Copping A Squiz At Underbelly's New Ladies

Underbelly: Squizzy is set to sizzle on the screen next year, with the main character of this season of the crime franchise having four women battling for his affections. The Channel 9 series focuses on the life of Joseph Theodore Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor (Jared Daperis) and sees female protagonists Dolly Grey (Camille Keenan), Lorna Kelly (Elise Jansen) and Ida Pender (Gracie Gilbert) all chasing the criminal mastermind. Even the wife of one of his colleagues in crime, Annie Stokes (Diana Glenn), secretly has the hots for him and the pair end up having a tryst. Squizzy's first love was Grey, who was a prostitute when Squizzy met her. He dumped her for Kelly, whom he married. While married he had an affair with Pender. He then left Kelly and married Pender.

The actors who get to romance Squizzy on screen said despite his character's roguish reputation, Daperis, 22, who plays the part, was nothing short of a gentleman. Gracie Gilbert, 20, who plays teen tearaway Pender, said: "It helps when you have an actor working opposite you who is lovely and very charming and makes things easier." Her character meets Squizzy when she is working at a hosiery counter where he buys stockings for his wife. Of the pair's love scenes Gilbert said: "There is nudity but the relationship that Squizzy and Ida have is so passionate. It's not gratuitous. It's always the thought at the back of your mind about your mum and dad watching it and your nanna." Gilbert said she drew inspiration for the intensity of the relationship from her first teen romance. "It was all very exciting and new and we were both young and awkward," she said. "I was with him for quite a long time. He was my next-door neighbour."


Jansen plays Squizzy's wife and when the pair meet Kelly is a virgin, a staunch Christian and a member of the Temperance society, which is against smoking and drinking. Jansen said the challenge was portraying the innocence of her character. She said she also drew on intimacy lessons she had while learning her craft at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. "For me it was a bit different to the other female characters because of who she was," Jansen said. "She was a Christian and wasn't sexually promiscuous."