Editor's note: The below interview contains major spoilers for the Killing Eve series finale.BBC America original series Killing Eve has revolved around its central pair of two women who begin as foes but then evolve into something much more twisty and complex: MI5 analyst Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and skilled but psychopathic assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer). Although Eve begins looking into Villanelle's killings with a professional interest, their relationship inevitably takes a more mutually obsessive turn, and the two seem to be destined for a final collision course that could be as explosive as it is long-awaited.
Ahead of the show's Season 4 finale (which also doubles as its series finale), Collider had the opportunity to catch up again with cast member Fiona Shaw, who plays the elusive and guarded Carolyn Martens, former MI6 head who has ultimately found herself at a new low this season. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Shaw discusses how playing the more vulnerable sides of Carolyn was a lot harder for her from an acting standpoint, as well as requesting to have Jodie Comer as a scene partner for the final season. She also talks about how the season's flashback episode gave her more backstory for her character than she'd previously considered, what Konstantin's death means for Carolyn, and why her character coordinates in the decision to take Villanelle out by the end of the series.
Collider: I feel like we get to see more of Carolyn's layers, the layers of the onion, peeled back a lot more. At the start of the show, she's someone who's very stoic and very mysterious and keeps a lot of her cards close to the vest. And obviously, she experiences a loss that's a huge turning point. What was that like to get more opportunities to loosen her up and show those sides of her in Season 4?
FIONA SHAW: Well, it was much more pleasurable to play the very powerful, mysterious character. It was much harder. I never really knew those layers were there until they were being asked by the story. You're dead right that obviously the death of her favorite child — who she had kept at a distance actually, because she didn't want anyone to know how important... or maybe she didn't even know herself how important he was to her. All children are important to parents, but [Kenny] was sort of everything to her really in some way. Her care for the world, I think, shifts after that.
The biggest thing that happened is that she's been taken out of MI6. That's very hard for Carolyn, because she's a career leader within that office structure, even if she kicks against it. I used to feel that when I was at the National Theatre. I loved kicking the National Theatre, but I hated leaving. I was very sad when I left. It's nice to be the renegade within an institution because you have all the benefits of the institution, and then you can slightly use your mind in a different way. But when she's taken out, she really is a fish out of water. I found the beginning of the last season very hard because she just kind of rather shabbily goes to Russia, rather shabbily betrays some of her friends, because she rather shabbily needs a job or needs to be this sort of person.
I really loved Episode 4 because we get to see Carolyn and Villanelle sharing the most scenes that we've ever seen that are just the two of them alone together. How was it to work with Jodie Comer more one-on-one as a scene partner in that way?
SHAW: And I'd requested it. I'd said, "Please, make me meet Jodie in Season 4." We've never had anything to do with each other, and we're good friends at work, and it was lovely to. So it was great fun, but I wish it had gone on longer. I wish they had just taken Carolyn and Villanelle off to Germany together rather than partying in Cuba. I enjoyed working with her.
The flashback episode for your character is really important because, again, it's more peeling back the layers. It's more of seeing how Carolyn got to where she is and her backstory — not just with the Twelve, but her deepest personal relationships. Did anything surprise you or stand out about her past when you were reading the script for the first time? Was there anything that you were surprised to learn that maybe you didn't know about her before?
SHAW: Yes, I had never played it with the attention that she had been brought up in Germany, I always thought she'd been brought up in London. She was brought up in Germany as her father was working as a spy. Of course, there's a reference to his being a spy in Episode 2 of Season 2, but that was only out of fun, I think, really. But these writers grasped that and ran with it and made another story, and that's wherein this way, the writing of such a series could go in many, many directions. I'd said, "Yes, Daddy was a spy, and he was interested in boys." Well, they've just run with that phrase. In fact, it was just for a joke, I think, largely. But once you name a truth in the historical context, I suppose that becomes the story.
Even earlier in Season 4, Villanelle brings up Carolyn's father, and we don't have the full context for that yet because we haven't seen the story, but we don't realize until that episode that it's something that's rooted in tragedy for her. And she can joke about it now, but it's clearly a turning point for the character.
SHAW: I keep on thinking of it in rather classical terms. In a way, I think subconsciously the writers have written Athena, whose father was Zeus, but there's no mention of the mother. It's entirely a father-daughter thing that comes off Carolyn, so the writers write it. We never hear about Mrs. Martens. So we don't know it, so it is kind of Athena and Zeus. She's very clever, but she's rather formal. It's very interesting to see how she's not made by her mother for this show, in that sense.
In terms of Konstantin's death, it's kind of the product of the line of work that they're in, but for Carolyn, it seems like it's definitely a big blow for her because they have such a long, complicated history together. How do you think that she takes that loss and shoulders it throughout the rest of the season and into the end?
SHAW: It's written, what you see is what you get, but I think probably you are right to say it's complicated, and I don't think anyone can solve the complication. I have many friendships that I think I'd be very thrown by if they came to a bad end, but they're not simple. When my father died, I felt very ambivalent about it. You're surprised by your own feeling, is what I mean. That there would be sorrow tinted with relief, tinted with freedom, tinted with misery. I think you really don't know the length of a life or the length of a friendship until it comes to the end.
I think we've enjoyed seeing the many relationships [on the series]. I mean, Carolyn was thrilled to see Konstantin in Russia in the first season. She hadn't seen him for ages because he's been around — and then he stays around in the third season, a lot, in a way she hates and wishes he would go, but the basis of all those friendships is very unstable. It's about people who have to agree that they will jump in another direction if it will protect them. The game of Killing Eve is that the audience is enjoying seeing people in much more unstable, but more interesting lives than maybe we live. But thank God we don't live those lives.
Villanelle gets taken out, and then we see that Carolyn is the one who made that call. What's her motivation? Do you think it's trying to tie up loose ends?
SHAW: No, I'm sure it's MI6 have asked her to. She has to prove that she's willing to do anything to get back to it. That was again, a premise set up already. As you say, everyone in the world of Killing Eve knows that they might die and nobody is blameless, so I'm not saying in any way this was a good thing. And I think it's done rather speedily because you run out of episodes in which to... but I don't think it's mustache-twirly in the start. I don't think Carolyn was ever that involved with Villanelle, but Villanelle was also certain to kill Carolyn. That's the game they play. Eve was dying to see Carolyn come to a sticky end because she was cross with her from way back. I don't think it's so outlandish that somebody would have them killed, [or] somebody would have killed them.
There are apparently whispers about a spinoff show, presumably with Carolyn, in the works. Would you be willing to return to the world of Killing Eve if there was a possibility of that happening?
SHAW: I think it's less announced than rumored. I'm not sure if it's announced. I certainly haven't read anything or seen anything, but of course, people have wished for it and have said to me that they would hope that such a thing would happen. I have no idea what I feel about it. If it was very interesting, I'm sure I'd be interested. If it wasn't, then I will leave her tucked up at the end of the fourth season, but I've so loved playing it. And if there is more life in it, well and good, but I have no knowledge of that.