Making Miss Take
British-Chilean actor Talisa Garcia tells DQ about her role as Miss Take in ITV heist drama Frauds, the character’s secret ties with one of the show’s protagonists and the close bond she forged with her co-stars on set in Tenerife.
As Talisa Garcia built her acting career, she would often enjoy nights in with her friends and a takeaway to watch Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker in series such as Doctor Foster and Broadchurch.
So being on the Tenerife set of ITV drama Frauds, starring both Jones and Whittaker, was a “dream come true.”
“Working with them, I can’t even begin to explain it,” she tells DQ. “You’ve got to keep it together, because you’re also an actor, but it’s very difficult sometimes not to look at them doing a scene and think, ‘I’m doing a scene with Suranne Jones. I’m doing a scene with Jodie Whittaker.’ It was so surreal, but they’re so friendly and loving, and it was like three mates back in drama school. We just had so much fun doing it.”
Co-created by Jones and writer Anne-Marie O’Connor, the series introduces two con women, Bert (Jones) and Sam (Whittaker), who rekindle their dark and toxic friendship to pull off the art heist of the century. When Bert is released from prison on compassionate grounds after 10 years behind bars, she goes to Sam for help to carry out one last epic job.
The two women bring together a team of talented outcasts to help them plot the crime, but the power struggle between Bert and Sam threatens to derail their plans and destroy them both.
Among the gang of co-conspirators assembled by Bert and Sam to steal Salvador Dalí’s surrealist painting Face of the Great Masturbator, which is housed at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia, is Garcia’s character, the exuberant Miss Take. Described as a smart, shrewd and acerbic Spanish trans woman, she’s the closest thing Bert has to a mother and taught Bert everything she knew about the art of the con.
Produced by Monumental Television in association with Jones’s TeamAkers, the series also stars Elizabeth Berrington as sharp-witted magician’s assistant Jackie Diamond, Karan Gill as Bilal Anwar, an oddball loner who is also a gifted artist, and Thaís Martin as Caitlin, a hustler who appears to have a link with Sam.
As revealed in flashbacks, Bert dropped Miss Take when Sam came along. She was then left to rule over drag nights at her club on the Costa del Sol, but still wants more from life. And with their latest heist, Bert and Sam might be able to offer her that.
“Miss Take is the best,” exclaims Garcia, who likens the character to criminal mastermind Fagin in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. “She never really asked to be a mother, so she never asked to be put into this, but Bert was left to her. Miss Take has not had the best life herself, so she can only give her so much love and so much attention. When I first read it, I thought of Fagin. That’s what came to my head straight away. Basically, I’d been training her for this big job for all her life.”
Even after so many years apart, “there is love there,” she says of Miss Take’s fondness for Bert. “She’s the only daughter she knows, but even with the love she has for [husband] Matteo, she’s very complicated. She’s been hurt a lot from a young age. She doesn’t trust the rest of the world and she’s in it for herself. She doesn’t believe that anybody’s going to do her right. It’s all about what she can get. But there are people who actually do love her, and she does love. She’s not evil.”
Miss Take’s reunion with Bert becomes a key part of the story, but as expected, things don’t go smoothly. “She wants to see Bert, of course she does, but she’s pissed that she didn’t contact her first. She went to Sam,” Garcia continues. “In a way, she does feel like Sam took her from her. There is that whole Fagin-Oliver thing going on here. One can’t live without the other. But there is definitely love between them. They don’t know anything else.”
There is less love between Miss Take and Sam, who both “get” Bert more than they do each other. But Miss Take does recognise the effect they have on each other, which is why Sam is initially reluctant to revisit her criminal past once Bert is released from prison.
“They’re like a couple that just doesn’t quit each other,” Garcia says. “It’s so toxic between them. It’s like being with a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you know they’re really crap for you. You just take them back, because you love them. That’s what their relationship reminds me of, so I haven’t got that much time for Sam. I don’t trust Sam too much. I know behind my back, she’d twist that knife. With Bert, it would take a lot for Bert to do that. And if you asked me if I would twist the knife, probably yes, on both of them.”
As plans progress to steal the extremely valuable Dalí canvas, each member of the gang takes up a unique role, from master forger to illusionist. But while much of the group’s work is conducted in secret, Miss Take’s goal is entirely the opposite – to create a distraction that will keep the museum’s security guards away from the painting as Bert and Sam put their plan into action.
“She’s got to get all the attention on her, and she’s an expert at that – she does drag,” Garcia laughs about Miss Take’s show-stopping scene in episode six. “Her and her girls will do the trick, basically. Miss Take is not shy, so she’s definitely a huge part of it.”
A resident of Alicante in southeastern Spain, where she owns a bar and hosts drag events, Garcia admits to feeling spied upon when she first read the part of Miss Take, such was the similarity between the character’s backstory and her own life.
“I’ve been around drag queens a lot, and so for me, because I am transsexual, I did start off as a boy dressing up as a girl and going out with my friends to the club,” she says. “When I was 18 and dressing up, because I hadn’t had my operation at that time yet, I would just dress up and my friends would put makeup on me. That would be a big part of going out, and it’s the same to get into a character.
“When I read it and I got the description, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ Then I met them [the producers] and I told them my story and it was just crazy, because it was my story, apart from the fact that I don’t do drag,” she says.
Beyond the character, she was hooked by the show’s twists and turns that aim to keep viewers gripped across all six episodes. Then when it came to filming in Tenerife and Madrid with a female-led cast and crew, she found love and support at the time when, in April this year, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the term “woman” legally means a biological woman.
“When we got to the end of filming, it was when the new law came out. That was on the last day, when we went out for our meal,” remembers Garcia. “It was such a sad moment for me. I had my operation done when I was 18 years old. I’m in my 50s, so it’s a long time ago, and all of a sudden it’s quite a scary time for people like myself. You don’t know what’s happening in the world.
“It’s not just happening in the UK, it’s happening in a lot of places. And to be around [the cast and crew], it was a really nice moment. We’re all sitting there, and I remember Jodie gave us a hug, and Suranne. I was sitting there with all these powerful women and at the same time on the news, there was this other group of females cheering for this law going through. I was just really glad I was with this group of beautiful people.”
Filming in a real bar in Tenerife with some real drag queens also helped the authenticity of Miss Take’s scenes. “It was the real thing,” Garcia adds. “We were in the real place. But the makeup team were incredible to help me as well, and a lot of outfits.”
Unsurprisingly, it’s the scenes during the museum heist that Garcia enjoyed filming the most, as Miss Take draws all eyes in her direction and away from the unfolding theft. “That scene, oh my god,” she says. “It was amazing filming that, because we were running out of time. We had to do this thing at the end where all this glitter comes out, and we were like, ‘We’ve only got one shot at it, come on. Can we do it?’ And you know what? It just looks incredible.
“Then there’s a scene I have with Bert, and it’s quite an intimate moment between us. There was a lot of emotion in that scene. I have a scene with Jodie as well which is quite nice, but the museum one is going to be the most interesting one.”
Garcia recently rented out her bar and is looking forward to splitting her time more between Spain and the UK at a time when she says representation of trans actors and characters on screen is changing for the better. “But then I always find actors tend to be more on the left [politically], and they tend to be more aware of all these things,” she says. “The industry has definitely changed a lot, and as the industry is changing, society is going the other way. They take one step forward, 10 back. I wish we could all just get on with our lives and be who we want to be.
“I wouldn’t want to be young now. I wouldn’t want to be an 18-year-old. I know that. I’ve thought that a lot lately. We always want to look younger – I’m the first one queuing up to have anything new that comes out. But to be honest, I wouldn’t want to be an 18-year-old trans person now. I’d be too scared. I’ve always said to all my trans friends and brothers and sisters, ‘Just do something.’ Become singers, actors, lawyers, doctors. That’s the way you change people, from inside outwards, rather than just going online and become infamous. Just study and do something and change people’s minds that way.”
Having become the first trans person cast by Lucasfilm for a role in small-screen fantasy series Willow, Garcia has also played parts in crime drama Baptiste, The Girlfriend Experience and Silent Witness. She now hopes she’ll get the chance to reunite with Jones and Whittaker for a second – and third – season of Frauds, which is distributed internationally by ITV Studios.
“It’s one of those shows that people are gonna just love,” she adds. “It’s a heist, but it’s full of real people and the characters are so well written. It’s just beautiful. They’ve gone really deeply into every single character. They all have a pulse, and that is really important when you’re reading a script. People are going to absolutely love it.”
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tagged in: Frauds, ITV, ITV Studios, Monumental Television, Talisa Garcia, TeamAkers