Ruth Wilson makes 'Luther' character a seductive psycho

• Ruth Wilson stars as Alice Morgan in BBC America%27s %27Luther%27
• The character has shifted from villain to best friend over the course of three seasons
• %27Luther%27 creator is keen on doing an Alice spinoff series

No one in their right mind would befriend a psychopathic British femme fatale like Alice Morgan unless they seriously had a death wish.

But as played by English actress Ruth Wilson in the BBC America cop drama Luther, she becomes a seductive object of brainy desire and deadly attraction.

In the first season of the show in 2010, Alice was a genius-level scientist who murdered her parents and really didn't show any remorse whatsoever, quickly becoming the arch-enemy of London copper John Luther (Idris Elba).

Since then she's gone from villainess to BFF, acting as a confidante for Luther in some of his hairiest situations. And Alice makes her grand return in Friday night's season finale (10 p.m. ET/PT) to help out her pal Luther and Mary Day (Sienna Guillory) when they're targeted by a vigilante.

"Alice brings a little bit of light relief, but she also comes in to restore Luther's lost mind," says Wilson, whom American audiences saw this past summer in The Lone Ranger. "They are connected somehow, and when she comes back into frame, it restores order, weirdly enough.

"I was desperate for her to come back. It's not really the same without her. That relationship with Luther and Alice is the crux of the whole piece, really."

If Elba's accurate in comparing his Luther to Batman, then Alice is a redheaded hybrid of the Joker and Catwoman.

When Wilson had first read the script for the first Luther episode, she had never seen a female character like Alice before. And it was definitely a departure from her other roles, such as BBC's 2006 version of Jane Eyre.

"It was a no-brainer," Wilson, 31, says. "She talked like Hannibal Lecter but she was toying with everyone like a cat with her mice."

Alice has her fans, the actress adds, and she thinks it's because viewers can see how much fun she's having. "Audiences always respond to someone enjoying their job or the character they're playing. They can see the light and the glee behind the eyes."

Luther creator and writer Neil Cross saw the instant chemistry between Elba and Wilson during the very first scene, when Luther visits Alice's flat while investigating her parents' deaths. In it, she stands very close to Luther and purrs, "Did you come here for sex?" And while filming it, Cross recalls, "it felt like madness to me — it's a very, very long, talky scene, and often you want actors to settle into the role a little bit before you do the really big stuff."

Cross felt there was something special between the two of them, and the connection between Luther and Alice has become stronger over the course of the series.

"The chemistry when we work is incredible, and that sets off this weird synergy that happens on TV," Elba says.

"The audience inherently knows that that's not a good relationship. She's a murderer and he's a detective, and now they're good mates. We watch that relationship with keen eyes and we see how it could become very dangerous, but it's tantalizing to watch."

There's almost a sense that if these two complex people finally got together then maybe they'd be good for each other. "He shouldn't want that and we shouldn't want that, but we all do," Cross says.

He adds the key to Luther and Alice's attraction is the fact that each likes in the other what they like best about themselves.

"Alice sees in John the things in which he treasures about himself, which is not this self-lacerating sense of justice. It's his morality, his intelligence, his ability to be like the Shadow and see into the hearts of man," Cross explains.

"And similarly, he sees in her what she thinks is best in herself. In a weird way, he sees through the psychopathic killer (into) what Alice perceives to be the true Alice, and that draws them together more than the very palpable sexual tension they have on screen."

Wilson next stars opposite Dominic West in the upcoming Showtime drama The Affair, but she'd also consider being part of an Alice-centric series, a project Cross is keen to do.

There's definitely an audience for it, he says. "One of my favorite characters in fiction is Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, and in many ways, although she spiraled out of control into a much more exotic creature ... I still see her as my Tom Ripley.

"She's so much more clever than me, she's so much smarter than me, she knows much more than me, and for some reason she's really easy to write. It's like a little act of possession. I start typing with Alice's words, and it's effortless."

Wilson sees a lot of story potential in a possible spinoff, too.

"There's so much we don't know much about Alice," she says, "and there's never been space to breathe in a way for the audience to really see what goes on in her day-to-day life. That's how we like to pitch it: She's an enigma that comes into someone's life, makes a statement and gets noticed, but then disappears.

"I love that character; I've never had so much fun playing a role and it's very easy for me — which is quite worrying."