Given the twisty, telenovela nature of Jane the Virgin, Azie Tesfai, who plays corrupt detective Nadine, is sometimes as much in the dark as to what her character is up to as viewers are.
“I tend to try to play Nadine really good and my note [from producers] is always, 'It’s okay to be bad,'” Tesfai says. “I don’t think she’s so good anymore.”
Nadine hunts for villain Sin Rostro with Jane's ex-fiancé, Michael, throughout the first season — that is, until it's revealed that she is actually in cahoots with the crime kingpin in order to protect her family. In the second season premiere, it’s Nadine who hands over Jane’s kidnapped baby, Mateo, to Michael in exchange for a chip containing information that's vital to Sin Rostro.
Nadine won’t be going away anytime soon, Tesfai explains. In fact, expect her ties with ex-hookup Michael to develop. “I think that their relationship does take a new level, but not romantically,” she says. “I think they have some strange bond. I think the undertone of the premiere episode is that Nadine and Michael are a lot more similar than maybe Michael realizes. We both will do whatever we can for our family. “
Though she plays a baby-stealing antagonist on the show, her fellow cast members are her “best friends,” she says. “I text Justin [Baldoni] for boy advice all the time." But Tesfai doesn’t get along with everyone on set, especially now that there are infants around. In one scene, she worked with five babies, she says, who would not stop crying. One pooped on her. She eventually had to go the American Sniper route, and use a doll.
“Those babies,” she laughs. “Really difficult to work with.”
Watch Tesfai discuss Jane and her charitable jewelry company, Fortuned Culture, in Refinery29's #NoFilter video, below.
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