After 13 years portraying police officer Nekane Beitia on the Spanish soap opera Goenkale, Itziar Ituño wasn't too excited about the prospect of playing yet another cop. But she went to the audition for Money Heist anyway. Ituño wound up getting the role of police inspector Raquel Murillo, and to her surprise, she loved embodying the tough hostage negotiator-turned-outlaw. 

"I said, 'Not again. They're going to typecast me as a cop,' ” Ituño tells Netflix ahead of the Money Heist Part 5 premiere. “But of course I realized that the characters were completely different — this was a different show that was told in a different way."

Raquel starts the series overwhelmed: She’s raising her daughter while dealing with her abusive ex — also a cop — and gets assigned to the country’s highest-profile case ever, a hostage crisis at the Royal Mint of Spain involving a diplomat’s daughter. During her (very little) downtime, Raquel falls in love with a mysterious man she meets at a diner near a crime scene. It turns out, though, that the mystery man is actually the mastermind behind the very crime she’s trying to solve. And this was a storyline that really struck Ituño — it was a good kind of challenge, one she craved.

"What I liked the most about the first and second parts is having this major contradiction of falling in love with the enemy. That was so cool. Because, of course, contradictions like that are what we actors live for,” she says. “You put yourself in the emotions and you really get under the skin of the person.”

Despite taking on another cop role, Ituño was thrilled to be able to reframe the generic cop storylines often found on television — especially with Raquel’s two very different experiences as police and perpetrator. Plus, without joining the other side, she wouldn’t have been able to get an iconic red jumpsuit of her own.