I feel like Killing Eve has a lot of shared DNA with Fleabag.

When I saw Fleabag I just died. I died. Because it’s on steroids. It’s very English, just like Killing Eve is a very British show. I’m the only American element on it. It’s purposely that way. We still have the same language, but it’s a different culture. I really like being that fish out of water.

You’re Canadian and live in America. Is that a feeling you’re familiar with?

I’m sure everyone carries the feeling of being the other. Being a Korean Canadian growing up in Canada, being a Canadian living in America—there’s always this slightly outsider point of view, which I really try to embrace.

I read an interview from 2004 where you were talking about how you’re not an easy sell in Hollywood. Has anything changed since then? Did you feel it was an uphill battle to get this part, which wasn’t written as an Asian character? Or was everybody just like: “Oh, clearly you’re the perfect person for it”?

I think it’s both of those things, honestly. It’s taken me 30 years to get this part. I see that so clearly. And they just thought of me. It definitely holds both. Have things changed? I could say yes, because as you mention, in the original novellas, there’s no real specific reference to Eve’s race, but she’s definitely white. That’s one big change, that people would be willing to go off book and say, “Well, that doesn’t matter.” Because for decades and decades and decades, and still, it seems to matter to people. What I’ve always had a problem with is that it seems to always go just one way, and never toward diversity. You know what really bothered me was that movie when all those teens went to Vegas and gamed the system [21]. They were all these smart kids, and basically all of them were Asian. But the lead characters were all white.

It rarely bends toward diversity; this was a case where it did. I don’t think that Phoebe, Sally [Woodward Gentle], the executive producer, BBC America, were thinking of it in that way. I think they thought I was the right person. And that’s absolutely ultimately the sweet spot of where I’ve been working to be for my whole life. I really believe in affirmative action. I really believe in it because I know that I benefited from it. My first paying gig was when I was 15, and that was a fuck long time ago. But I cut my teeth on industrial film and commercials and local TV shows. In Canada, there’s a mandate for diversity. I was a girl, Asian, and I spoke French. I ticked all their boxes. Did I want to be cast from that point? Not really. You could always feel that you were the quota. You always had the smallest part. You’re not central to the story. But then you don’t get to be for another, whatever, 20, 30 years. But I benefited a lot and took it with the correct outlook, which is just that I’m going to gain as much experience as I can and I will transform it in the way I want to transform it, which took a long time.