Killing Eve Trivia | 40 facts about the series

Killing Eve is a British spy thriller television series aired on BBC. It is based on the Villanelle novel series by Luke Jennings.

Let’s find out more about the series!

The first series premiered on BBC America on 8 April 2018.
On BBC iPlayer on 15 September 2018 through BBC Three.
The show has been highly successful in both the United States and the United Kingdom, receiving critical acclaim for both the first and second series, particularly for its writing and the lead actresses’ performances.
The first series had unbroken weekly ratings increases, among adults especially.
It has received several accolades, including a Peabody Award and the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series.
Both Oh and Comer have won multiple Best Actress awards for their roles, with Fiona Shaw winning one for Best Supporting Actress as Carolyn Martens.
The third series premiered on 12 April 2020 for BBC America, and on 13 April 2020 for BBC iPlayer.
It concluded on 31 May 2020.
Killing Eve has been renewed for a fourth and final series.
It was set to premiere in 2022.
Sally Woodward Gentle, of Sid Gentle Films, optioned Luke Jennings’s Codename Villanelle in 2014, saying that “the notion of a female assassin was not unique”, but that Jennings’s take was “fresh, intelligent and tonally much bolder than others”, adding that she was particularly interested because “It wasn’t exploitative.
We really enjoyed the character of Villanelle and the inventiveness of her kills, but we were particularly engaged with the mutual obsession between the women”.
Jennings’s story began as a four-part novella published between 2014 and 2016.
Following the stage success of Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was recruited to write the show, which was then commissioned by BBC America in November 2016.
The band Unloved, featuring Jade Vincent, Keefus Ciancia, and David Holmes, were commissioned to score the series.
Shortly before its premiere, Killing Eve was renewed for a second series.
Luke Jennings’s sequel, Killing Eve: No Tomorrow, was published in March 2019, shortly before the second-series premierethe book is said to diverge from the television series, but also to “share common DNA” because of Jennings’s continued collaboration with the creators.
In July 2018, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Waller-Bridge delegated some responsibility for the second series, hiring Emerald Fennell as head writer, and Lisa Brühlmann and Francesca Gregorini as directors.
Less than twelve hours after the premiere of the second series, BBC America renewed the series for a third. Suzanne Heathcote served as showrunner,so that each new season of Killing Eve brings on a new female showrunner.
On 3 January 2020, Killing Eve was renewed for a fourth series ahead of the premiere of the third series.
On 20 February, Laura Neal was announced as the head writer as well as an executive producer of the fourth series.
In March 2021, it was confirmed that the fourth series would be its last.
Sandra Oh—who was the first actor cast in the adaptation—loved the script for Killing Eve, but was slightly confused about which role the producers had in mind for her.
The unusual choice of word came about after Waller-Bridge googled “dickswab” to see how common its usage was, and found a person actually called “Dick Swab.”
She said she chose the word “dickswab” after thinking “really, really hard” about what Eve and Bill would say to Darren Boyd’s character, Frank.
Eve’s first scene, consisting of her screaming in the bed, was intended to be a twist on crime shows that usually open with a woman screaming.
Villanelle says in Episode 5 that she has a “thing for bathrooms”. Looking back, this makes sense: Multiple killings, meetings, and exchanges in the show take place in bathrooms.
Jodie Comer had been carousing with friends at a music festival in Barcelona (Spain), and nursing a hangover, when she got the call to audition with Sandra Oh in Los Angeles. Despite feeling her chances of landing the part were slim at best, she took a 13-hour flight to L.A. and after 5 minutes in reading with Sandra, the pair clicked.
Sandra Oh has said that she ‘waited’ 30 years for a role as meaty as this. When she first read the script, however, she had no idea who the producers wanted her to play, assuming she would be a receptionist or doctor, or some such secondary role usually attached to Asian actresses. Needless to say, she was ecstatic when her agent, Nancy Gates, assured her she’d be playing Eve.
The title of each episode is taken from a line said by a character within that same episode.
Some scenes were filmed in Reading Prison, Berkshire during October 2017
Jodie Comer was once offered to appear in Strictly Come Dancing (2004), but politely declined, and preferred to watch the show live in the studio with her mother and her grandmother instead. When fans noticed Comer in the audience, as a reference to her character Villanelle, they joked on social media that they were worried about the life of host Tess Daly.
Jodie Comer (Villanelle) and Turlough Convery (Bear) both played in the very successful British TV show called My Mad Fat Diary in 2014-2015.
It’s been speculated that the character name Villanelle was derived from a combination of “Villain” and the French word “Elle” for ‘she’, as in She-Villain (villainess).
Phoebe Waller-Bridge was nominated for the 2018 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series category for Killing Eve: Nice Face (2018), but lost to Joel Fields & Joseph Weisberg for The Americans: START (2018)
In the first season we see that the Polastris live at the fictitious 39 Piscally Street, Ealing, London W13 2CH (or 2CK).
Fiona Shaw, who is Irish, had originally wanted to play her character, Carolyn Martens, with an upper class Irish accent, but the producers declined her suggestion.
The Killing Eve team were keen from the start to secure Sandra Oh for the main role, but were told she was unavailable. Waller-Bridge was persistent, however, and even wrote a long email to Oh’s agent stating that Eve “couldn’t be [played] by anyone else.”
During the course of seasons one and two, Villanelle speaks seven different languages (French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Mandarin*) and four different accents (English^, Scottish, Australian and American). * However, her knowledge of Mandarin is proven to be minimal during her exchange with Konstantin’s daughter, Irina. ^ It could be said that she speaks more than four accents, as she employs several different English accents throughout the series.
Series 1 Body Count = 27. Eighteen murdered and one killed in self-defence by Villanelle, one suicide, one accidental death, and six killed by other characters.