Killing Eve legend Jodie Comer has revealed the usual way she chooses new roles, admitting she follows her instincts nowadays as she prepares to tour with a play
Jodie Comer says she relies on her instincts when choosing new roles to play. The actor, 32, will be in a touring version of the play Prima Facie and stars in new post-apocalyptic horror sequel 28 Years Later.
Looking back on her work in Free Guy, a 2021 action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, she says it gave her a moment of clarity about her career: “It was my first film and I had the most amazing experience on that job – they were just the most gentle, inclusive, supportive people, and it was incredibly fun… But I realised, when I was coming home, Ah, there’s something I’m not feeling. I feel like I’m not stretching. Or not discovering. And I realised that it was the emotional part of it. I wasn’t exercising [that] part of myself.”
Speaking to GQ, she added: “I realised that’s actually where I get my fulfilment – trying to find those places. If the instincts aren’t there, if I’m not excited by it, then I just don’t want to go near it because then I’m pulling from an artificial place. It feels almost dishonest with myself.”
In 28 Days Later a virus called “rage” has obliterated the country. But in real life she struggles to summon up her own rage and it often turns to another emotion.
Jodie said: “I’ve realised my own [rage] just immediately goes to a very emotional place – my anger can so quickly go to tears. I think I swallow it as well,. I think, as women, we suppress it and that’s probably why I have trouble accessing it – I’ve done that so much that it feels kind of foreign, like I’m not quite sure where to pull it from.”
The actor, who is best known for playing Villanelle in BBC spy series Killing Eve previously starred in a run of Prima Facie in London’s West End in 2022. It follows the story of a barrister named Tessa, who specialises in defending men accused of sexual assault, and whose view of the legal system changes after she is sexually assaulted herself.
Speaking about the reaction to the play from men, she said: “I imagine it’s quite confronting, I don’t know. Maybe also, when they read what it’s about, they think, ‘well, that’s not something that’s directed at me’.
“I imagine, for a man, it will force them to look back at their own behaviour, which I imagine would be – or could be – potentially very uncomfortable. But (sexual assault) isn’t ‘a woman’s issue’, you know what I mean?”
She added that a male police officer who had visited the show wrote a letter to the production afterwards. Jodie said: “I don’t think I’ve had a deep, meaningful conversation with many men about the play, actually.
“I do know there was a male police officer that came in one night, and he wrote in to the production.
“He was kind of saying, ‘this is me – I see myself, and I recognise the kind of work that needs to be done as a police officer’.”
The actor, who is best known for playing Villanelle in BBC spy series Killing Eve, said many women had contacted the production after seeing it to share their personal stories.
Speaking about the interactions, she explained: “It’s so beautiful, and it’s so rare, for someone to look you in the eyes and share something of themselves, and there’s so much that isn’t said, but even in just the briefest of moments, it’s like, ‘that was me, or, I feel that’.”
* The Heroes Issue of British GQ is available via digital download and on newsstands on 10th June..