Twists, Turns, and Changing Relationships: Fiona Shaw on “Killing Eve” Season 3
Hit spy-thriller series Killing Eve returns to our television screens this weekend and sees Fiona Shaw (Petunia Dursley) step back into the shoes of Carolyn Martens.
But what does Season 3 have in store for the MI6 mastermind?
As anyone who has seen the first two seasons of Killing Eve will know, Carolyn Martens is a character that is essential to the plot, but audiences know very little about her. However, Shaw has revealed that this is all set to change in Season 3 when the story takes a turn into Carolyn’s domestic life.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Shaw teased at just how much audiences will be invited into Carolyn’s home life:
She’s very much more present and she’s pushed much further than she’s ever been. And you get to know her personally much, much more. That’s possibly true of some of the other characters — but particularly Carolyn. I was surprised at how the domestic world reveals so much more about Carolyn. And in a way it was a huge challenge because of course, it’s much easier play behind the hedge of work. You’re going to meet her right up front and personal in this.
If you delve into someone’s private life, you might just stumble across family members you didn’t know existed (looking at you, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald). In Season 3 of Killing Eve, audiences find out that Carolyn has a daughter, and Shaw has hinted that it may not be the happiest of mother-daughter relationships:
Ummm… it’s disastrous. [Laughs] There is a part where Carolyn says, ‘In some ways, you are always your father’s child and Kenny was mine.’ For all the peculiarity of their relationship, Kenny and his mom have a lot in common. They’re both slightly obsessive and maybe slightly on the spectrum, and they go on very well in their silence. They didn’t have to speak much. I’m thrilled that Gemma [Whelan] has joined the family, and it’s hilarious because Carolyn is just a red rag to a bull with all this self-help and emotional talk. It drives Carolyn mad! So it’s a disastrous relationships in many ways.
And it’s not just the mother-daughter relationship that Carolyn is struggling with. Shaw also spoke about Carolyn’s changing relationship with former MI6 operative Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh):
Eve has now left [MI6], so Eve is no longer in [Carolyn’s] employ. So their knowledge of each other is now really only plot-fueled. And I find playing it very hard because, because I’m dying to boss Eve — and in a way I’ve lost my power to do that. [Laughs] I’m not her boss, and she can tell me where to get off anytime she likes; she can do what she likes. That’s a really big shift in it.
But Season 3 isn’t all about Carolyn’s domestic life. Shaw revealed to the New York Post that there are set to be more twists and turns as audiences find out more about some of the other key characters in the show:
As you get into a third season, the audience know the characters so well that it’s really important that they get a bit deeper down into those people. The audience knows what they know — but they need to be fed new aspects of the characters. I think this season does that with everybody.
With the third season of Killing Eve set to take a darker tone, delving into the lives of key characters is only going to produce more twists and turns. As Shaw told Entertainment Weekly, audiences are in for a wild ride:
Oh my God! I would say, ‘Fasten your safety belts.’ Just settle in. Get your pizza in and get your popcorn on or whatever it is. But you’ll be astonished. I was astonished. We have read-throughs of these [scripts] at the beginning of the season, and we read two episodes and you just go, ‘Oh my [G]od! Ahhhhh!’ A lot of ‘Ahhhh!’ It’s a good ride.
Killing Eve comes to BBC America at 9 p.m. on April 6 and will be available on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom on April 13.
