Kirby Howell-Baptiste is best known for her work in television comedies such as Hacks, Barry, and The Good Place. The signatures of many of these roles are her characters' irreverent attitudes and positive energies, which always serve to invigorate and entertain audiences. It is perhaps surprising to find that these qualities carry through to her more serious roles such as those in Killing Eve, Why Women Kill, Veronica Mars, and most recently The Sandman. Even in these dramatic roles Howell-Baptiste's interminable brightness always manages to shine through no matter what desperate, serious, or devilish the circumstances are in which her characters find themselves.
As Elena, Kirby Howell-Baptiste Grounds the Madness of Killing Eve
In 2018, the spy thriller Killing Eve premiered with Howell-Baptiste playing the ambitious and delightfully quick-witted MI5 secretary Elena Felton. Elena is a friend and confidant of leading lady Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and is the grounded center of the madness throughout the first season. While Eve obsessively chases the assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and lies to her husband, Elena brings her croissants, teases her, and gives her advice. She plays well against the often intense Eve, poking fun at her and consoling her in equal measure. Howell-Baptiste does this beautifully and no matter what is going on she brings lightness and humor to her scenes. Whether she's calling her sister's baby an asshole or describing an assassin as having "massive pendulous breasts", she is always a ray of sunshine, and a delight to watch.
One of Elena's best moments comes when she has spent a particularly terrifying day being chased by assassins, and excuses herself by laying out her plans to go home, get drunk and, "cry-hump" her ex until she has forgotten all about her traumatic day. Then because she never misses any opportunity to make nice with her boss (and hero), she thanks her boss for an, "amazing day." This is all delivered with a straight face as if she is saying something completely ordinary, and not revealing completely personal and probably inappropriate information to her boss. It is such a sweet and positive moment in an otherwise brutal and bloody episode, and it is Howell-Baptiste that makes it so with her own innate charm that she brings to her characterization of Elena.
In Why Women Kill, Kirby Howell-Baptiste Plays a Charming Badass
In 2019 Howell-Baptiste starred in the Marc Cherry crime-drama series Why Women Kill. The series is set in one house where three consecutive generations of wives live with their husbands. Beth Ann Stanton (Ginnifer Goodwin) lives there in 1963, Simone Grove (Lucy Liu) in 1984, and Taylor Harding (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) in 2019. When the audience first enters the 2019 storyline, we meet the strong-willed Lawyer Taylor Harding. It is one of the all-time great character introductions where the audience gets to see her take on a disdainful contractor and firmly establish herself as a badass, take-no-prisoners kind of woman.
The contractor shows up and Taylor's husband (Reid Scott) says that his wife requires a little face time. She asks a legitimate question about the plans for the remodel, and the contractor replies that it's, "difficult to explain," in a condescending tone while calling her sweetheart and asking her to relax. Howell-Baptiste is just politely smiling, and calmly embodying alpha female energy which lets viewers know this poor bastard is about to get bitch-slapped so hard, he's not going to know what day of the week it is. He tries to get to her back down by insulting her knowledge of construction and telling her she has to trust him and calling her sweetie. So she goes in for the kill, and it is beautiful. She whips out her lawyer speak, crushing his misogyny and unearned confidence in a quick move. Got to love it when a woman tells a man her, "dick is bigger" than his, and by the end he agrees.
While breadwinning, pants-wearing, bisexual women are not particularly unusual in 2019, characterizations of modern women are often unflattering, and dislikable caricatures. Taylor could have easily been a very two-dimensional, stereotypical character, especially when juxtaposed with a doting 60s housewife. However, in Howell-Baptiste's capable hands Taylor is the kind of woman who can take control and kick some ass, but who also loves fiercely, and is willing to be vulnerable and sweet.
Howell-Baptiste's Veronica Mars Character Is Impossible to Root Against
Also in 2019, twelve years after the original TV show finished airing and five years after the film debuted, Season 4 of Veronica Mars was released. Howell-Baptiste played Nicole, a new addition to Neptune, who is introduced to audiences as a badass woman willing to stand up for herself against bureaucracy and poorly behaved drunks in equal measure. Nicole and P.I. Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) get to know each other during a night of drinking, mocking rich idiots, and getting high. They go to an abandoned construction site to shoot Veronica's gun at bottles, and Nicole reveals to Veronica that she was assaulted. Luckily for audiences Howell-Baptiste manages to avoid the unfortunate trend in television media, for backstories such as hers to be used as plot devices rather than fully explored and developed character depictions. Her portrayal of Nicole is fully-fleshed out with strengths, flaws and a purpose not derived from her past trauma.
While Nicole is only shown using a gun this one time, she does joke about having an Uzi, and is well-known for using weighted knuckle gloves for punching cretins in her bar. Considering none of Howell-Baptiste's other roles require a display of violence she looks mighty comfortable handling a gun and totally awesome throwing a right hook. Unfortunately for her character this penchant for violence coupled with the fact that most of the bombing victims visited her bar before they died, leads to her being considered a suspect by her new friend Veronica. Not even that can make her any less likable however, as Howell-Baptiste has made her ridiculously charming and impossible to root against. For audiences, and Veronica even when she's a possible mass-murderer, she is still the girl we cannot help but want to party with.
As Death in The Sandman, Howell-Baptiste Is a Compassionate Sister
Howell-Baptiste plays the eternal Death in The Sandman Episode 6, "The Sound of Her Wings," and her portrayal is layered and invigorating to watch. Her characterization of Death is remarkably human, taking the time to eat an apple and feel the earth beneath her bare feet. Yet she has such a powerful life force that all the characters that come into her orbit, from a man selling fruit to people playing soccer in the park, are drawn to her energy. All of this comes from Howell-Baptiste who embodies radiant positivity with such truth that it is like watching an actual eternal being walk among mortals. For audiences, watching her discuss life and death is a hopeful and strangely comforting look at what may await us all when the end comes.
The entirety of her performance in this episode is a balancing act between her role as Death and her role as Dream's sister, and she pulls it off by being both grounded and ethereal. The Sandman may be the story of Dream (Tom Sturridge), but in these scenes, in contrast to his sister's gracious wisdom, Dream comes across as very much the immature younger brother. As Death takes him on a journey to understand their family's purpose and function as eternals she is also showing audiences a day in her life. Meeting and taking the hands of people from all walks of life when their time is up, and reassuring them with a smile and a kind word. There aren't many actresses that could take a baby to the sunless lands with only a few words and somehow make it a beautiful moment, not an unbearable one.
Some might say that Kirby Howell-Baptiste's real skill lies in her impeccable ability to choose the right roles and that a lot of credit should go to the writers who created these characters. This, when considered carefully, shows only that Howell-Baptiste is drawn to well-written women who are strong and willing to fight back against a world that would otherwise force them into little boxes. Whether it is her strength, her joy, or her razor-sharp sarcasm her characters are beautiful representations of remarkable and interesting women. No matter the persona she embodies her nuanced portrayals of these characters make every show she is a part of shine a little brighter.