The day after she won her Bafta, Jodie Comer watched Game of Thrones with her brother and had a burger for breakfast. Granted, it was the middle of the afternoon, but they’d had a big night. She had picked up the award, amid stiff competition, for leading actress, for playing the flamboyant and seductive psychopath Villanelle in Killing Eve. “As soon as they said my name, I pulled my really ugly crying face,” she says, pulling her best ugly crying face. “I felt like, oh God, I’m such a cliché! I had to pick my dress up because it was too long and I was going up the steps, crying.” She shakes her head, embarrassed. “Such a cliché. But I’ve always gone, oh my God, imagine. Imagine that happening. And then it does.”

I meet Comer two days later, the day after the day after, when breakfast has reverted to usual hours. We’re in a stuffy meeting room at her agency in London, because she’s been in meetings all day. There’s a Killing Eve launch tonight, then she’ll head back to Boston in the morning, to shoot Free Guy, a new action comedy with Ryan Reynolds. She’s only back in the UK briefly, and she’s had a lot to squash in.

“I am tired, but it’s self-inflicted,” Comer says, warmly. “I can’t complain that I’m being overworked.” She is bare-faced, in a neon lime lycra T-shirt, and wriggling like an eel. Her hair is loose and occasionally ends up in her mouth. When she really wants to make a point, she slumps forward, hands on the table, open and expansive, and looks at you with those huge, sincere eyes, lifting an eyebrow, fashioning her elastic face into a flash of Villanelle.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘They said my name and I pulled my really ugly crying face’: Jodie Comer winning best actress at the Baftas. Photograph: James Veysey/Bafta/Rex/Shutterstock

Tell me about the afterparty. “The first time I went to the Baftas, it was crazy,” she says. At an afterparty in 2017, she was introduced to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and ran the first season of Killing Eve. This year ended up being a little tamer. “But I mean, I say this. Me, my dad, my brother and my mum were still up at 6am drinking champagne,” she laughs.

Comer is extremely close to her family. She grew up in Childwall, a suburb in the south of Liverpool, and her dad is a sports massage therapist for Everton FC. (Her brother Charlie works for Huddersfield FC as an analyst, “so my mum’s like, we’ve got to support both now, cos it’s Charlie’s work.”) She was bereft when they had to get the train back to Liverpool, though they did take her Bafta home with them for safekeeping. “I’ve got pictures on my phone,” she says, grinning, showing me photos of the award out in the wild, next to a bottle of champagne left over from the celebrations.

They have decided to call the Bafta “Billy”. “I don’t know why,” she says, pulling a goofy face. “My dad had it out on the train, and this woman went: ‘That’s not from Poundland, is it?’ This other woman said: ‘Is that the real thing?’ He said, ‘Yeah, do you want to touch it?’” She flicks through her camera roll, pictures of it in the pubs of Liverpool. “They took it on a pub crawl. They were so proud.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Murderous intent: Comer as the flamboyant and seductive psychopath Villanelle in Killing Eve Photograph: Robert Viglasky/Sid Gentle Films

Though she’s only 26, Comer has been acting professionally since she was 13. “I know! I keep saying” – she adopts a crisp, RP accent, and fans of Killing Eve will know she is an expert at accents – “‘I’m relatively new to the business.’ But I’m like, mmmm?” She acted at school, partly because she finds emotions so fascinating, and has always found it easy to bring up her own.

She remembers a local drama competition where she performed a monologue about a girl whose father had died in the Hillsborough disaster. “Before I’d even said my name, I was crying. I was like, ‘My name is Jodie Comer’ [she pretends to do it, a big, cartoonish sob] and everybody was like, oh my God, is this real?”

Play Video 1:51 Jodie Comer and Phoebe Waller-Bridge accept Baftas for Killing Eve - video

She’s always been very in touch with her emotional side. “I’m a Pisces, so personally, I’m up here,” she says, moving her hand towards the ceiling, “or I’m the opposite. There’s no in-between with me. But I love a good chat about feelings. I’m like, come on girl, let’s get it all out, let’s have a cup of tea.”

She saw a woman crying in the corner at Euston station recently, and saw everyone walking past, pretending it wasn’t happening. “No one knows what to do. It just fascinates me.” What did you do? “I went over! She said she was fine. I thought, oh good, because I know if I’m upset and someone says, are you OK, I’m like…” She does a comedy wail. “It kicks me off even more.”

At the Baftas, she dedicated her award to her Nana Frances, who died when Comer was filming the first season of Killing Eve. “She used to say, ‘You get it off me, you know,’” she said, movingly, in her Bafta speech. The next day, her dad showed her a story about it in a tabloid. “My grandad moved house when my nan passed away, and they went to their old address, spoke to a neighbour, found out where the funeral was.” Comer was stunned. “I know I spoke of her, but that is such a deeply personal… That is a little bit… That jars with me.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leading lights: (from left) Fiona Shaw, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Jodie Comer with their Baftas. Photograph: David Fisher/Bafta/Rex/Shutterstock

Part of Comer’s charm is her down-to-earthness. She comes across as the kind of person you could natter to all day, who’d, yes, stop you in the street if you were crying and ask if you were OK, but with that comes a certain sensible reserve. Unlike most famous people of her age, she keeps a healthy amount back for herself. Her social media is largely work-only.

“I know,” she says, half-apologetically. “I’ve seen comments where people say, all you do is post work stuff. And it’s so hard, because I understand that it’s about balance and engaging with the people who support you, but I also have to be protective of my own world, you know?”

She still has the same group of girlfriends she’s had since school. “We’ve got a group chat that doesn’t stop pinging,” she says, “so we’re all caught up with each other.” She’s not one for falling out of clubs under stuttering camera flashes. She slumps forward, hair dangling around her face. “I want to work. I don’t want to be seen. I guess I just don’t feel the need to, really,” she says. “Also! If I’m going out, I want it to be with my closest mates in a flat, with my hair tied up, doing something really embarrassing. I want that to be in a private world.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Death watch: Cromer as Villanelle in season two of Killing Eve. Photograph: BBCAmerica

While she’s been acting since she was young, the rest of it is all completely new to her. “It’s an adjustment. Doing gorgeous glamorous magazine shoots and all the rest of it, that is a part of this world that you don’t know about until it happens.” It’s not that she minds talking about her life, but she’s good at simply saying what she wants to say, and nothing more. “It’s such a fine line, because I want to be honest. I’m aware that probably the majority of the people who support me are female, and in their late teens, and whether you like it or not, there is a responsibility there to...” She doesn’t quite know what that responsibility is, exactly. She shrugs. “I feel like all you can do is be yourself.”

In her acceptance speech, Comer also thanked fellow Liverpudlian actor Stephen Graham, saying she owed him a pint. Did she get him one? “The bar was free!” she hoots. “That would be really cheap of me if I did it then. But I did catch up with him afterwards.” Graham was the one who recommended her to his agent, after he’d seen her in a play when she was 15. Comer was already working with a local agency. Her dad said it was fine to switch, but she would have to make the call herself. “I was like, this is such an adult conversation to be having, surely you should be doing this?” She says she’s always trusted her gut. It’s easy to see where she gets it from.

Her first big role came not long after she made the move, when she played Chloe, the best friend/enemy in My Mad Fat Diary. “I look back on that, and it’s so iconic,” she says. “I remember getting off the phone, going, oh my God, I’m doing a whole six episodes! This is so cool. Filming in London. Whooaaa.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The other woman: Comer with Suranne Jones in Doctor Foster. Photograph: Alamy

In 2014, she had another up-a-gear moment, when she played Kate, the other woman, in the smash-hit revenge drama Doctor Foster. “Jodie is sharp and funny, 100% professional and totally authentic,” Doctor Foster herself, Suranne Jones, told me, over email. “I adore her.”

Kate, on the other hand, was not so well regarded. “I mean, everyone hated her,” says Comer, eyes wide. “Everyone hated her!” She remembers two girls coming up to her in the toilets of a bar. “They were like, ‘Are you that girl off Doctor Foster?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah.’ And they said, ‘Oh, I hated you.’” She tried to persuade them that it was the cheating husband Simon who was the real villain, but they insisted it didn’t make a difference. “Fair enough,” she shrugs, gamely. She was quite pleased to have made an impression. “I love riling an audience up. I love seeing the impact a person can have on an audience. I’m like, well, at least I made you feel something. I’ve got you sat on the couch swearing at the TV.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I love a good chat about feelings. I’m like, come on girl, let’s get it all out’: Jodie Cromer. Photograph: Adam Whitehead

At the beginning of Killing Eve, season two, Villanelle is bruised, bleeding and down on her luck. I realised I was rooting for the assassin to get back on her feet and start brutally killing people again. Is there something wrong with me? She smiles kindly. Clearly this is not the first time she has counselled someone through this crisis. “We can sometimes see ourselves in her everyday personality and the ways she has about her,” she says, soothingly and patiently, before adding, “Not in all the murder stuff.”

Eve and Villanelle’s hard-to-define relationship is the black beating heart of the show, but it is usually couched in vague terms by the actors whenever they address it. The New Yorker’s television critic Emily Nussbaum called the series “homoerotic candy”. Is it fair for an audience to be teased about the attraction between them if they’re never quite going to get there? “I mean, I know from my perspective, Villanelle is sexually attracted to Eve. I can’t speak for Sandra and Eve, but I think it seems impossible, and it probably is,” she sighs. “It’s so hard, because you know what the audience wants, and that’s what we’ve tried to explore more in this second series.”

This is a theme that Comer loves in Waller-Bridge’s writing, whether on Killing Eve or Fleabag. “That obsession we can have with other women, and not quite know what it is,” she says. She lights up when she talks about her. Comer auditioned for Killing Eve after the first Baftas she attended, where the two first met. “I was like, oh my God, I was soooo drunk. Like, what did I do? Have I ruined it? And she rang me just before I went in for my recall, and went, ‘Maaate!’ And I was like, ‘I know!” She said, ‘We’re both in the same boat, so don’t worry.’ I was obsessed with Fleabag. When I saw her name attached to this, I thought, I’ve got to do it.” (Waller-Bridge has not written the second season, but she is credited as an executive producer.)

Comer has always trusted her instincts, and this was a good one. “I feel like your gut never lies to you. You’ve got to listen to yourself.” She’s looking forward to living in Boston for the summer, and then she’ll be back in London to film the third season of Killing Eve. After that, she’ll take a holiday with her family. She wants to go to a beach, “where there is nothing but a bar”, she says, dreamily, already imagining the cocktail menu. “But that’s a while away,” she shrugs. Hollywood is calling, after all.

Killing Eve returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer on 8 June