In The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino likened the entire Killing Eve series to the villanelle poetic form, writing that the show is about the 'iteration of a recognizable pattern, its pleasures emerging in the internal twists'. Some commentators conjecture the name Villanelle was derived from the word villainess. Bradbeer also applied his appreciation of the Coen brothers' characteristic blend of comedy and terror, crafting characters who are most chilling when behaving almost normally and who are most dangerous when acting happy, innocent, playful and naughty. Waller-Bridge, Comer, and director Harry Bradbeer drew inspiration from a 2016 Spike Jonze perfume-commercial dancer (played by Margaret Qualley) who was overtaken by an alien force that liberated her from societal expectations, and who became playful and enthusiastic-and unpredictable. To further develop the Villanelle character for television, Waller-Bridge applied her impressions from her interview of Angela Simpson, an Arizona woman who had imprisoned, tortured and murdered a victim, and who-though affectless during the interview-afterward erupted with exuberant, giddy pride at her own performance. Jennings described Riaño-nicknamed La Tigresa (The Tigress) for her 'legendary sexual prowess' -as a 'psychopath' and 'completely without empathy.' Jennings stated that he based Villanelle's character on Idoia López Riaño, a hitwoman for Basque separatist group ETA who was convicted of murdering 23 people in the 1990s. The 2018-2022 television series Killing Eve, created by British writer-actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is based on Jennings' novellas.

Villanelle is the title character in Luke Jennings' four-segment novella series (2014–2016), whose compilation forms his 2018 novel Codename Villanelle. Their mutually obsessive relationship is the main focus of both the novels and the TV series. She is a psychopathic assassin who works for a crime syndicate called The Twelve, and the archenemy of British intelligence agent Eve Polastri. Villanelle, birth name Oxana Vorontsova or Oksana Astankova is a fictional character in Luke Jennings' novel Codename Villanelle (2018), its sequels Killing Eve: No Tomorrow (2019) and Killing Eve: Die For Me (2020), and the BBC America television series adaptation Killing Eve (2018–2022) in which she is portrayed by English actress Jodie Comer. Oxana Vorontsova (in Codename Villanelle) Phoebe Waller-Bridge ( Killing Eve television series)

Luke Jennings ( Codename Villanelle novel)

Killing eve book series