Jaime Murray steals your heart in the British caper comedy Hustle

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This article was published 26/06/2006 (7253 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW YORK (AP) – When Jaime Murray heard about Hustle, she wanted in. She was angling for the role of Stacie Monroe, the beautiful and brainy “lure” on this comic caper series’ team of London-based flim-flammers.

Murray had the looks all right: slinky but girlish, with almond-shaped eyes, cushiony lips and porcelain skin. She could also boast of rigorous training at a London acting school known by its students as “trauma centre.”

But one thing about the audition gave her pause.

“Stacie was described as having ‘legs that go on for miles,”‘ says Murray, which, to her, implied a lofty supermodel type. So she plotted to artificially boost her odds along with her five-foot-seven height.

“I arrived for the audition in towering platforms,” she recalls with a giggle. “Later, after I got the job and had a meeting with the casting director, I felt safe wearing flip-flops.”

Classic bait-switch! But the truth is, Murray might have stolen the whole show from lesser actors than her able Hustle co-stars, who include Adrian Lester, Marc Warren, Robert Glenister and (the lone Yank in the crew and former Man From U.N.C.L.E.) Robert Vaughn.

Bonded by all-for-one togetherness, the charming gang of five they play deftly separates each fat-cat mark from the wealth at hand. “You can’t cheat an honest man” is the self-absolving mantra of this band as they carry out their lighthearted schemes, in the process having almost as much fun as the viewers.

Hustle premiered on the BBC in 2003. CBC TV airs the show in Canada.

Over a cup of tea in Manhattan not long ago, Murray was exclaiming on the pleasure of playing Stacie, whose virtues would be reaffirmed by any Hustle fan: “She’s intelligent, she’s sexy, she’s nobody’s fool. She’s cool, calm and collected. And naughty.

“And the stories let me play different characters in every episode: different accents, different costumes. So much fun!”

Indeed, on this week’s episode – when the team scams a thuggish pub owner by promising stardom for his no-talent son, a would-be British Eminem – Stacie masquerades as a rapper’s moll, a victim of a make-believe mugging, and a starchy government enforcement officer.

The stuff you learn playing Stacie! Once, for a scene as a stripper, Murray took pole-dancing lessons “from a wonderful woman who stripped for years. I met her on a Sunday morning, the only time the place was available – stunk of cigarettes and beers.”

And with the rest of the cast she has learned a few tricks of the swindler’s trade.

For instance, a consulting pickpocket confided that his peers often stand in tube stations adjacent to a “Beware of the Pickpockets” sign.

“You know why? Because as you walk past it, you touch your pocket or your bag. You locate your wallet for them, so they know exactly where to go!”

A useful lesson. But then, Murray has never shied from learning things.

“I was very bookish growing up, and I studied hard at school,” she says. “My parents wanted me to have an academic career. So I ended up going to the London School of Economics, and studied philosophy and psychology, which was as close to acting as I could get in the academic world.”

But despite her parents’ admonition that she turn elsewhere than drama for a living, her path perhaps was preordained: she is the daughter of Billy Murray, a veteran actor perhaps best known as a crooked cop on the British TV series The Bill.

“When I was growing up, I knew he was struggling, and he wasn’t particularly happy or fulfilled,” she says. “But I suppose the more he wanted to do it, even when it was causing him pain, the more I was drawn to it, too.”

Drawn more and more to it, she finally switched to drama school, where the Method approach employed there proved sufficiently punishing. “I’ve been recovering ever since,” she says with a laugh.

“Why did I want to be an actor?” she muses, then an answer pops out: “I wanted everyone to love me.” She bursts into peals of laughter. “That’s what they say in Chicago, isn’t it? More loooove!”

Thanks to her big break, she’s feeling the love now – including that of her Hustle co-stars.

“I’m so close to those boys now,” she glows. “But when I started, I was soooo intimidated. I was a nobody, with no experience.” And having trained primarily for the stage, “I didn’t even know what to do with the camera. I thought the best thing to do was ignore it.”