It’s a crisp Autumn day when Callie Cookie bounds in to meet me for coffee in North London, her energy as bright as the kaleidoscope of orange leaves I see on my way to the café. One glance of her signature wide-eyed smile and immediately I adore her.
She has puppy-dog energy. Her look can be described as ‘Savasana meets Spinelli’ as she sports a leotard, baggy trousers and a grungy hat, two pencil straight plaits either side. She clatters a jailer’s key ring on to the table, removing her over-ear headphones and beanie: “I better take these out before I kill myself! I only need one. Look at me! Like some kind of janitor!”
She’s come straight from a gym class. Immediately, she over-shares, giving me the inside scoop on a personal wardrobe malfunction. The yogi onesie gifted to her by her mum is not as pretty as it looks. “It’s very cool but it’s not very comfortable,” she says, gesticulating towards her crotch.
“Not easy to go to the toilet either, I imagine,” I add. We giggle loudly as she does an impression of the bathroom jumpsuit nakedness all females encounter at least once in their lives: “You take it all off…sit there!” She pulls a frog-like facial expression. “Looking around with your tits out!” She’s funny in real-life, too.
Getting her tits out is something which comes as part of her profession. She’s had to do it recently for the BBC’s sexy comedy series Cheaters. The messy drama about love, morality and monogamy returns in November for a second season. Cooke plays unfiltered, endearing Esther, who returns from a backpacking trip after discovering her long-term boyfriend, Josh (Joshua McGuire) was having an affair with the married woman across the road (Susan Wokoma). The show’s ten-minute episodes, written by Oliver Lyttelton, pack a punch. Each minute is filled with comedy beats and heightening drama. From Cooke’s description, it appears season two will be even better: “It continues with the same chaos. You’re not quite sure who to feel sorry for. And they’re all really messy.”
Leave your sombre soundtracks and fluid, artistic sex shots at the bedroom door, this is no-nonsense shagging. Cheaters is equal parts horny and hilarious. When I ask Callie about the vision behind the refreshing, realistic take of sex on TV, she lights up: “Yes, that’s exactly what we wanted! We wanted to do some bonking!”
Having sex with someone new is a daunting enough experience for many, never mind pretending to do it on screen for others to view as entertainment. Despite the show’s ‘bonk-tastic’ nature, a great deal of care and consideration goes into making it. Director Elliot Hegarty (Rivals, Ted Lasso) has a great ability to keep actors at ease with their performances. “Elliot’s amazing,” says Cooke. “He doesn’t shoot it in a creepy way. We all get to stand behind the monitor, review the shots and check what we are happy with.”
Like any good show, this is a team effort. Actors, directors, producers, intimacy coordinators all have their say. “The intimacy coordinator, Yarit Dor, sat down with me at the start of filming. We needed to find out the specific way that my character would have sex. Specifically, Esther, not Callie.” Self-deprecating and sharp, Cooke illustrates how the absurdity of Esther’s character, and comedy elements are what make her sex scenes less intimidating: “I was lucky that most of my scenes were funny, being sexy would terrify me!” says Cooke with a chuckle.
She teases me with inside info about next season: “In season one, I got off pretty lightly but in season two, I have a new scene partner and some more, what the script describes as ‘athletic’ positions.” She explains how sex scenes work. The cast, fully clothed before the cast walk things through, before returning home to perform their ‘homework’. Naked. Practice happens in a mirror so actors can report back their level of comfortability to the rest of the team. I have tears pouring down my cheeks at her description of one particular Kama Sutra-inspired activity. Safe to say, this one didn’t make the cut into the show. (It’s not making it into this feature either. I’ll leave that one to your imagination.)
She’s never made a second season of a show before. Her excitement about it is infectious: “I’m always quite low key about my TV shows but there’s something about this season that I’m so excited about.” It’s clear the team had a hoot making it. She’s proud of what they created together. “Those guys are some of my best friends now!” She depicts the warm, friendly on set and how the cast grew together, filming part of season one pre-pandemic and continuing later, post lockdown. Years later, they all happily return for what feels like a long-lost family reunion.
At present, there are no plans for a third season, but Cooke is keen on the idea. “It feels like a trilogy!” she laughs, swigging her flat white. “I don’t know what a trilogy feels like, but it feels like this is one!”
Like her character, Esther, who’s been on a journey to ‘find herself’ since last season, Cooke returns to season two of Cheaters four years later. Older, wiser and with more acting experience under her belt (Henpocalypse!, Piglets, Doctor Who). She’s back and forth on location shooting a Formula 1 film which wraps in December. Supposedly you are only ever six degrees of separation away from someone. Now, I am opposite someone who can propel me to Brad Pitt faster than a McLaren pit stop. Naturally, I cannot help myself but ask her about the experience.
“So, have you met Brad Pitt?” I ask, trying to appear cool, aloof (and failing). She’s far more chilled in her response. They’ve been working together for the past 12 months. I continue to probe, desperate for details on what he’s like to work with: “He’s fantastic. And he smells so nice!” Why doesn’t that surprise me?
She has nothing but glowing reviews. “The number one sets the tone of the set and he just does it perfectly. He’s really clever… he knows how to make a movie; he knows that every character needs a win.” From their first encounter at the table read, Pitt approached her to discuss ideas for her character. “He’s really kind. Sweet. Chatty. Silly. Sometimes shy. I’d never met a huge movie star before but he’s everything you’d want him to be.” They say you should never meet your heroes, but from Cooke’s description, perhaps you should if yours is Brad Pitt.
Cooke plays Pitt’s mechanic in the Hollywood blockbuster, zooming onto our screens in 2025. Just as with the sex scenes in Cheaters, she isn’t afraid of doing her homework. “I was pissing myself in the early auditions, pretending to do things with wrenches when I don’t even really know what a wrench is!”
After the intense audition process (several tapes and in-person meets) Cooke was invited to a final round at the Carlin offices where she learnt how to change F1 tyres. She rose to the occasion with flair. The casting directors took pictures of her in among the machinery to aid their final decision. “How do you even pose around a car?” Another impression. She gives herself a double chin, brings back that gorgeous frog-like smile and this time, a gawky thumbs up. Cooke is all joyful, goofy, effervescence with kind eyes and a heart of gold. I see exactly why they cast her.
A few weeks later, she has the job Drive to Survive superfans would turn racing green for: she trains at Mercedes. She’s the only actor in the pit crew when they shoot, the others are engineers. The movie comes from the team behind other epic action films such as Top Gun: Maverick; the great Hans Zimmer does the soundtrack. It’s a serious job, with a great deal of pressure but Cooke, who never takes herself too seriously, finds the fun in it. The film is shot on a live track, so the intensity of the action mimics real-life F1. “It’s mental!”
Not only is Cooke a pretty face but she’s now a dab-hand with a wheel gun. “I did a pit stop in between Mercedes and Ferrari at Silverstone’s Grand Prix weekend during a race. You’ve got Lewis Hamilton pulling in next to you!” She buzzes at full throttle, recalling the high intensity of the filming environment: “It means everyone is laser focused.” My cortisol spikes. Not only am I now incredibly impressed by her new-found mechanic skills; I am beyond excited to watch this movie. Still, always grounded, she’s honest about her shortcomings: “I couldn’t change a Ford Fiesta tyre but give me an F1 car and I’ll be fine.”
The shift from television comedy to Hollywood movie has been nothing but pleasant surprises for Cooke: “The movie world is very different but there’s still the kick-bollock-scramble at the end of the day to get the last shot. Brad Pitt is mucking in.” I am as surprised as she was to discover how making movies is less hostile than you’d envision: “I kind of imagined it to be lonely and not as family-feeling as a BBC drama, but it’s not. Javier Bardem moves his chair into our green room because he wants to hang out. Joseph Kosinski, our director, is incredible at bringing a group of people together. The vibes are immaculate.” Having now spent half an hour with Cooke, it would not surprise me if she was a contributor to such vibes.
Even in a big-budget film, Cooke’s character has risibility. A clumsy female mechanic who becomes good at her job when Brad Pitt’s character is around? I can relate to that. I think I’d become better at my job if Brad Pitt was lurking nearby. I query if comedy was a conscious choice: “At school I liked making people laugh and I was a bit of an idiot. I was always pretty chatty, but I hadn’t done a play before I went to drama school.”
How did she end up in the arts? Cooke grew up working class. Acting was one of the extracurricular activities available for free. “My parents worked a lot, so I did a lot of free after-school clubs.” She later went to Arts Education School to study drama. It was a teacher who suggested moving from books to screen. “I was going to go to university to do English and then I had a teacher at school who told me that you could study acting, and she’d help me.”
After filming away, she is always grateful to come back to life in London and reconnect with the ones she loves. “Being away is fun but it’s also a bubble. I like coming home. I enjoy coming back to my non-actor boyfriend and my non-actor family.” Both of Cooke’s sisters are nurses. One works in mental health and the other on A&E trauma wards. She twinkles with pride as she speaks of them: “They’re both just the most impressive people. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it.”
The middle of the three daughters, she has regularly reflected on her alternate life trajectory: “I’ve had a few complexes over the years about doing a stupid job compared to what they do – but I’ve decided I’m going to be so grateful every day that I get to do this. I’m just going to ride the wave and milk it dry as much as I can to help them.”
She’d love the opportunity to play a nurse, after seeing first-hand how hard her sisters work. Suddenly we enter a spitball exercise together about her potential dream jobs. She loves American shows like Dave and Search Party. “I would love to do American TV. American TV at the moment is really impressive.” But she also holds aspirations closer to home: “My sense of humour is very British. I think my dream would be to do a British comedy film.”
It’s clear, Cooke has an eagerness to do it all. But it is comedy which fills her soul: “I think comedy drama is the sweet spot…anything that can make people laugh and make people feel something is…” she gestures her hand into a chef’s kiss. I smack my lips to complete the scene with her.
Her working-class background and hustler ethic is something she never plans to stray from: “I hope I stay an actor that wants to do everything. I would never want to be someone that says, ‘I only do movies now.’” We ponder her trajectory: “I’m not going to say I’ve coasted because I do think I’ve worked really hard, but I’ve been incredibly lucky.” As we debate possible contributions to the luck, Cooke offers: “The moment you stop trying to do something else and just focus on being yourself is when it starts to happen.”
When we try to map back where her success rose from in her twenties, she struggles to recollect. I see her bubbly demeanour change. “I almost don’t really remember that time in my life,” she winces. “Being a Londoner in your mid-twenties is fucking hard. Relationships are failing, friendships are changing. It’s brutal. I was working seven jobs, making no money.”
Until about two years ago, Cooke waitressed on the side of acting. “I was working as an actor, and I was climbing but I was also drowning. It was so tough.”
If filming or rehearsing, she’d complete a full week of acting work, then wait tables on the Sunday. She was always a better actor than a waitress, her clumsy nature is not well-suited to the latter job. She is happy to put London’s coming-of-age burnout behind her. However, astute and self-aware, she remains sensitive to the fact that so many actors don’t graduate beyond an installation lap in the arts. “Honestly, I think it’s so hard for so many actors. Like I say, I have been incredibly lucky.”
Ghosts of waitressing past came back to pleasantly haunt her. On the first day on the F1 job, she received a visual reminder of her leap from pit to podium. Her hometown is not far from the Silverstone circuit. Arriving at the read-through, held in a conference suite at the racetrack, there was a certain familiarity to the place: “I walked into this room and thought ‘Oh My God! I used to waitress here!’’
A surreal full-circle moment for Cooke, an actress as goofy and grounded as she is gorgeous. Having met her in the flesh, something tells me this endearing, hilarious lady will reach pole position very soon. And I’ll be there spraying the champagne when she does. ■
Cheaters series two is on BBC iPlayer from Tuesday 19 November, and airs on BBC One from that night
