What a difference a few years makes. Back in late 2018 when Jodie Comer auditioned for the new fantasy thriller Free Guy – her first major Hollywood role, with Deadpool superhero Ryan Reynolds as her leading man – she was pretty much unknown in La La Land.
The first series of Killing Eve had just finished airing in America and Free Guy’s director Shawn Levy has admitted that at the time he hadn’t watched a single episode.
Since then the show’s been a hit all over the world, Jodie’s won an Emmy and a BAFTA for her portrayal of psychopathic assassin Villanelle and she’ll follow Free Guy up later this year with historical blockbuster The Last Duel, in which she co-stars with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Adam Driver no less.
But back then, aged just 25, she admits she found the move to Hollywood a traumatic experience. ‘It was my first big feature film, and it was completely overwhelming and intimidating,’ she tells me over Zoom.
Jodie Comer, from Liverpool, who won an Emmy and a BAFTA for her role in Killing Eve, has revealed her new roles as Millie and virtual avatar Molotov Girl in new film Free Guy. Pictured: Molotov Girl with her weapons
‘Shawn sent me the script and told me the idea, and then I flew to New York for my audition with Ryan the day after we’d wrapped filming on series two of Killing Eve.
‘I felt so pressured! I felt the stakes were so high, and I felt like an impostor because the project felt so much bigger than myself. But as it turned out it was great. Shawn’s wonderful, and he and Ryan are very silly.
‘They love improvisation and they’re very excitable. I was so lucky to have been introduced to film by working with these guys in my first big job, and I learned a lot from both of them.’
That cavalier approach is certainly evident on the screen in this rollercoaster of a movie. Ryan plays Guy, a happy-go-lucky type who wakes up every morning with a smile on his face and heads off to the job he loves in a bank.
It doesn’t occur to him to wonder why his morning stroll takes him past drive-by shootings, multi-vehicle pile-ups and bodies falling from windows onto the street.
Because Guy is not a person. He’s a character in a popular video game called Free City, with neither thought nor will of his own, created solely to be manipulated by the game’s players.
One day, though, Guy makes an unexpected decision on his own, and as a consequence he meets Molotov Girl, a mysterious beauty with a crisp English accent who tells him, ‘We expected you to just follow the rules, but you are so much more than that.’
Jodie said Free Guy has an incredible amount of emotion, despite being pitched as an action comedy. Pictured: Jodie as Molotov Girl and Ryan Reynolds as Guy
She breaks the news to him that his existence is not real but virtual, and adds that unless the owner of the game can be stopped, he intends to destroy Free City and everyone in it in a couple of days’ time.
Jodie plays both Millie, the game’s endearingly nerdy developer, and her somewhat more glamorous gunslinging virtual avatar Molotov Girl, who must face down the game’s all-powerful owner Antwan and, with Guy’s help, secure the future of Free City and its residents. And it’s just the sort of film Jodie feels we all need to help us out of the Covid doldrums.
‘It’s a ridiculous amount of fun,’ she says.
‘It’s pitched as an action comedy, but there’s an incredible amount of emotion in it. It really struck me when I watched it how much heart there is. I think it will give people a jolt of joy which we so need after all this sadness.
Like Villanelle, I never know what’s round the corner
‘When it’s all been so crazy and we’ve all been feeling so out of control and wondering how we can possibly make a difference, it’s actually weird to see how much of a parallel this film has to that.
‘Because although the characters in the game Free City don’t have control over their lives, it’s through the game that Molotov Girl meets Guy.
Jodie as Villanelle in Killing Eve
‘They help each other on this journey of discovery and realise that although Guy is ultimately a character with artificial intelligence, he also thinks in the real world. So there’s a huge message there that we’re all going to come out of this and there’s going to be something new about the way we live.’
As well as the fun she had, Jodie also got a crash course in some fairly hair-raising stunt work, including flying through the air on a motor-cycle, being kicked in the face (‘so I can tick that one off the list,’ she jokes) and some pretty nifty gun work that even Villanelle would be proud of.
‘I had to train for that, which I really threw myself into,’ she says.
‘I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to admit defeat, and I was determined to do as many of my own stunts as I possibly could. It really opened my eyes to how hard the stunt team work to make us actors look so skilful, and how boring movies would be without them.’
Fiercely private, Jodie is a young woman sure of her own mind. She’s currently dating American lacrosse star James Burke (they met while she was filming Free Guy in his home state of Massachusetts), but when it was revealed he was a member of the Republican party, and critics jumped to the conclusion he must be a Trump supporter, there was a backlash against pro-LGBT Jodie.
Jodie, who began acting professionally aged just 15, starred in BBC drama Doctor Foster before Killing Eve. Pictured: The truth dawns on Guy
She publicly slammed the ‘absurdity’ of these claims, saying, ‘The biggest lesson for me this year was: I know who I am.’
She attributes this quality to her upbringing. The product of a happy and stable family in down-to-earth Liverpool, she says that from the beginning her parents (her father’s a sports masseur for Everton Football Club, her mother’s a transport worker) have instilled in her the rock-solid sense of self that comes from knowing you will be supported no matter what.
‘My parents have always made sure the choices I’ve made have been my own,’ she says. ‘I’ve always been independent and that was down to their encouragement – they’ve always been there to listen, but have never, ever been the ones to make the decision.
‘That ball has always been in my court and that’s given me a real sense of empowerment and shaped me to grow in a way I never would have if it hadn’t been there.’
She began acting professionally aged just 15, and first turned heads playing Suranne Jones’s nemesis Kate Parks in the BBC drama Doctor Foster. Then came Killing Eve, the TV hit of 2018 that will end next year with series four.
Pictured: Jodie and Ryan Reynolds in Free Guy
Although everyone’s sworn to secrecy about the final series, which is currently filming in locations across Europe, it’s known that it will feature most of the old gang and some new faces, and that the new showrunner Laura Neal has promised all the pitch-black humour and corkscrew plot twists we’ve come to expect from the show.
What will happen to Villanelle, though, is anyone’s guess, and Jodie says that’s exactly how she likes it.
‘It’s always hard for me to picture where she’s going,’ she says of her ever-unpredictable character.
‘I’ve had some really exciting chats with Laura, who’s got some fresh ideas of where to take her, because Villanelle is so complicated. She really doesn’t know which direction she’s going in most of the time. It’s a bit like being an actor really – you never know what’s around the corner.’
Free Guy is in cinemas on Friday.