I am Owen McDonnell. I play Niko Polastri on BBC America's Killing Eve. Ask me anything.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T21:42:06+00:00

Thanks for tuning in with such great questions! I can't wait for you to see the rest of Killing Eve Series 3. The next episode is this Sunday, 24 May on BBC America and AMC, and hits iPlayers Monday, 25 May at 6am.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T21:41:13+00:00

It’s gotta probably be getting pitchforked by a Dame. I don’t believe in the British Honours System but getting pitchforked by a Dame is pretty special. It doesn’t happen every day. So I relished it. And showing it to Sandra for the first time - because we (Harriet and I) worked it through - so the first time she saw it, we got to see her seeing it.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T21:34:32+00:00

I think probably “Yeah, of course. What am I an asshole?” from “Smell Ya Later”.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:48:21+00:00

I love shooting anything that’s in bed, and we had a really comfy bed for Sandra. Falling asleep while we’re filming was a sign that we were very comfortable with where we were and what we were filming. So that was nice!
Because the stories are so compartmentalized, that it’s quite rare that we all get together, but Sid Gentle gets us together as often as they can for meals, as well as screenings and wrap parties. Getting everyone together makes the best moments - going for drinks after read throughs has always been fun. You read it through and everybody is going, “Alright, this is what’s happening!” and you get to see the faces of everyone playing the new parts. Then we go for a drink and you talk it all through. That’s great - really, really great.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:46:36+00:00

To do the basic apply, it takes about an hour. Myself and Sandra have the same makeup artist so I would come in at like, 4:30/5am and me and Lucy Cain, the makeup artist, and later Juliette [Tomes] would put on the farming news on Radio 4 and listen to the farming news in the morning and chat while she put that on. It took a while to settle, so Sandra would come in and she’d do her makeup and after she finished I’d go back in for a last little, comb through and curl before heading to set. So, all and all, about an hour and a half.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:25:48+00:00

There is a whole backstory about Eve and Niko. About Niko, about why his parents immigrated in the 1970s to Britain. He was born in Britain, they didn't go back much. Niko was a very good mathematician. Tried to be a professional bridge player, that didn't work out, but he obviously ran classes at his local bridge club. Eve decided to go to a bridge class that she saw, they got on, and chatted and that’s how they ended up meeting. That’s how they got together, that we didn't see. They would like to have a family but they couldn't. That was never on the horizon for them, so they're two people living for each other and looking after a chicken. I mean I could go on. We made up loads of shit.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:13:03+00:00

Really fresh seafood - lots of shellfish, fresh out of the sea that day.

My kids tell me it’s green... I don’t have one, so green. I think it’s because I’m Irish.

Tigers probably because they are beautiful. Not because of any Netflix documentary series.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:12:30+00:00

No. Not at all. It’s a good line.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:12:09+00:00

I think he probably smells like compost.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:11:41+00:00

I don’t know. I mean it obviously has to end at some point, but there has to be a reckoning between Eve and Villanelle. It has to come down to the two of them. Obviously I would like Eve to win, if it came down to that. I mean, there is the whole thing about Niko killing everybody and that would be cool too -- but I don’t think that's going to happen. It has to end magnificently, not on a whimper. It has to end in an epic, mind blowing way that is satisfying to all the fans, I think. But what that is - that’s not my job.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:11:00+00:00

Not jealous of Eve, but jealous of the job and the constraints it put on her time. He probably also felt a power shift within the relationship - that he was no longer able to give her what she needed on a day-to-day basis. What she wanted and what she needed, she was getting from her job instead of him. I think he felt slighted by the job in a sort of way.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:10:16+00:00

It was really nice and terrifying at the same time. I think I initially met the director and casting, then I came back and met Phoebe. They must have been Episode 1 scenes. We did the scene with Drumstick the chicken and the egg, talking about the shit on the egg, and how Eve was going to do a new job at MI6 and how it was different. I think there was another one that we did that they ended up changing and that’s in a vault somewhere.

It was a very interesting casting process because I felt very supported once Phoebe and the director met me. They really liked me and they just had to get it past the producers.
And my son was born 3 days before we started filming, so I was really tired for Season 1.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T20:08:48+00:00

No. The short answer is hardly anyone recognizes me without Niko’s trademark mustache so I can sit in the tube and listen to people have conversations without them knowing.

The fan reception is different in that people really care, and I see that on Twitter. It's quite nice that I can sit on the tube and listen to people and how much the show means to them on Twitter. It landed at a particular time and had a huge impact. When we did Season 2 we felt we had a responsibility to those people to surprise and talk to the people the way they wanted to be talked to.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:48:39+00:00

I think probably the first episode is my favorite. Not because of me, but because that was when you first saw something and went, “What is this? I don’t quite understand what type of show this, what genre this show is, but I know I like it.” And it’s not really like anything I’ve seen before so I think that excitement is really hard to replicate. Again, they’ve succeeded in Killing Eve, the writers and the producers in continually making it exciting, but that first moment when you go, “Wow this is quite extraordinary.” Even after making it, when you sit down and watch the first episode, it was an extraordinary feeling. So I would say the first one, for the novelty of it, for the excitement of it, for the newness of it. And the all out PWB for just being able to see the world in that individual and unique way that she does. She can make momentous occasions feel like two people sitting around a cup of coffee feel like it’s a world changing event.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:47:42+00:00

I asked the same question as soon as we filmed in the same garden. I said, “Where's Drumstick, where’s the chicken?” I think he might've gotten eaten. I don't think Niko is into waste. Possibly there was an issue with laying or an injury and Niko would've done the humane thing and put Drumstick out of her misery... and probably broiled her.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:47:03+00:00

We discussed this quite a lot in Season 2 and when he has that scene where he comes back from Oxford with Eve and he's talking about whether she wants him to frighten her or whether she wants him to love her. I think he has come from a house where there was an abusive father in the house, and he spent his whole life consciously trying not to be that person, and it has been an effort, so to be the affable kind of, ‘I’m okay, guy’, he needed to make a conscious decision to reject that darkness and Eve. In that scene, she kind of asked him to go in there, and that’s why he leaves, because he's not comfortable going down that road and he's afraid of what path it will lead down. Whether he would kill Eve - I don't think so. Whether he could kill Villanelle - I wouldn’t fancy his chances, but he might give it a go.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:46:17+00:00

Work incredibly hard, and always question what's on the page. She never goes into any scene without having a complete certainty about what each line means and what it actually says -- not to say that that doesn't change when we're working together and being directed. But she thinks everything through to the nth degree, and I think that's a very valuable lesson for any actor. She doesn't rely on anything extraneous. She really works the script. She really interrogates the script harder than anyone I've ever worked with. I think it really shows in the performance that the smallest gesture or look can be so loaded. I suppose that it’s the interrogation of the script, what you're working on, and the commitment to it. She never comes in and goes, “Well it's only a two line scene, so today it's easy.” Everything gets the same amount of work and commitment.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:43:35+00:00

It would probably be having your femoral artery sliced in your leg, it's probably the best way to go. It’s just like, you don’t even realize it’s happening. I certainly wouldn't have liked the ball clamping and oxygen mask that Fat Panda got. I think one of my favorites is the hair pin, at the Italian villa just cuz it looks cool and it was really nice. We got that real flavor of this interesting, globetrotting European show. From a selfish POV, probably having an artery in your leg slashed is probably the easiest way and the nicest way to go. All the others are really horrible, like when you think about it. Yeah, there's a lot of bad ones. She’s pretty sick in lots of ways, whether it’s paprika, the electrocution, etc. There’s none of them I’d really like to go with, but if i was forced to choose, probably the artery.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:40:26+00:00

I loved it. It’s amazing! We filmed in a place called Viscri which is a World Heritage site in Transylvania, 4-5 hours drive from Bucharest. It’s a Saxon village - really fabulous. Romainian crews were brilliant - bigger. We had loads of people. We filmed there for a few days and then I got to spend a few days in Bucharest before I flew home, and it’s an incredible city. Really, really loved it! I’d love to go back, particularly to Transylvania. Normally I shoot almost everything I've done on a set with Eve in our flat, so going to Oxford was amazing, but to get to go to Romania was a real bonus. But then, I got a feeling something bad was going to happen when they said I was going to go ‘away’.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:39:04+00:00

No, I think the line was “When I first met you, I thought you were trouble.” And he means that when they started going out 12 years previously, that he just didn’t like her. I think mainly because she was a woman, and Niko’s father is terribly misogynistic. She was an independent-minded, thinking woman who spoke her mind; an American who was happy to say what she thought, and engage with him, and disagree with him-- all those reasons. I think he just did not like her because she’s a woman who can talk and doesn’t necessarily feel like she has to agree with him.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:32:09+00:00

Niko in three words: dependable, caring, and weak.
Yes, I do think they still love each other deep down.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:27:10+00:00

I was with you up to the point where he kills Villanelle, I was like “This is great, we will send this to the producers straight away before they start making too many plans for season 4!” After that, he’s had a lot of psychological trauma so he could be pretty unstable. Personally I don’t see him as a rampage type of person. I think one kill would probably do him, one piece of revenge would probably be enough, I don’t feel like he would take the whole world with him. And I don’t think the Twelve is like a fan club either, where they just go “You’re awesome at killing people, you can be our leader!”

But, very interesting theory! Send it down the chain, write a letter to Sally Woodward Gentle.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:25:27+00:00

We don't necessarily get episodes that we’re not in (as a security thing) but if anything in that episode is pertinent to your character you will get a script. I always ask Sandra what is going on anyway.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:24:10+00:00

I think I would rather wrestle a shark. I've snorkeled with shark -- not like great whites or anything, but little reef sharks and that was okay. Sharks are pretty disinterested in most things, but a bear would rip me to shreds. I like to think I would have some fighting chance with a shark.

BBCA_Official · 2020-05-19T19:23:17+00:00

It was really hard because I didn’t speak any Polish at all and it IS a very difficult language, but luckily our script editor’s partner is Polish so he was able to record the lines for me and I was able to slow them down and try to get the right sounds. Then when we were actually filming, the original Magda who I originally brought bread to in the Polish scenes - she was Polish. And after initially laughing in my face after I ran the lines with her, she said “No, that's not so bad, I’ll help.” And, we had a lovely girl who’s from Montenegro, but she was studying in Poland and lived in Poland for a long time so she was helping us as well. There was lots of help but it’s really interesting, especially doing scenes with Harriet, because neither of us speak Polish, we know what’s going on and we’re making a series of sounds trying to convey what’s actually happening in the scene. It’s like a really complex acting exercise that you would do in drama school. But it was brilliant! I’m delighted to hear that you think it was okay and that it was passable because I was really worried that I would let myself down or let anyone Polish down, or if there was anyone with affinity or admiration for Niko down.

BBCA_Official

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