Heike Makatsch played the seductress Mia in Love Actually, who had an affair with her married boss (Picture: Universal Pictures)
If you trample all over Emma Thompson’s heart, even when she’s playing a character, you will feel the wrath of the entire nation.
It’s a sentiment Heike Makatsch knows well. The German actress, 53, played the temptress secretary Mia in Love Actually who seduces Karen’s (Emma) husband Harry (Alan Rickman).
When Karen discovers their affair, she famously sobs while listening to Joni Mitchell. It’s a gut-wrenching scene seared into the brains of many women – and Heike told Metro.co.uk she still gets flack for it.
‘Outside of Germany, people only know me through Love Actually or at least primarily through that film,’ the Resident Evil actress said, via a translator on Zoom.
‘That’s where people see me as the secretary who destroys a marriage, and many women feel a sort of anger towards me because of that.’
However, now she’s hoping to overhaul her intentional reputation with her excellent turn in Apple TV drama Where’s Wanda?.
In a famous scene, Emma’s Karen cries while listening to Joni Mitchell (Picture: Universal Pictures)
Heike said she was best known for the ‘evil’ role outside of Germany (Picture: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)
Heike plays Carlotta, a desperate mother who resorts to bugging her neighbours’ houses to find her missing daughter Wanda (Lea Drinda).
‘It’s quick that you’re typecast and I hope that now internationally Carlotta will help me so that people can see I’m not just the marriage-destroying evil Mia,’ she said with a laugh.
But she looks back on her time in Love Actually fondly. Her co-star Rickman, who died aged 69 from pancreatic cancer in 2016, was ‘loveable and wonderful’.
‘I was nervous and he gave me a very good feeling and encouraged me,’ she recalled.
She’s hoping her new role as Carlotta will overhaul her international reputation (Picture: Apple TV+/Frederic Batier. All Rights Reserved)
Heike described Where’s Wanda as a ‘tightrope walk’ between comedy and drama (Picture: Gerald Matzka/Getty Images)
After filming wrapped, Rickman sent Heike flowers and thanked her in a jokey note for ‘having been a great affair’ on screen. ‘He made me feel really good and made me feel safe,’ she added.
Now on to Where’s Wanda: an irreverent, quirky crime series, which uses black comedy to deal with dark themes. The blend of genres is a ‘tightrope walk’, Heike said, but a gratifying challenge for an actor.
It’s also gorgeous to look at: set in a timeless, yet highly stylised fictional small town that could be anywhere, not dissimilar to Sex Education.
In it, Heike’s Carlotta and her husband Dedo (Axel Stein) spy on their neighbours after their daughter Wander vanishes, setting up a makeshift surveillance room in their basement.
Heike enjoyed working with the ‘wonderful’ Rickman on Love Actually (Picture: Universal/Dna/Working Title/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
Heike said she understood Carlotta’s decision-making as a mother herself (Picture: Apple TV/Frédéric Batier)
What does Heike make of Carlotta’s highly illegal approach to finding her daughter? ‘I could understand it completely as I’m a mother myself,’ she said.
Heike has three daughters with former partner, musician Max Martin Schröder. She was also previously in a seven-year relationship with Daniel Craig until 2004.
She continued: ‘As a mother, the idea that one’s own child has disappeared, the police have given up looking, you find all this unhappiness and you’re sitting there being passive, you do want to be active. You want to do everything you can to find your daughter again.
‘I can understand that [in that position] you would cross over the legal boundaries. I don’t think I would feel bad doing that: violating somebody’s privacy just to find my daughter again. I have to say that out loud.’
Heike previously dated James Bond star Daniel for seven years (Picture: Franziska Krug/Getty Images)
Heike seems to share a determined streak with Carlotta. She told me she too hasn’t been immune to conducting her own harebrained schemes (although to be clear: none involving illegal surveillance).
Many years ago, she dodged paying for a Rolling Stones ticket by climbing over the fence. It didn’t quite go to plan, though. Dogs soon began chasing her, alerting security guards to Heike and her fellow intruders and they were chucked out of the gig.
But, as she was ‘desperate’ to see the rockers and undeterred by their foiled attempt, they found some generous gig-goers who passed their tickets through gaps in the fence to Heike and her group to re-use. The trick worked
Even when Heike later bumped into the original security guards once inside, they let them off the hook as it was clearly ‘so important’ to them to watch the Rolling Stones.
Where’s Wanda? follows the mysterious disappearance of Wanda (Picture: Frédéric Batier)
She very much brings this mischievous to Carlotta in Where’s Wanda?. But what does she make of the show?
‘My take-home is that we all have secret skeletons in the closet – but it doesn’t mean you have to judge people for it,’ Heike explained.
But most of all, Heike said the eight-parter is about how ‘family carries you throughout your life.’
Where’s Wanda will debut on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Wednesday followed by new episodes every Wednesday through November 13.
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