Double trouble
ITV heist thriller Frauds marks the first time Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker have starred together on screen. They tell DQ about their partnership as complicated leads Bert and Sam in a series that’s also the latest project from Jones’s TeamAkers production company.
Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker are two of the biggest stars on British television, with Doctor Who, Vigil, Broadchurch, Gentleman Jack and Doctor Foster among their credits. Yet six-part heist drama Frauds, which debuts this Sunday on ITV and ITVX in the UK, marks the first time they have shared the screen.
Set in southern Spain and filmed on location in Tenerife, the show stars Jones and Whittaker as Bert and Sam, two con women whose toxic but darkly funny friendship is rekindled in order to pull off the art heist of the century. When Bert is released from prison on compassionate grounds after a devastating health diagnosis, it’s Sam she calls and it’s Sam she needs to help her carry out one last epic job.
Bert and Sam then embark on the most audacious of art thefts, reuniting with a talented team of outcasts to help them plan the crime. While the team must overcome numerous challenges before they can pull off the heist, a power struggle between Bert and Sam threatens to derail their plans and destroy them both.
Jones isn’t just leading the series on screen, however. She also co-created the drama with writer Anne-Marie O’Connor and is an executive producer through TeamAkers, the company she founded with her writer-producer husband Laurence Akers. The show is coproduced with Monumental Television and distributed by ITV Studios.
Frauds is the second original scripted project from TeamAkers following 2023’s Maryland, which was also written by O’Connor. But while that three-parter – about a pair of estranged sisters who discover their mother’s secret life after her sudden death – was a “small, quiet, beautiful” drama, Frauds is completely different.
“We wanted to continue our creative relationship [with O’Connor] on the basis of telling female-led stories, ones that hadn’t been told. The sibling relationship hadn’t been told in that way before [in Maryland],” Jones tells DQ. “Then we wanted to tell a story about a toxic relationship that I think everyone has, whether it’s with a person or it’s with an addiction, drink, drugs. That is Bert.
“In your formative years, maybe you find someone who intoxicates you and brings out a different side to you. Normally, what happens is you then become an adult. But obviously, if there’s a Bert in your life, it’s hard to get rid. They won’t go away, as with addiction. So I feel like it was just a story that everyone would know, but we’d not really delved into it. From the outside, it is just a fun show, but creatively, what’s going on is what me and Anne-Marie love to do best, which is deep character work.”
Casting Sam and Bert, Jones wanted to upend viewer expectations of which one she and Whittaker might play. “I think everyone would assume Jodie’s more of a Bert,” says Jones, who previously went against type as reserved, uptight sister Becca in Maryland. “When you make your own shows, you can cast yourself in roles you wouldn’t typically be cast in.”
“The thing that’s so fascinating about [Sam] is she’s the opposite of me, an absolute closed book, whereas I’m not,” Whittaker laughs. “Everything’s a one-word answer, but then you see these flickers of fire, where she really shows her true colours, and I loved having to play that suppression for a lot of it.”
After her three-season stint as Doctor Who, becoming the first female actor to play the title role in the storied sci-fi drama, Whittaker has been seen on screen in prison drama Time and factual drama Toxic Town. “I love being offered parts that are so challenging and feel like a world away from myself,” she says. “Sam is such a brilliant challenge. Anne-Marie has got such a way with words. Our chemistry as a three, it was so collaborative.”
Whittaker was immediately drawn to Frauds because the scripts were “like nothing I’d ever read,” she says. “Suranne and Anne-Marie, they’ve created something they’ve never written before, and Suranne felt like she hadn’t seen these characters before. That’s why it feels unique, because every major role is being played by a woman. That’s not usual for this genre, in any way.”
Unsurprisingly, spending the first four months of this year filming in Tenerife was also part of the appeal. “I was like, ‘I’m there,’” she jokes. “But also it just read really fun. Most of the work I do, you don’t associate it with fun. The overriding theme isn’t ‘bants,’ whereas something like Frauds ticks all the boxes. Sam’s such a layered character. It’s absolutely not one-note. There are so many elements. She has so many walls up and this addiction to this person. Bert’s like [sweet soft drink] Vimto. Your parents would be like, ‘Don’t drink Vimto, you’ll be climbing the bloody walls.’ Bert to me is Vimto.”
With Bert spending a decade in prison, Sam has had a chance to reflect on the life they’ve led and their lifestyle choices, only to be thrown back into it immediately on Bert’s release. “But what I love about the writing is this is not some innocent victim who’s pulled along,” Whittaker says of her character. “She’s absolutely making decisions for herself. And as angry as she can be, she is making those choices.”
It’s also revealed early on that Sam is on the trail of the daughter she gave up for adoption at a young age, carrying grief for the life she might have led while also dealing with her guilt over Bert’s jail time for a crime she was involved in. “That is obviously fundamental to where she is at this moment, and also probably having a pretty chill 10 years and then the Tasmanian Devil’s back in your life.”
Jones and Whittaker were already friendly socially before Frauds, living close to each other in North London. Even so, Jones was surprised by how quickly they bonded on set and the easygoing understanding they found to play a pair of long-time friends. “The more we hung out, the more we were able to just do those scenes, touching each other, hanging off each other and pushing each other around. It just felt natural,” she says.
“It’s easy to have chemistry with someone like Suranne, because she is so ace,” says Whittaker. “I feel so blessed not only to have been given the opportunity to work with her, but also that it’s on something she’s created. She knew my work, knew I’d never played a role like Sam before, and seeing her absolutely smash it as Bert was just brilliant. We were a pretty small ensemble but we were really tight, and it was a wonderful family environment.”
That chemistry proved particularly useful in the show’s first episode, which is practically a two-hander between Jones and Whittaker. Sam greets Bert on her release from prison and discovers her plans for one last job, throwing her own 10-year rehabilitation into chaos. From episode two, the series bursts into life with the pair rediscovering their knack for petty theft – while dressed as nuns. There are also scenes set in a bullring as the show’s supporting characters slowly come into view and Bert’s plans for the heist are revealed.
“There was a lot of talk about, ‘Oh, are people gonna watch it?’ because it’s just two women talking,” Jones says of the opening scenes. “Me and Anne-Marie were like, ‘Well, if you’re not invested in Bert and Sam, you’re not going to be invested in the heist.’ It’s very daring of ITV in this landscape where, if someone’s ‘double screening,’ you need to have something going on all the time. Let’s see if people will love it or not.”
“I loved the dynamic between them,” Whittaker says. “They are such fun scenes where you begin a scene in one place and you end it in a completely different place. They press each other’s buttons sometimes to get a fun reaction, but they’re just testing each other. And when you as actors get to do that over six episodes, it’s brilliant.
“But also, essentially it is a heist genre piece, and in that it feels completely different from a lot of the ones I’ve seen. I love the grade, I love the colours. The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. All those elements make it feel different. What I loved about Bert and Sam is they’re not always likeable and their decisions aren’t always the ones everyone would make, but they’re so fucking fun, you kind of want to stick with them.”
As Bert, Jones sports uneven peroxide blonde hair and numerous tattoos. At one point, she even “toyed with a buzz cut,” she reveals. “Jodie was going to be dark, so I knew I wanted to be the opposite. Bert doesn’t care what she looks like. She cut her own hair in prison, one side shorter than the other. The tattoos are horrid – they tell a story of drunken nights.
“I felt like I needed to inhabit that physicality so that every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone I didn’t really know or like, because that’s what Bert feels about herself. I couldn’t wait to dye my hair dark and put some nice clothes on and be classic and clean again, because it’s so opposite to who I am.”
Bert also stands out for her passion for Hawaiian shirts. “I sent a mood board of what I wanted, and Hawaiian shirts were up there,” Jones says. “She basically is telling the world that she’s here and she doesn’t give a fuck – and actually she does give a fuck and she’s scared. But a lot of people who are outlandish like that have a vulnerability inside, and that’s why they’re hard to be around, because they present something different.”
As an executive producer, Jones has been across every aspect of the series, even while she was acting on other jobs. She was in the Frauds writers room at the same time as she started work on Netflix political thriller Hostage, in which she plays the British prime minister. Casting on Frauds then took place while Jones was acting in BBC comedy Film Club. “They were all just on top of each other,” she recalls. “I had a massive brain fart most days.”
Filming overseas for four months, she would have meetings during the day and then work at night to fulfil her duties as an exec producer, while also being pulled off set to look at scripts. “So it was a lot, but what we managed to achieve is unbelievable,” she says. “Now we can say we did it, and we did it in the space of two years from the moment we thought of it to now. It’s a two-year development to screen. It’s unheard of.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Hustle: A slick team of British grifters, each with a troubled past, targets corrupt big fish in elaborate long cons – and the greatest challenge is often trusting each other.
White Collar: A charming art forger and conman cuts a deal with an FBI agent to cooperate on white-collar crimes, but each case is a delicate dance of trust as the ex-con can’t quite escape his taste for the game.
Imposters: A dark comedy following Maddie, a masterful con artist who seduces and marries her marks before robbing them. When three of her ex-victims team up to track her down, they become embroiled in schemes even bigger than they imagined.
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tagged in: Frauds, ITV Studios, Jodie Whittaker, Suranne Jones, TeamAkers