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.
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 on below, and stay tuned for the podcast episode), 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.