Tanya Louise Turner (also Laslett and Frederico) is a fictional character on the ITV drama Footballers' Wives, and also briefly appeared on the drama Bad Girls. Tanya is portrayed by English actress Zöe Lucker and is one of only two characters credited in every series from the pilot episode to the series cancellation after series 5, along with Jackie Pascoe, played by Gillian Taylforth. Her role within the series changed frequently; throughout some storylines she is considered to be an antagonist whereas in others she is the main protagonist.
The character is well known for her ruthless, cold and calculating behaviour. She is intelligent and independent and has been married three times, with each marriage resulting in her husband's death. American magazine TV Guide said "You'd have to go all the way back to Dynastys Alexis Colby to find a saucier British TV import than Tanya Turner".
Tanya was voted tenth in Virgin Media's Top 10 TV criminals poll, for her involvement in the death of her second husband, Frank Laslett and for her frequent use of cocaine.
Fictional character biography Series One
Tanya was originally married to the womanising captain of Earls Park Football Club, Jason Turner (Cristian Solimeno). Their relationship was stormy yet very strong even though Tanya knew of Jason's extramarital flings. He slept with his team-mate Ian Walmsley's (Nathan Constance) young sister-in-law, Marie Minshall (Micaiah Dring), who was Jason's biggest fan. He considered leaving Tanya for her after several bust-ups, but came to his senses and dumped the girl he used for sex.
In episode one, Jason and Tanya discovered that the club's chairman, Frank Laslett (John Forgeham), had lied to them and secretly signed Italian midfielder Salvatore Biagi (Daniel Schutzmann), whom he planned to replace Jason as captain. Tanya lost her temper and attacked Frank after the event, causing him to hit his head on the side of his car, putting him in a coma. Tanya and Jason fled the scene, leaving Frank for dead, though he was found unconscious the next morning.
Months followed with a terrified guilty Tanya in pieces and spending every day and night in constant fear of Frank waking up. Visiting Frank religiously in hospital in fear of her guilt being made public, Tanya discovered nurse Jeanette Dunkley (Julie Legrand) raping a comatose Frank. In exchange for her silence, Jeanette agreed to convince Frank's ex-wife and son that Frank would never recover and it would be best to turn off the life-support machine. As everyone gathered to say goodbye to him, Tanya was stunned when Frank's hand twitched and he opened his eyes. Luckily for her, he remembered nothing about the incident that nearly cost his life and she had told Janette that they were having an affair which throw him off guard when Janette told him that she knew as he had no recollection of this either. She then paid Jeanette to disappear. This also gave her the chance to get Frank to reinstate Jason as team captain, although he lost it to Ian after some bad performances.
After begging for Tanya's forgiveness for being a useless husband, Jason got back up to his old tricks and seduced Jackie Pascoe (Gillian Taylforth), mother of his teammate Kyle (Gary Lucy), who was about twice his age. She fell pregnant but an uninterested Jason told her to abort the baby, however she couldn't bring herself to do so (unknown to Jason), and when her daughter-in-law, Chardonnay (Susie Amy), discovered that she wasn't pregnant as previously believed, she decided to take on Jackie's child as her own to avoid humiliation.
Whilst Tanya led Frank to believe he was in a secret relationship with her, Jason stormed in and started shouting, which brought back Frank's chilling memories of the night of his "accident".
Series Two Series 2 began with Tanya and her husband Jason in court, accused of Frank's attempted murder, but she lied her way out of it and there was no evidence as the nurse, Jeanette, has "vanished" into thin air. In the end, it was her word against Frank's and the case collapsed but Frank was determined to get his revenge.
Furthermore, the Pascoes came home after Jackie secretly gave birth to Jason's son, Patrick "Paddy", in Florida, USA.
Jason noticed Jackie's depressed attitude at a party, celebrating baby Paddy's birth, he was delighted when Kyle and Chardonnay made him and Tanya godparents, and followed Jackie into the house to confront her. After her breast milk leaked, he realised that Paddy was the child he thought she had terminated several months before. He became broody and decided he wanted children after all, and offered to ditch his troublesome marriage to set up home with Paddy and Jackie, who had started to get doubts about giving up the baby after noticing how Chardonnay used the child as a fashion accessory. When Jackie made it clear that she and Jason had no future, he decided to try and persuade Tanya to have children, even though he knew that she would refuse.
As the Turner marriage disintegrated further, Tanya and Jason's agent, Hazel Bailey (Alison Newman), came home from a party drunk, and after snorting cocaine, engaged in lesbian sex. Tanya was horrified and deeply regretted it the next morning as Jason walked through the front door.
Realising that this could be the last chance to save her marriage, Tanya pretended to agree to try for a baby, taking birth control pills in secret. Jason made a grand gesture as godfather by putting a large sum of money in a bank account for Paddy but destroyed the account book when he found out that the Pascoes had thrown Jackie out after they caught her breastfeeding the baby. The police gatecrashed the christening party, after Frank tipped them off about Tanya carrying drugs, and Tanya's handbag was emptied, revealing drugs and some pills. Jason decided to end their marriage once and for all, disgusted, and began divorce proceedings. She was interviewed by Chardonnay on her chat show and branded Jason as impotent, but he hit back by saying that he had fathered a baby.
He decided to sort out the mess once and for all and kidnapped Paddy from the Pascoe home, beating up Kyle when he tried to intervene after he announced he was the child's father. With no legal adoption papers, their case was hopeless and the press, wondering why Paddy hadn't been seen for such a while, questioned their parenting abilities.
However, things changed when Jason cut all ties with baby Paddy after a doctor revealed that he was intersex after a womb and ovaries were found. Jason called his child a freak, and blew a fuse after a magazine was published with him, Chardonnay, Kyle, and Tanya dressed as with the bodies of the opposite sex stuck under their heads to try and show the world that they did not care about Paddy being a hermaphrodite. At this point, new, shy, teenage football player Darius Fry (Peter Ash) was besotted by Tanya, who seduced him on a number of occasions, before making him strip in the sauna and throwing him out of her house naked.
Jason then begged Tanya, who was revolted by her fine and community service at an old people's home cleaning false teeth and toilets due to her drug addiction, to reconcile after admitting to fathering Paddy. She agreed, and was stunned when blast from the past Jeanette turned up at the home. Jeanette blackmailed more cash out of Tanya and joined forces with Frank to prove that she put him in a coma and tried to get Jeanette to finish him off for good.
During a meeting with Tanya, Jeanette who secretly wore a microphone underneath her top linked to Frank's headphones, started talking about how Tanya put Frank in a coma. Tanya, twigging that Jeanette had a plan with Frank, purposely diverted the conversation to Jeanette raping Frank in hospital, while Frank listened in horror. Jeanette knocked a glass of wine down her top and Tanya took this as her chance to finally move on from the incident that almost killed Frank by agreeing to put Jeanette into hiding by dying her hair grey and disguising her as a resident of the old people's home she worked at. Frank, now finally knowing for sure that Tanya almost murdered him, tracked Jeanette down by using her mobile phone signal and told her that she must help him make Tanya pay.
Jason and Tanya were arranging the renewing of their vows, when the philanderer bragged to his team-mates about having slept with the manager, Stefan Hauser (Philip Bretherton), deranged daughter, Freddie (Jessica Brooks). Darius, who was still besotted with Tanya and genuinely believed that he was the right man for her, had a go at Jason in the changing rooms, provoking the angry captain to threaten him. Chardonnay told Tanya that Jason had cheated yet again, and she went through with their renewing of vows right until the moment she was to say "I do", but she threw the ring across the room and told him that their marriage was over for good. Jason responded by punching her, however she told everyone to enjoy the reception. By now Jason was despised, particularly by Tanya, Salvatore, Kyle, Chardonnay, Darius, Frank and Jackie. He was soon informed of his wife's indiscretion with Darius during their separation, and got drunk on the roof of the building. He began to shout at an unseen character (later revealed to be Chardonnay), and fell off the edge of the roof, hanging on by one hand. He begged Chardonnay to help him, but she picked up an empty bottle and whacked it hard on Jason's fingers, causing him to let go of the roof and fall to his death.
Series Three The series opened with a funeral, assumed to be Jason's, although it turned out to be Chardonnay's when a glass coffin with her name on in large crystal letters appeared from the back of a funeral car. Her widower, Kyle, bore her secret — she had killed Jason, and then battled with anorexia due to the pressure of her guilt, which eventually led to her death. Jason, however, was ruled in court to have committed suicide.
Events in Tanya's life also took a surprising turn. Despite previously having hated Frank Laslett, who had agreed to drop all charges in favour of their new business arrangement, Tanya, having been left a string of debts by her late husband, Jason, married him in a business settlement. Of course Frank demanded more than just an arrangement, and Tanya began to cringe during sexual encounters with her new husband, and it seemed that Frank's revenge was coming in a different form.
Tanya, meanwhile, began an affair with new signing, Conrad Gates, a bisexual who had always shared an open relationship with Bollywood star wife, Amber. It became clear to an extremely jealous Amber, who loathed Tanya, that the fling she urged her husband to end was becoming more serious. Tanya discovered that Conrad was also hooking up with his closeted gay teammate, Noah, and after Conrad dumped him, she set him up with a rent boy and had the whole scene filmed and shown to the world to make sure he didn't get involved with Conrad again.
Amber was then abducted and Conrad decided to cool his affair with Tanya, but she exposed Amber as a liar and that the kidnapping incident was set up to make Conrad finish with Tanya. The disgusted team captain decided to leave Amber and move in with Tanya after she watched Frank die of a heart attack after realising that rampant sex wasn't good for his dodgy heart.