Killing Eve Prequel Unveils Its Main Cast — Meet the Stars Poised to Steal the Show
BBC is rolling out the cast for Honey, the rumored Killing Eve prequel — but still won’t confirm the show’s ties to the hit spy saga. Deadline reports the project has locked in major cast members.
BBC is rolling out a new spy series called Honey, and it sure looks like a Killing Eve prequel. The network hasn't actually slapped the word 'prequel' on it yet, but the character math speaks for itself.
The pitch (and the wink)
Honey is set in 1982 East Berlin and follows a female deep-cover MI6 agent trying to stay one step ahead of the Stasi. On paper, this could be any Cold War thriller. In practice, the lead is Martha Schmitt — who, yes, is a younger version of Carolyn Martens, the ruthlessly unflappable spymaster Fiona Shaw played in Killing Eve. Shaw won a BAFTA for that role, so you can see why they'd want to rewind the tape.
"1982, East Berlin. A female deep-cover agent for MI6 is surrounded by enemies and constantly under threat of her cover being blown. She tries to avoid detection by Friedrich Bauman, the new Head of Counter Espionage for the Stasi. Caught between Friedrich and the reckless, arrogant (and incredibly attractive…) CIA operative Aaron Neeland, she is blindsided by desire in this Cold War menage-a-trois."
Cast and characters
- Ann Skelly as Martha Schmitt (the younger Carolyn). Skelly's past work includes Rachel Reid in Red Rock, Beth Winters in Death and Nightingales, Lady Ethelfled in Vikings, Penance Adair in The Nevers, and Isabel Gore in Four Letters of Love.
- Nate Mann as Kurt Fischer.
- Jannis Niewöhne as Friedrich Bauman, the Stasi's new Head of Counter Espionage.
- Rory Kinnear as Graham Anderson.
- Sonita Henry as Anne Anderson.
- July Namir as Kamilla Akhmedova.
- Oliver Cudbill as Stefan Weiss.
- Victoria Mayer as Ingrid Schimmel.
- Valentino Dalle Mura as Rolf Muller.
- Sofia Oxenham as Greta Abstreiter.
- Julian Niedermeier as Otto Kowalski.
- Daniel Zielinski as Tomas Klein.
What's actually confirmed (and what isn't)
The BBC first let slip that Honey was in the works last spring (April 2025), but keeps dodging the prequel label. Meanwhile, the show positions Martha Schmitt as Carolyn's earlier-life alias. You can draw your own conclusions, but come on.
Who's making it
Honey is a BBC series produced with ZDF. Sid Gentle, the company behind Killing Eve, is developing it. Scripts come from Emma Moran, who created the offbeat superhero comedy Extraordinary for Hulu. For anyone keeping score: Killing Eve itself adapted Luke Jennings' book Codename Villanelle and ran on BBC America for four seasons from 2018 to 2022.