IF YOU HAVEN’T already binge-watched Netflix’s twisty-turny thriller Fool Me Once, consider it mandatory viewing for January. ‘I literally gasped out loud when I read the script’, says its star, Michelle Keegan. Anyone who’s completed the eight-episode roller coaster will know why. Keegan plays Maya, an ex-soldier who is grieving the death of her husband (Richard Armitage). So why has he suddenly popped up on the nanny cam? Can it really be him? And how is it all connected to her sister’s murder months earlier? Simply put: ‘It’s wild.’
It’s the latest in a series of Netflix adaptations of Harlan Coben’s best-selling novels and delivers the same dose of addictive escapism as previous hits The Stranger and Stay Close. Except with Fool Me Once the dark secrets, tantalising flashbacks and punchy plot twists just keep on coming. (And yes, Keegan reassures, ‘all your questions are answered by the finale’. No infuriating cliffhangers here.)
Some of Keegan’s best scenes are when Maya goes up against her very chilly, very posh mother-in-law Judith, played by Joanna Lumley. ‘I loved Ab Fab. If you’d told 11-year-old me that I’d be playing scenes opposite her I wouldn’t have believed it. She’s TV royalty,’ says Keegan. Was it a little intimidating? ‘Honestly, every time she was on set, you could feel everyone sort of light up. She’s so funny.’
For Keegan, the draw of Fool Me Once was a project ‘that I could really sink my teeth into’. It follows a triumphant 12 months for the 36-year-old actor, who is married to presenter Mark Wright. As well as a fifth season of Sky comedy Brassic, she branched into period drama in the BBC’s 1950s-set Ten Pound Poms. It’s further proof of just how versatile she i
