Mahal Kita Flowers worked on the set to help create the elaborate images to promote the fourth and final season of the hit show, writes Marijke Hall

Killing Eve fans will no doubt have seen the edgy images of protagonists Villanelle and Eve, surrounded by candles and a dark, floral arrangement.

Created to promote the show, it aims to depict the dark and light interplay of the two women for season four of the hit BBC America series.

And the man behind the amazing floral creation is none other than Mahal Kita Flowers (@mahalkitaflowers) - or Antony Burger - from Margate.

If you’ve come across his work before then you’ll see exactly why he was chosen for the job.

Inspired, edgy, unique and of course beautiful are just a few words that spring to mind when it comes to his floral creations.

It’s hard to believe Antony, previously a fashion producer in London, has only been in the flower business a few years.

But anyway, back to that Killing Eve job.

Recommended by a photographer he has worked with before - Claire Rothstein - he was asked to help create the floral set for the promotional stills and videos.

“When she told me the job I thought ‘there is no chance I’m not doing this; this is my gig’,” he explains.

“This is the type of thing and look I like to do. If it was more pretty perhaps I wouldn’t have been so eager to do it, but this was dark and moody and the main idea was a dying shrine.

“It’s edgy and my work thrives in that style.”

He says working with set designer Hana Al-Sayed and her team he helped to create a floral shrine in which the characters were photographed and filmed.

Taken from Instagram: Mahal Kita Flowers (@mahalkitaflowers)

“The idea behind it was to indicate this feeling of dark and light and how the two main characters interplayed, and the juxtaposition between them,” he explains. “One is bad and one is good but as the show’s gone on, Eve is transitioning to be this person who is actually a bit more bad.

“I got involved mainly because I worked with Claire Rothstein. She’s an amazing female photographer, very good at capturing heightened female sexuality in a really nice way.

“That feeling between Eve and Villanelle, that whole sexual tension, they really wanted to show that and play with it.”

He was sent the designs of what the set designers had in mind and then went to work finding the flowers to do it justice.

“It needed to feel like a shrine with these dark colours but almost like it had been there for a while,” he explains.

“The roses were on their way out, we didn’t want it to feel fresh, we wanted it to feel very on the edge and dying.

“It’s kind of my thing, I like that look, quite extravagant but also rich.

“I pulled a load of stuff that I thought would work, so roses, deep burgundy hydrangeas and a lot of green eucalyptus.

“We did it in mid-October so there was a lot of Halloween stuff around at wholesalers so I pulled in a lot of autumnal leaves and red eucalyptus and things like that.

“We also got a load of silk roses which we spray-painted black which we do quite often in these larger sets. So you get this really nice clean look.”

He says the “amazing” design team built a huge set which was modular to allow the characters to actually go into it.

“You have to create that depth so it doesn’t look flat; it was almost four layers of different parts,” he explains.

“We had to place the characters in and then move the set in too, so they were basically trapped in there.

“Up until shooting you’re still moving things around. Preparing other things just in case something needs to change.”

He admits it was a dream job, not only his style but also with flowers as the main focus.

“On most shoots there are flowers involved, but they are an extra to the main thing,” he says. “But with this, the set was flowers.

“It’s one of those funny things where you go on these shoots and I’ll be doing flowers, whether it’s videos or stills, and thinking ‘there is a chance they could cut this’ - with this there was no way they could cut it.”

Aside from the promo shots, parts of season four of the show - which is the final series - had been filmed in Margate.

“There’s no connection between them filming in Margate and me doing this Killing Eve job - maybe I manifested it myself! It was just sheer luck that the photographer knew me.”

Antony, whose studio is on Fort Hill, says he was quite comfortable working on set, having worked in those fields before.

He says he hopes to do more events and shoots, which was his initial plan when he moved permanently to Margate four years ago.

“I wish I could remember why I suggested becoming a florist which sounds ridiculous, but at the time it seemed so natural.

“I knew that I could do it creatively, I just didn’t know logistically that I could do it.”

Well clearly it was the right decision.