Fiona Shaw's Trip Switch

The first surprise about Fiona Shaw in person is her Irish accent. From Killing Eve and before that Masterpiece's Baptiste, right back to Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter movies, we've become used to her playing upper-crust Brits with clipped vowels and stern stares. But her surname at birth was Wilson and her roots, she says proudly, are in Cobh, County Cork.

"All acting is listening and learning," she says, and throughout an illustrious career that began at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, followed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and now film and television work, Shaw has listened and learned to speak like an English aristocrat when required.

The second surprise? In real life, Shaw is about as stern as a banana. She says she takes most jobs based on how much fun she'll have, which is why wrapping the fourth and final season of BBC America's Killing Eve has left her bereft.

"I've gone into mourning with missing it," she says, speaking from New York. "I'm so sad that it's finished — I so enjoyed it." She was nominated for an Emmy for her work in the show's second and third seasons.

The big switch for the final season is that Shaw's Carolyn Martens — head of the Russia desk at MI6 — winds up befriending Jodie Comer's international assassin, Villanelle.

"That was hilarious," Shaw says. "We've spent all these seasons not having very much to do with one another, and suddenly Villanelle and Carolyn meet. They have these games with each other — Carolyn is even asked by Villanelle to play air guitar."

A little light axe work is precisely the kind of fun that Shaw relishes — it gives her a chance to go back to comedy, where she says she feels most at home.

"I used to do a lot of comedy when I was younger," she recalls, citing plays like Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals, "and then once you become a kind of classical actor you get asked to do things like Hedda Gabler or Medea or Mother Courage, all those big roles that I played. But I think I was always a comic actress — just trapped in tragedy."

A recent wave of television roles, including an Emmy-nominated turn in Fleabag, has allowed Shaw to escape that trap. "I probably entered the television world quite late," she says, "but I've been embracing it with all my might, because I picked a very good moment to join television. It is suddenly an incredibly demanding medium in the way that the theater used to be. And it has resulted in my being able to do a lot of very interesting things."

The next interesting thing is Disney+'s Andor, a Star Wars series that follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) five years before the story told in the 2016 film Rogue One. For Shaw, this introduction to the world of the megafranchise has been — you guessed it — "fun!"

"People keep telling me that I'm not allowed to talk about Andor, but I don't have much to say about it anyway, because I don't know much."

Okay, but key question for this eminent Shakespearean on a career high: did she get to shoot a laser gun?

"No," she says, laughing. "But I got to fly a spaceship. I'm sure I'm not allowed to say that. But I've said it."

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #2, 2022, under the title, "Trip Switch."