Missing You’s Rosalind Eleazar: ‘I was catfished and it was petrifying’

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Rosalind Eleazar was catfished by a man she met through a dating app (Picture: David Tarling/Netflix)

*Warning: This contains spoilers for Missing You

Netflix’s latest Harlan Coben thriller Missing You is a dark tale that takes catfishing to such an extreme you’ll never want to download a dating app again. It’s also a scam the show’s lead star Rosalind Eleazar has experienced personally.

‘It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life,’ the 36-year-old actor recalls to Metro. Rosalind had been speaking to a man on an app – she can’t quite remember which one – and they arranged a date in London.

A friend had wisely advised her to meet him in public so they settled on a tube station. When Rosalind arrived, she saw a man staring at her. It was not the man she had seen on the app.

‘And then he came up to me, and I was like, “Oh my god, oh my god. What am I gonna do?”’ she says. ‘He asked me if I was Rosalind and I replied, “No, no.” Then he said, “Oh no, don’t worry. My brother is coming; he’s held up at work and he wants me to come and get you.”

‘I was just like, “Oh, right, okay, don’t worry, it’s fine”. And then he followed me back into the tube and there was a female member of staff just looking at me and then I just ran off.’

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Rosalind managed to escape from him but is still troubled by what could have been a a very different outcome years later. She was just a teenager when it happened.

She reflects: ‘I thought, “What if I had been just a bit more trusting?” For a moment I did think about it – as I was only around 17 or something. It was petrifying. I just thought, “Oh my God, imagine what could have happened if I’d gone.”‘ It’s a chilling thought – particularly as we are living through an epidemic of violence against women.

Missing You is Rosalind’s first time being ‘number one’ on the call sheet. Until now, she’s best known for being Slough House spy Louisa in Slow Horses, and has also starred in shows including Howards End and Rellik.

The Harlan Coben universe is a gigantic vehicle for Netflix and Missing You the the ninth TV adaptation. While the thrillers are hugely popular among viewers, critics have been less kind. The i called last year’s Fool Me Once ‘junk food television.’ What does Rosalind make of that?

Rosalind Eleazar poses for photographers at a photo call for the television series Missing You, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in London. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Rosalind said he catfishing orderal was the ‘most frightening’ experience of her life (Picture:: AP)
Undated Handout Photo from Missing You. Pictured: (L to R) Rosalind Elezar as Kat Donovan, Ashley Walters as Josh Buchanan. See PA Feature SHOWBIZ TV 2025 Preview. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ TV 2025 Preview. PA Photo. Picture credit should read: Vishal Sharma/Netflix ? 2024. NOTE TO EDITORS: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ TV 2025 Preview.
Rosalind takes on her first leading role in Netflix (Picture: Vishal Sharma/Netflix © 2024)

She says: ‘The thing is with reviews, everyone has an opinion. With these shows, what’s interesting is that if there are bad reviews, the figures say something very different.

‘Shows should be allowed to live in the space that they’re taking up. There are so many different styles of show and the Harlan Coben shows have a really particular USP and people love it.

‘They absolutely love these shows because he’s a genius at twists and turns and taking audiences down wrong roads. It’s a genre that people have loved since the dawn of time.

‘But do reviews bother me? I mean, I tend not to read them because you can get in your head about that a little bit.’

Missing You: Limited Series - Trailer Images (25th November)
Rosalind admits she finds Kat’s ‘forgiving’ nature ‘frustrating’ (Picture: Netflix)

As an unapologetic and ardent Harlan Coben fan myself, I say Missing You is his most twisted plot yet. It ends with Steve Pemberton’s Titus being unmasked as a mass murderer who catfishes vulenerable singletons and kidnaps them under the guise of a date. He then keeps them chained up in his farm, tortures them until they sign away their life savings to him before dealing the final blow: murder.

Rosalind felt the same as me when she read the script. ‘God, I do remember when I read that and I just thought, “Oh, wow, this is this isn’t light. It’s a really dark world,” she recalls.

‘And filming, obviously I was very separate to that storyline, so when I watched the six episodes, it was like, “Oh my god, this is horrific.” It’s a serious subject, and it goes to the absolute extreme.’

Missing singletons isn’t the only mystery to be solved in Missing You. There’s also the matter of who actually killed Kat’s dad, played by Sir Lenny Henry. It transpires it was her ex-fiancé Josh (Ashley Walters) who accidentally stabbed in a scrap before completely vanishing from Kat’s life without a word.

Missing You: Limited Series - Trailer Images (25th November) Missing You. Steve Pemberton as Titus in Missing You. Cr. Vishal Sharma/Netflix ?? 2024.
Rosalind said she found Steve’s character’s storyline ‘horrific’ (Picture: Vishal Sharma/Netflix)

But when Josh reappears after years, Kat falls back into his arms, seemingly forgetting he ghosted her. She is preternaturally forgiving, I say. ‘I was frustrated as well with how forgiving she is,’ Rosalind agrees.

‘I think, though, what drew me to the character. In my mind, I was like, “What are you doing, what are you doing?” But I think that love works in a really odd way.’

‘What also annoyed me about Kat was that she thinks that she knows the reasons why before thinking it through completely. In that final meeting, she basically puts words in Josh’s mouth, and it frustrated me that she didn’t just ask him, “Why did you leave?” and let him answer it.

‘She comes up with the theory. She has made up with this narrative that he left because she was a mess after her father’s death and that she was almost unlivable to live with. But the problem with that is, well, Josh was [horrible] for leaving her during that time. It was one of the hardest things for me as an actor to get my head around – but that made her more flawed and I enjoyed that.’

Rosalind Eleazar as Louisa in Slow Horses (Picture: Apple TV+)
Slow Horses fans want to see Louisa and River in a relationship (Picture: Apple TV+)

When Josh finally admits to Kat he killed her dad in the final scenes, she’s once again incredibly accepting. Sat next to him on their bed, she reaches out and touches his hand. But there was almost a different ending.

Rosalind says: ‘You should’ve see the amount of conversations we had with the team – the execs, the producers, the director, the writers – about this ending. There were lots of different versions of the ending.;

She added: ‘It’s not necessarily that it there a completely different ending. There was a version where Kat doesn’t touch Josh’s hand. It just ended on them sitting side by side. But I think everyone wanted there to be hope for the two of them.’

However, Rosalind does not think Kat and Josh jet off into the sunset once Missing You ends. ‘I don’t know if you could get past that,’ she explains. ‘I think that every time you would see your partner’s face, you would know that they took away the person that you loved.’

The 2024 BAFTA TV Tea Party - Arrivals
Rosalind would like to star in a biopic next (Picture: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

An on-screen relationship that fans do want to happen, though, is between her character Louisa and top Slough House spy River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden, on Slow Horses. Many are already convinced there’s a blossoming romance between them.

Rosalind teases: ‘It could happen. It might not happen. I can’t say too much on it. If something does happen, it will be in a very weird and Slow Horses way.

‘A lot of people speak about our chemistry and we really enjoy working with each other, but I think chemistry shows up in many ways: it might be that people are actually reading it as a chemistry between two friends rather than a romantic one. Jack and I love working together, so that definitely helps.’

As for her dream role? ‘Your last job informs your next job and what you want to do,’ Rosalind replies.

‘I’ve done a couple of things now that are procedural, and I’ve done quite a few adaptations and period jobs I definitely want to do something in a different time period or a biopic about Angela Davis.’

Missing You is available to stream on Netflix.

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