Talking Heads’ Jodie Comer opens up on battle with ‘imposter syndrome’ after years of struggling with scouse accent
JODIE Comer felt like an “impostor” when she first started her career because she hails from Liverpool.
The Emmy-award winning actress, 27, revealed her scouse accent has affected her chances of getting roles in the past.
She told Glamour magazine: “I think it’s something that is ingrained in you without you even knowing, like Stephen Graham, I always talk about this imposter syndrome because of where you’re from.”
Fellow Liverpudlian, Graham has also previously spoken out about how he felt he previously thought he “didn’t deserve” to be successful in the acting business.
Impostor syndrome refers to a psychological pattern where a person doubts their accomplishments and has an ongoing fear of being found out as a “fraud”.
Comer continued: “It’s like, “Well, actually, no. You have as much right to be there as anybody else with any other kind of background.”
“But I think it is a subconscious thing.”
The actress rose to international acclaim playing the psychopathic assassin, Villanelle, in Killing Eve.
That role has made her a household name, won her an Emmy and Bafta.
The 27-year-old uses an array of accents as stylish assassin Villanelle in the hit BBC series, but in real life she has a strong Liverpudlian twang.
As she started out in her acting career, Jodie believed she would need to lose her accent to get ahead.
She told the Radio Times: “Do you know what, it’s funny because when I was much younger, when I was with another agency and really young, I don’t know where I got it from, but I thought ‘I have to lose my accent’.”
Thankfully, fellow Scouser Graham, who starred in the last series of Line of Duty, convinced her not to.
She continued: “And I remember working with Stephen Graham and he was great.
“He was like, ‘Don’t you dare lose your accent!’ And I didn’t.
“Maybe it’s just this idea of being working class from the North West, you don’t hear those voices all the time on television.”
Despite embracing her native accent, Jodie recently revealed she asked Killing Eve bosses to remove a scene where Villanelle adopted her real-life twang.
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Speaking to BAFTA, she explained: “I’m afraid Scouse will not be making an appearance on Killing Eve.
In season two, it got written into one episode. I asked them to take it out because it seemed too gimmicky for me.
“I was like, ‘We know she does accents but Scouse feels too much like a wink to the camera’.”
Killing Eve seasons 1-3 is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.
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