‘Killing Eve’ Stars on Helene’s Move Against Villanelle & Konstantin’s Past

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Killing Eve Season 4, Episode 5 “Don’t Get Attached.”]

Killing Eve reunites Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) in a way neither could have expected (or wanted) and flashes back to the early days of the Twelve, in Berlin in 1979, in the latest episode.

First, Eve makes a move against Helene (Camille Cottin), picking up her daughter from tennis. In return, Helene brings her to see Villanelle … get shot in the back with an arrow! “Did you really think I wouldn’t get back at you?” she asks. After Eve wraps her hands around Helene’s throat, the other woman lets her run to Villanelle’s side.

Meanwhile, flashbacks show the early days for Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) and Konstantin (Kim Bodnia, whom you can see in TV Insider’s exclusive clip from the April 3 episode below). Then, the two (he was “Karl”) ignored their significant others for each other before the truth about Konstantin (played by Louis Bodnia, Kim’s son in flashbacks) came out.

Cottin and Louis Bodnia break down the significant moments of the episode.

Eve’s Move Against Helene

Eve taking her daughter makes Helene “furious, but at the same time, there’s a duplicity,” Cottin says. “She’s enjoying the game because she’s sure that she’s going to win, but there’s something animal about ‘don’t you dare touch my daughter.'” Plus, there is a part of that does “respect” Eve for what she did, though “at the same time she despises her. She hates her for doing this. She feels betrayed, which is completely awkward because she’s lawless.”

Anika Molnar/BBCA

Helene’s Move Against Eve and Villanelle

What exactly was driving Helene’s move against Villanelle — getting back at Eve or was it for herself, too? “Both, because Villanelle betrayed her, too,” Cottin says. “She thinks that she can solve betrayal by just killing people, getting rid of them. But maybe not this time.”

And this time, she might find herself in some trouble because just before that last scene, Villanelle told Konstantin of her plans to kill Helene. “I think the problem is Helene is not worried enough,” Cottin admits.

When it comes to Eve and Villanelle’s relationship, “there’s a jealousy,” according to Cottin. “She envies them and there’s something about Eve that she wishes she could have those feelings. But at the same time, she believes that she understands that Eve pretends to be free, but is not free from her feelings towards Villanelle. She’s mocking her, saying, ‘Yeah, you pretend that you are completely independent, but you’re subdued to what you feel towards her and you’re not free at all. You’re like a junkie. You’re a Villanelle addict and you can’t be free and you can’t be strong while you have this addiction.'”

Anika Molnar/BBCA

In a season where both Eve and Villanelle are trying to be different people — the assassin tried not to kill anymore, but that didn’t last — Helene sees that but thinks “‘This is rubbish. You’re just lying to yourself,'” Cottin continues.

Meet Young Konstantin

Just before Carolyn (Imogen Daines in flashbacks) calls “Karl” out and identifies him as Konstantin, he lets out a laugh that couldn’t belong to any other character. “Yeah, I had to practice that a lot,” Louis Bodnia says. “I practiced a little with [my father], but it worked better for me to look at the character from recordings. It can be a little weird imitating somebody who’s in the room. When we were working together, it was much more getting into the feel of it than the actual sort of technical laughter or the dialect and things like that.”

In studying the character, he looked at Konstantin’s mannerisms and posture, as well as how he moved. “The older character is a used spy who has been tore down by all the years, so [there] was maybe a little more optimistic approach to the [younger version],” he shared. “I imagined him on the verge into this world [as an agent].”

Anika Molnar/BBCA

Kim Bodnia is “a proud father” about his son taking on his character, Louis says. “When I told him I got the part, he was just laughing, just like a huge laugh. You can imagine, his Konstantin laugh in real life. I showed him some stills and he was like, ‘Oh man, you look so much better than me. They’re gonna think what happened? What happened all these years with Konstantin?’ He’s really glad with all of this. He’s a very passionate person, so you can feel instantly where he is about it. And it feels good that he’s really proud about it.”

Konstantin & Carolyn

Konstantin was playing a part around Carolyn and did blackmail her father, which led to his death by suicide. “I think he momentarily regrets everything and then he snaps out of it. I think he needs to put a lid on those emotions,” Louis Bodnia says. “There’s also some acceptance of how things are.”

But were there any real feelings between the two? “I like to play with the idea that he tried to be in control with it, ’cause he was playing a professional game of not getting caught and doing his job as an agent who’s undercover. So he did not want feelings to get involved, but it’s always interesting to play with the moments where he’s not in control of that. I have bits of that in the performance where he’s losing himself to maybe caring a little too much and taking a risk because he’s maybe a little too interested in in this other life that could be possible with Carolyn,” the actor says.

Speaking of that “other life,” in the present day, Carolyn and Konstantin do briefly wonder about that. “People like us aren’t meant for happy lives with happy endings,” she decides. “We never were.” But where does Louis Bodnia stand when it comes to the people we see in the flashbacks at that point in time? “There is definitely a world out there where they’re together, but maybe they’re more rare,” he suggests. “I think they have a hard walk in front of them to get to these places where they would belong together, but they are tied together by some sort of fate or some sort of energy.”

Comedy in the Darkness of Killing Eve

Just as the truth about Konstantin comes out, Lars (Siggi Ingvarsson in flashbacks) confronts him and Carolyn with a gun. A fight ensues, Lars falls into the lake, then he pops up like a horror movie villain, and Konstantin and Carolyn repeatedly hit him over the head with oars. “What do you call it, that Whac-a-Mole game? That’s sort of what we went for,” Louis Bodnia shares. “That’s one of the charms of Killing Eve, that you can take these very grotesque things and also deliver it with humor. That’s why I was a fan of the show before from the first season, because it has this humor with it. It’s the comedy that drives everything underneath, and this very hard story is sort of carried on through by these moments of weird events.”

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That was the last scene he filmed as well as his favorite. “It was really nice to work yourself into these moments of truth and realness for the character,” he says. “You’d be playing this character, which is fun, but you’re only building up to the moment where you can show the true character. If you see it as a journey, each scene had its own worth and merit, so it’s more how all of the scenes leading up to the last climax helped it to be my favorite scene.”

Killing Eve, Sundays, 8/7c, BBC America