It really is the women that make Dream Team. The pioneering drama serial about a fictional Premiership football club (its won stacks of awards for its special effects and, unlike Footballer's Wives, was the first footie drama to work on TV) may have stacks of football, but all the best storylines revolve around the women, and this season Marem Hernandez has seen more than her fair share of the action!
During the show's six seasons, we've seen some sweet, sensitive girls and some of the hardest bitches, most determined women we've come across on screen, but now its time for Dream Team's latest addition, the woman who plays hard-nosed Mediterranean football agent, Pilar Hernandez. In true Dream Team tradition, this cat has claws and she'll bare them at every opportunity during the all new seventh season.
Actress Marem Hernandez, who plays perfidious Pilar is a familiar face to British TV viewers. She's appeared briefly in another Hewland International drama on Sky One, Mile High, and is instantly recognisable owing to her cheeky role in Ford Focus advert (after dropping her man off at an airport and receiving a proposal of marriage she famously skidded a big NO into soft earth as her man was peering down from his plane). But for Dream Team, the multi-lingual Latina head-turner is in no doubt how she will play her character in the show.
"Joan Collins has Nothing on me!" she says, "Pilar is a woman in a mans world and she has to be tougher and take no crap. Instead of coming along and trying to build relationships and be nice to people, she's quite fiery and shows the boundaries. She's a very strong character."
So will she have the big hair and shoulder pads, just like Joan Collins's Alexis Carrington character in Dynasty?
"The hair's there, but I haven't got the shoulder pads! It is fun to play. The other character Abi Fletcher, is like the Linda Evens character, so we've got this whole Dynasty thing going on."
With a hard-nosed reputation already assured, Marem is set to take her place in the show that provides more cliffhangers than Jordan has had nightclub punch-ups (indeed the balloon-busted model in the shows last season). We left last season with the future of Harchester United in turmoil (as ever) -who would be the mysterious winner of the golden ticket that would ensure them control of the club? As the new season begins, the rightful heir to the throne is still at large and various wannabes come forward to claim their prize. Of course, we saw Pilar at the end of season six, and she is set to be a major fixture this season at Harchester. "I was an agent that represented Marcel Sabatier, a French player that had a few problems and then I did a bit of monkey business with money, but we got through it. Now there's an ownership issue -who owns the club? The corporation has put me in charge to look after the financial side of things," Marem explains. She's certainly looking forward to mixing it up a bit. "As an actor, I'm like 'bring it on!'," she says. Her bitchy character may be a fun one to play, but Marem did do some research, and she offers some interesting views on how to play the ultimate bitch! "It's dangerous to be one-dimensionally nasty - there's only so far you can take that. I do think the character has a lot to give emotionally - and this is an actor talking - it's all very well being a bitchy character, but you have to have something you can relate to. It its straightforward evil, you can never identify with someone like that and you wont want to watch her. It helps to define the other characters - I am almost defining them. I do think its good to have a love-to-hate character, and that's my aim," she says.
But however much we try not to, when talking about how she'll play the latest super-bitch, conversation always returns to the same place. "I really went with Alexis. She's marvelous at that - she's got envy, she's got jealousy and she's got greed. We can't get enough of her."
So with her own love plot lines set to shake things up even more - plus new characters - Dream Team's and Harchester United's future seems assured.
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