When actress Susana Downes got the call in mid-2020 she would be cast as Gigi in the new SBS Heist drama The Unusual Suspects, she was in a doctor’s waiting room helping her ex-boyfriend get X-rays for his fractured ankle
The Unusual Suspects.
“I play a very small part, but it is pivotal in the main protagonists’ journey,” she told
Neos Kosmos.
The story follows the case of an elaborate heist set in Sydney’s glamourous Eastern Suburbs, played out by an all-star, diverse cast featuring names such as Aina Dumlao, AACTA award-winner Miranda Otto and Michelle Vergara Moore.
“As soon as I read the first two episodes, I was just like ‘this is so different and fun with a really amazing cast’,” she said.
“It moves fast…it’s colourful, it’s bright, it’s a bit camp. But it’s really well acted and really quite funny and dark at the same time.”
She’s overconfident, and living in a bubble in the Eastern Suburbs, the
Lord of the Rings and
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina actor said. She’s good-hearted and gutsy underneath it all, but I think she’s sort of oblivious, in some ways, to the rest of the world and what people go through. She’s cocooned in the world that she’s inherited. And then, you know, she has to have a wake-up call.
When viewers first meet Sara, she appears to have it all. In the series, Sara has three children, including the eldest, who is played by Otto s real life daughter Darcy O Brien. But as the series continues, cracks begin to show in Sara s facade.