Jodie Comer never does the same thing twice. But even so, the moment she pops up on screen in The Bikeriders, rambling her life story away to a photographer (Mike Faist) in a laundromat, feels like a daring reintroduction. As Kathy, the chatty and headstrong narrator of Jeff Nichols’s acclaimed biker drama, Comer is about as far from the seductive, deceptive, psychopathic assassin of Killing Eve as one could get. Here she’s warm, approachable, a little silly, and as helpless to the brooding stare of Austin Butler as the rest of us. The Liverpool native also bursts into frame with a Chicago accent at once so specific and so unusual you wonder how (and why) she’ll maintain it while delivering Kathy’s mile-a-minute monologues.

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This feels like the big-screen moment Comer’s been gearing up for ever since her Emmy-winning breakout on Killing Eve. Sure, she’s done blockbusters opposite Ryan Reynolds and won a Tony for her stage work, but with The Bikeriders (coming off a strong opening weekend at the box office), her chameleonic qualities finally meet their cinematic match. As my colleague Richard Lawson wrote in his review of the film, “One starts to see a glimmer of something Streepian in her, a whirring mind and an innate aptitude for transformation.” As the woman caught between her new love interest (Butler) and the biker gang leader (Tom Hardy) hoping to lure him deeper into his world, she’s also the key to the whole movie, and why it works.

On this week’s Little Gold Men (read or listen below), Comer acknowledges the big swing that came with her approach to Kathy—before delving deep into why it’s a good metaphor for where she hopes to go with the rest of her career.

Vanity Fair: What first attracted you to Kathy?

Jodie Comer: Before I read the script, I quickly took a trip to Google and had a look at these images [from Danny Lyon’s book] and then read the script with those images in mind. And then I had a call with Jeff, and we spoke for a couple of hours just about her and all my instincts and feelings. It felt like we were very much on the same page. And he said, “I actually have 30 minutes of audio of her being interviewed by Danny.” I was like, “Why have you not sent me this already? Send me it right now!” And he did.

The script was so rich and I already knew all the characters were very, very nuanced. But the moment I heard her speak in real life, I was just like, “Oh, if I wasn’t in before, I definitely am now.” She has such a knack for storytelling. She has a very distinct accent. I was so curious about her stresses and inflections, and she made me laugh out loud and was very brazen and said exactly what she thought. She felt incredibly authentic to me.

Was the call always to work on an accent that particular? I ask because it feels like a risk. It’s a big choice.

Yeah, I listened to the audio and I was like, “This is so specific and is so exposing and feels like it tells me so much about this woman” that I immediately leant in. I thought, “I have to get as close to this as I possibly can.” Jeff was definitely in support of that. Then I started working with my dialect coach, Victoria, and Victoria was like, “This is not a general Chicago.” We knew Kathy was from North Chicago, but every vowel sound is contradicting the other—you have to make a choice. Do you want to do a general Chicago, or do you want to emulate Kathy as truthfully as you can? And I was like, “Well, I want to do the latter.”

And you’re right, I knew there was a risk in that, because I know Jeff has since released some of the audio at screenings and stuff. That wasn’t anything I was made aware of. I thought there was a possibility that no one would ever hear the real Kathy. Because her voice is so unique, I was very much aware that people could be like, “Wow, she’s really going for it this time. What a bizarre choice. She’s lost her mind!” Or for people to be like, “That’s not Chicago.”

Jeff Nichols had said that he saw you take those taped interviews and break down every line phonetically. That sounds quite exhaustive.

A lot of that work was done with my dialect coach. The way in which Victoria and I work, we make such a good team, and I think we both get very addicted and excited and are constantly peeling the layers. One thing for me was with how much Kathy speaks, I knew there were going to be moments where I needed to look at something quickly and actually see the way I needed to pronounce it. Then I could find it in my mouth much quicker.

It’s fascinating to watch you bop between the different male characters. You’re being interviewed by Mike Faist in the movie. You have Austin Butler, you have Tom Hardy. I’m curious how each of their energies impacts you as an actor, because they’re all giving different kinds of performances.

Totally. I probably spent the most time with Mike Faist. I came into this being a massive admirer of him, and it was just so lovely to do scenes with him because a lot of our scenes together was Kathy talking at Danny. He’d ask her a question and then she’d talk for 20 minutes, and he was incredibly present and supportive and patient. I definitely had a lot of my moments of doubt and second-guessing in front of Mike, and he was always just so wonderful.

The same with Austin…[we] have a very similar approach to our work in that sense of openness and playfulness and being quite focused. With Tom, I don’t think I’d met him until the morning of the scene that we did, and the first scene that we did was when she confronts him in the bar—she kind of bulldozes in there and tries to put him in his place. It was a really interesting energy to feel when you’re about to kind of do a scene with someone who you’ve spent a lot of your life watching on screen. [Laughs] He does have this presence. It was fascinating to watch Tom work because I’ve never seen to this extent just his awareness of what the camera needs or what the camera enjoys. He’s able to monitor his performance in a way of understanding exactly what the camera’s going to pick up.

You seem to me like an actor who runs on adrenaline to an extent. You went straight from Prima Facie, your one-person play on the West End, to The End We Start From, another intensive project, to The Bikeriders, with very few breaks in between. How do you show up on The Bikeriders after so much consuming, consecutive work?

Yeah, it’s a good question. I definitely didn’t plan for it to be that way. I wanted to do this project so badly. When you want to do something so bad, you’re like “I don’t care. I’ll make it work and I will have a week off when this is all over.” When you feel that hunger, you know you have to follow it because you can’t fake that feeling, and when it’s present, it’s amazing.

I was kind of prepping Kathy through the whole of The End We Start From, especially in regards to the dialect, because that was the biggest thing that I needed to hone in on in order to get to a point where I didn’t have to think about it so much. And I feel like the play prepared me for Kathy in a way, because she spoke so much and [this] was the first character I played on screen where they were the narrator. That was a very different thing for me. But I’d been on stage doing that for months, for an hour and 40 minutes.

This has not been your typical movie press tour, right? I saw you and Austin at USO Fort Irwin, and you went to the Indy 500. Are you getting a different kind of Americana tour here?

Oh my god, fully—it’s been amazing, especially when that’s what the film represents and is an ode to. It is also unique because when I’ve done films in the past—the first time, the COVID pandemic happened, and then the second time, when this film was originally supposed to come out, it was the actors’ strike. I’ve never actually properly been able to do this in its entirety. Just to embrace it and enjoy it and see people feel genuinely energized and excited about the film—it’s been brilliant.

What was it like tracking this movie’s journey to release from afar? It premiered to Telluride to great reviews, and then you hear it’s been taken off the release calendar during the strikes. Did that scare you?

With those uncertain moments, the more you try and worry or control a thing that you have no control over, it’s just so pointless. There was a part of me that felt like it would find the right home and we would all be here, where we are now, and be able to speak about it and celebrate it. I’d also just come off the second run of the play on Broadway, so I was very much kind of hibernating. I was recouping. Selfishly, I was kind of taking that time. Even just the aspect of starting out auditioning and getting told no or not even getting any feedback—the amount of time I’ve worried about things that I just have no control over, I’ve slowly but surely realized to put your energy elsewhere. Don’t worry about things that you can’t change.

To your point about those audition struggles, can you take me back to that moment when Killing Eve started blowing up? I would imagine interest in you exploded very suddenly. What do you remember about that and how did you navigate it?

The biggest thing that I remember was a couple of years prior, or maybe even the year before, I’d been coming to LA to do general meetings with producers and directors, doing four or five meetings a day—getting an Uber to every single one of them and having five minutes to sell myself to someone who would have the promise of, “Oh yeah, we think we have two projects that you’re good for,” and never hearing anything again. There is a lot of that. With Killing Eve, I was having different types of conversations. It was less about me having to prove myself; people were coming to me having seen what I can do. I was very lucky that Villanelle was such a kind of nuanced and unique and multifaceted character, because it enabled people to see me in many different lights. They don’t just assume that you can do one thing, which is incredibly narrow-minded, but can happen very often.

Quite often in Hollywood, yes.

Yeah, exactly. I’d always wanted to do film, but I’d never done it and definitely had this insecurity of, “Oh, you know…” I remember someone saying to me once, “Oh, don’t do too much television. You won’t get to do a film.” It’s absolute nonsense.

Are there other directors you have on your radar now? I know you have a couple films coming up that sound pretty exciting.

I’d love to work with Rose Glass. I just watched Love Lies Bleeding, and I left that cinema shaking. I had a very visceral reaction, and I believe that’s Rose’s second film. She just has such a distinct taste and voice and style, which is incredibly exciting. Julia Ducournau, Lynne Ramsay to name a few. I feel the same about Julia in that sense of women who are very early on in their career, to have such vigor and confidence. A lot of male directors who I work with, you’re like, “Oh God, they’re so sure, they’re so confident.” But it’s also because they’ve been given the space and they’ve had so many years to be on a set and make those choices, make those mistakes. To see these women have that innately within them at such an early stage is so inspiring to me.

You’ve mentioned multiple directors who have elicited really risky, bold performances. With Julia Ducournau, when I saw Titane, I was like, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” I’m hearing you say, in effect, “I will jump into the unknown with you.”

Definitely. That’s where the fun and self-discovery lies. You learn so much about yourself in those situations when you take a risk or you feel like, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I’m interested in the journey that it takes to get to that point.” After doing Prima Facie, there was kind of a double-edged sword of—it’s such a challenge that you then end up craving that continuously. You’re not always going to get that same sensation or experience, but that desire to do something that you haven’t done before or challenge yourself in that way just gets stronger and stronger and then does make you be a little bit more selective.

The kinds of filmmakers you’re talking about can also collaborate in really surprising ways with actors such as yourself—who are putting their own imprint on the material. It’s always a unique combination.

The relationship with the director is so important to me. As an actor, I really want to be directed. I want that communication and playfulness. It’s amazing when you know you are kind of working with an auteur or someone who has a very distinct style and it’s visually going to be very, very beautiful and cinematic. But ultimately, I want to delve into the plot, to the emotion, to try and really get to the truth.

This interview has been edited and condensed.