In 2011, Shaw traded one mystical realm for another by joining season four of HBO’s True Blood as Marnie Stonebrook, a medium and leader of a Wiccan
In 2011, Shaw traded one mystical realm for another by joining season four of HBO’s True Blood as Marnie Stonebrook, a medium and leader of a Wiccan coven. While filming in Los Angeles, she dove headfirst into “various witchy things,” including seances. “You leave your name at the door, then somebody comes out and says, ‘Is there anybody here called Fiona?’ And you go, ‘Oh, how do they know it was me?’ Because you signed in,” Shaw says. “However, if somebody’s willing to give you the experience of meeting your great-uncle, and the desire is there, it’s amazing what is conjured. I’m not sure we need to just be scientific about the evidence for the existence of the world. We’re more poetical as creatures.”
Shaw sees her four seasons on Killing Eve—where she played vigilant M16 Russia desk head Carolyn Martens—as a career turning point. The role earned Shaw a BAFTA TV Award for best supporting actress, as well as two Emmy nominations; it was also the first project where she could totally pull back in her performance, trusting that the audience would find her. “The long form of television has given me what my big productions gave me, which is a chance to develop characters,” says Shaw. “To get better at them, to live them, and to have the confidence that the thing is already accepted—you’re onto something that people want to see.”
That gig catapulted her into series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s other obscure comedy about women on the edge. The four minutes and 20 seconds she spent playing a therapist on Fleabag is all it took for Shaw to earn a guest-acting Emmy nomination—and to convince the show’s fractured heroine that she did, in fact, “want to fuck the priest,” thank you very much. “Phoebe Waller-Bridge is somebody you just want to go around carrying in a palanquin,” says Shaw. “She’s so talented, so kind, so full of fun, and so truly herself.” At the start of Fleabag’s therapy session, Shaw’s character makes the bold choice to intensely lather her limbs in lotion. “The whole thing of the arms—that was all her,” she says of Waller-Bridge. “I was doing it quite modestly. She said, ‘No, really go for it.’”
As we near the end of our conversation, Shaw shares a quote of her own, from Booker Prize–winning author Michael Ondaatje: “‘You must never repeat an emotion.’ You must move.” That’s also true of acting, as well as living itself, says Shaw. “Because even as you are talking to me today, Savannah, we are different people than we were yesterday. There are certain shapes and agreed tropes that we carry, but if you’ve learned anything since yesterday, it’s that you’re slightly different today,” she says. “There is no static character. That has been very freeing for me.”
Perhaps this is why Shaw squirms when reminded of who she once was. She’s still passionate and hardworking about the craft she’s devoted her life to, but less precious about what it all amounts to. Has she at least gotten close to meeting the lofty goal she set for herself all those years ago in 1989? “I have not said it. I also don’t feel I need to have said it,” Shaw says. “Maybe the aspiration is more important than the achievement.”
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