FIONA SHAW

The Killing Eve, Fleabag and Harry Potter franchise star, 63, joins the second season of the Masterpiece series Baptiste (Oct. 17 on PBS) as British Ambassador Emma Chambers. When her family goes missing on a skiing holiday in the Hungarian mountains, Chambers teams with Detective Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) to delve into Budapest’s corrupt underworld in a hunt for her husband and two sons.

How would you describe the second season of Baptiste? I saw it as a study of someone pursuing something, but as each episode got written, I could not believe the level of grief, the weight. Emma becomes like Atlas, holding up a ceiling of grief. I’ve played [Greek tragic heroines] Electra and Medea, so I knew stories can get bad, and this one really did.

What interested you about your character, Emma? I loved that she was very ordinary; she’s not a very interesting person, not very witty, not a very good mother. She’s quite an ordinary halffailed high achiever in the diplomatic world, but not a high-flyer. She’s a bureaucrat.

Can you tease the final season of Killing Eve, which will air on BBC America in 2022? The intrigue that you’ve enjoyed in previous seasons has definitely deepened. [In the new season] the characters are dealing much more with the past.

You played Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films. Do you love having been part of that franchise? I do. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley and the boys [Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Tom Felton] would do a special week at the beginning of every film. The longevity of the commitment was very pleasing because we watched the boys grow up.