Killing Eve criticised for lack of diversity after picture shared of all-white writers' room
All 16 of the writers credited on Killing Eve’s IMDB page are white
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Your support makes all the difference.Killing Eve has come under fire for having a lack of racial diversity among its writing team.
Last week, writer Kayleigh Llewellyn faced criticism after tweeting a picture of season four’s writers' room wrapping over Zoom, with fans pointing out that, while the show was progressive in featuring a mostly female writing staff, all of the nine writers pictured were white.
According to the show’s IMDB credits, which credits 16 writers as working on Killing Eve since it began in 2018, the show has never featured a non-white writer.
“Imagine how much better Killing Eve would be if they had a person of colour in the writers’ room," one Twitter user wrote.
In response to the tweet, which has since been deleted, director Matthew A Cherry tweeted: “Y’all really be proudly sharing these non diverse writers room screenshots freely on the TL like it’s something to celebrate.”
Writer Rachel De-lahay, who has worked on the BBC’s Noughts and Crosses adaptation, also shared her thoughts, commenting: “Do you know how many writers I know in this room? The next cool generation + they don’t seem to give one f***.”
She added that she was “tired of people pretending they care to your face.”
Many fans were particularly critical of the fact that the show stars Sandra Oh, a Korean lead, yet Killing Eve has no Asian writers.
“The audacity to have an ASIAN lead... an ICONIC Asian actress whose rise to fame was from her performance on an insanely popular show written by a BLACK woman… for a show whose writers room is all white? @killingeve you see... how this is weird, right? How that’s off, right?” one person wrote.
Despite the show originally debuting to rave reviews, critics have argued that Killing Eve’s quality has decreased with each season. Some fans have suggested that the show has focused too heavily on Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and not enough on Eve Polastri (Oh) in later seasons.
Each new series of the show has featured a different female showrunner, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge helming the first season and Emerald Fennell and Suzanne Heathcote taking over for the second and third, respectively.
Sex Education’s Laura Neal is set to take over the show in its fourth season.
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