Karla Crome stars as Riley in Hit & Miss, Sky Atlantic’s new drama series about a contract killer with a big secret: she’s a transgender woman.
Train. Kill. Receive payment. Repeat. This has been the routine for Mia ever since she was taken under the wing of Eddie, a long-standing resident of the criminal underworld, and transformed into a sharp-shooting assassin. Fate, however, ensures things don’t stay the same for long, and the arrival of a bombshell-laden letter from her ex, Wendy, changes Mia’s life forever.
Created by Paul Abbott (Shameless), Hit & Miss is currently airing on Tuesday nights at 10pm on Sky Atlantic.
How would you describe your character?
“Riley is sixteen and she’s the eldest of the four children. They live in Yorkshire in the hills. She doesn’t know her father, or at least he’s not mentioned. And her mother, Wendy, the mother of all the children at the farm, has recently died of cancer. So Riley is really looking after all of the kids and we see that burden on her right from the beginning. She’s basically the mum.
“She’s having an affair – I guess you could call it that – with John, the landowner and owner of their house. She began sleeping with him in order to pay the rent for the house and then she fell for him. This is all going on and it’s a bit dark from an outside point of view, but with her mum dying she finds something in John that maybe is a bit paternal – a friend, or even just someone to look after her.
“And then in comes Mia. She knocks on the front door, and Riley kind of recognises her as this person from her mum’s past. Not only has this strange character who is her half-brother’s father just turned up out of the blue but she also wants to stay with the family and she wants to be the mother. She’s been asked by Wendy, the mother, to look after her kids after she dies.
“So Mia arrives and the initial episodes are about the slow integration of Mia in to these children’s lives. She’s a very lonely character – she needs to be because she’s a killer. But the kids have no idea. They just know this woman who used to be a man has come in to their lives and said, ‘I’m taking over.’ We later find out that she does that because she wants contact with her son and she cares for these children. But in the beginning they see her as an intruder.”
Where do they all live?
“They live in the middle of nowhere in this bizarre house that is falling apart at the seams. They get the pigs to pork weight and then they take them down to the market and they eat a lot of eggs because they have a lot of chickens. They grow their own vegetables – it’s so strange for a 16-year-old to be orchestrating this household. But obviously she doesn’t go to school, and she doesn’t go to college so her family is everything to her.”
How would you describe Hit & Miss?
“It’s so bizarre – when people ask me what character I play I have to say, ‘Well let’s sit down and I’ll draw you a diagram!’ I would describe it as being about a transsexual hit-woman who inherits four children. It’s not the sort of thing you’d bring the kids down with a blanket and some Cadburys to watch – it’s dark – but you can certainly see it as a family drama in its subject matter.
“There’s the innocence of a family trying to stay together, a child who’s lost their mother, people who want to be loved; where we look for love and how we find it.”
How did you come to be cast?
“I just got the audition through my agent, I read the script and it was so strange! I’ll be honest – I hadn’t heard of Sky Atlantic and I hadn’t even heard of Chloë. So I went in to it with an open mind. Then when I went back to be seen again, read more sripts and met the people involved, it became a lot more compelling.
“I realised the scale of the project and what it entailed. Filming took several months but it was an actor’s dream. I had every emotion and action to deal with – you wait and see. The scale of things that I got to play with and go through was horrific in one way – but for me as an actor it was a treat.”
What were your most challenging moments during filming?
“The very first day of filming was a challenge, but a good one. It was when the character of John dumped me and we had quite a violent sex scene. But going in to it with a scene of such power meant I was ready for anything after that. And in a funny way I didn’t know anyone then so I didn’t feel that self-conscious. That wasn’t memorable in a good way but it set the standard.
“Other challenges were more literal – I got sent to swimming lessons because Riley’s a county-level swimmer. Oh, and she can sing as well. I’m obviously not from Yorkshire, I’m from north London, so I’ve had to change my accent too. All those things have given me loads of experiences I can take away and use in the future.”
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Watch a video interview with Chloë Sevigny…