Daily Mail

The transgende­r star giving BBC drama a very modern twist

- Daily Mail Reporter

WITH stunning good looks and a femme fatale figure, she was the perfect choice to play a sexy siren in the BBC’s new Sunday night drama series Baptiste.

And the plot twist that saw her character revealed to have previously been a man was also a fitting surprise.

For Talisa Garcia underwent gender reassignme­nt surgery at the age of 18 and admits she worried she would never be a ‘normal woman’.

The Chilean-born actress, 45, was a boy called Joseph before her transition.

She stars as brothel madam Kim Vogel in the six-part BBC1 thriller, a spin- off from the acclaimed hit drama The Missing. At the end of the first episode, French detective Julien Baptiste, played by Tcheky Karyo, discovered Garcia’s character was formerly male sex- traffickin­g mastermind Dragomir Zelincu.

Miss Garcia admits that her stunning good looks meant that many of her friends – and even former boyfriends – did not know she was transgende­r.

‘For me, it has always been a secret’, she said.

‘I was a bit embarrasse­d, I suppose, of not being a “normal” woman.

‘I look different to a lot of transgende­r people and have been extremely lucky. I was just a woman and no one ever questioned it. So I kept it hidden.’

Miss Garcia has no idea who

‘No one ever questioned it’

her natural parents are as she was separated from them as a baby during the violent Chilean military coup in 1973.

She was found in the streets and adopted by a university lecturer and her engineer husband. The family fled Chile in 1977 and eventually settled in Swansea.

They moved to London when she was 13. Having become severely depressed as she could not cope with being male, she attempted suicide. With the support of her parents, she underwent a seven-hour-long genital reconstruc­tion surgery at the age of 18.

‘I don’t expect everyone to accept me, and there’s nothing wrong with it if people don’t – as long as we’re all civil to each other,’ Miss Garcia told the Daily Telegraph.

She has also appeared in Silent Witness and Doctors, but Baptiste is her biggest role to date. The first episode of the drama drew nearly five million viewers, easily beating the 760,000 who watched Channel 4’s postwar spy drama Traitors, featuring Bodyguard star Keeley Hawes – who also appeared in The Missing.

 ??  ?? Femme fatale with a secret: Talisa Garcia, in a picture she shared on social media
Femme fatale with a secret: Talisa Garcia, in a picture she shared on social media
 ??  ?? As a boy: Until 18 she was Joseph On TV: In first episode of Baptiste on Sunday night
As a boy: Until 18 she was Joseph On TV: In first episode of Baptiste on Sunday night
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