“It’s really empowering to play these types of women who do have to find their voices.”

Jodie Comer

Fresh off her starring role in the West End and Broadway hit Prima Facie, the actress stars opposite Austin Butler in The Bikeriders

By Jeanne Malle

The world said good-bye to Villanelle, the psychopathic assassin at the center of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s beloved TV show Killing Eve, two years ago. Even so, it’s hard to think of Jodie Comer, the British actress who portrayed Villanelle, without remembering her hiding a syringe in a hairpin, just in case she needed to stab someone in the eye. Over the show’s four seasons, audiences watched the evolution of Villanelle’s obsessive relationship with Eve Polastri, an M.I.6 spy played by Sandra Oh. In 2019, Comer earned an Emmy for her role in the feminist take on the thriller genre.

That female-centric world feels far away from Jeff Nichols’s new movie, The Bikeriders. Comer, 31, plays Kathy, a middle-class Midwesterner who falls for Benny (played by Austin Butler), the newest member of the Vandals motorcycle club, led by Johnny (played by Tom Hardy). Told from Kathy’s perspective, the movie, set in 1960s Chicago, shows the club evolving from a group of outcasts with a shared passion for motorcycles to a wild, bloody gang.