with audiences and critics around the world, earning acting awards for its leads (a Golden Globe for Oh and an Emmy for Comer) and was a prominent fixture in end-of-year best-of lists.
Oh says the pressure that kind of success generates is acutely felt.
“You really hope to get to that point in your career where you have to deal with this type of pressure,” she said, but it’s never affected the way she works other than to try to channel it into quality.
The challenge for the actors and each new head writer (Emerald Fennell for last series and Suzanne Heathcote for this one) is to keep finding new ways for the beloved characters to surprise audiences.
“You should always translate (pressure) into effort, into continuing to create something that is fun and real,” she said.
“I’m not saying our show is like a documentary because good God it’s not, but there is so much in the relationship of what goes on between the characters that you have to continue staying grounded and continue to bring all of your A game, to make it interesting and new.
She added: “It’s very challenging creatively to continue being on the edge of new, and what I mean by that is if you want to bring something new, you have to keep diving down and exploring places you haven’t explored before.”
With its fascinating, flawed, feisty, ferocious female leads, and the fact that the writing has also been driven by women, completely subverting what has traditionally been a male-dominated genre, Killing Eve has been described as the perfect show for the MeToo era. While she agrees the birth and rise of the show coincided with that public sentiment, Oh is quick to emphasise that she hopes we’re well on the way to an era where that shouldn’t even be a point of conversation; and that women creating content is an integral part of the landscape.
“I think that the female point of view is coming through much more strongly in television and the makers of television,” she says.
“We can point to a lot of our more well-known actress/producers like Reese (Witherspoon) and Nicole (Kidman); but we also have long-term female showrunners like Jenji (Kohan, of Orange Is the New Black Fame) and Shonda (Rhimes, Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal).
“They are not cutting their teeth now, they have been doing it for decades and it’s just now I feel that probably that the industry and the audience is now getting more used to it … it’s like ‘oh, I am really excited for this next section of time in the making of content’.”