Daddy, what’s a twat?” Ramona Marquez was simply 5 years outdated when she uttered this line – absolutely the stuff of each mother or father’s nightmares – within the 2007 pilot of Outnumbered on BBC One. It was one among her very first items of dialogue as Karen, a sweet-faced mess of blonde curls with a knack for troublesome questions. The encounter, which occurred along with her frazzled father one morning earlier than faculty, set the tone for the frenzied household sitcom which, for seven years, adopted the Brockmans as they grappled with the unhinged actuality of controlling three wayward kids.

The present returned for a Christmas particular in 2016 (through which Karen was a teen glued to her glittery iPhone), and it’s again once more this 12 months for one more one-off festive episode. Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner are reprising their roles as dad and mom Pete and Sue, with Daniel Roche and Tyger Drew-Honey again as Karen’s older brothers Ben and Jake. “It’s basic Outnumbered chaos,” Marquez, now 23, tells me from a shed within the backyard of the house she shares along with her girlfriend in southeast London. Particulars on the episode are a intently guarded secret, and Marquez is just actually capable of inform me about one plotline. “We’re joined by a grandchild [Jake has had a daughter] – so Karen’s an auntie!”

Outnumbered was groundbreaking when it arrived within the Noughties: a present that appealed to everybody from the age of six to 96, and with the youngsters’s dialogue virtually solely improvised. Marquez, Roche and Drew-Honey could be requested by creators Andy Hamilton and Man Jenkin to provide you with humorous issues to say in every scene, that means that, as actors, Dennis and Skinner had been regularly on the mercy of regardless of the kids stated. Certainly no grownup might have dreamt up this line of Karen’s, when she earnestly explains that fairies could be deadly: “They fly down your throat and switch your coronary heart right into a pumpkin then your blood stops operating and you then die.” The present’s genius lay in its superb, at occasions virtually surreal unpredictability.

Marquez was 5 when Outnumbered started and 13 when it ended. Throughout that point, we watched her develop from a scrappy however angelic child right into a brunette teen getting ready to adolescence. She virtually grew up in public, though for her after all, it merely felt regular. “I’ve by no means identified any totally different,” says Marquez. “I used to be so younger. I do have some recollections from earlier than I used to be 5, however not many. I hear about different situations in TV the place younger children had been exploited, and I really feel fortunate that we had been all the time revered.” That didn’t imply it’s all the time been easy. Whereas the day-to-day expertise of filming holds “the most effective recollections” for Marquez, it was what occurred off-set that could possibly be tough. The tabloid curiosity could possibly be intense. Over time, there have been numerous sensationalised tales concerning the Outnumbered solid showing within the press. “Ramona Marquez appears worlds away from Karen Brockman and reveals off HUGE tattoos” was one typical headline earlier this 12 months. One other, revealed by The Solar in 2021 whereas Marquez was learning Spanish and Mandarin in Manchester, screamed: “Ramona Marquez promoting off her outdated BRAS for £4 after quitting performing for uni.”

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Marquez remembers the bra headline nicely. “I offered a sports activities bra. It wasn’t even mine. I’d by no means even seen it earlier than. It simply will need to have been my sister’s or one thing, who is aware of, after which it was within the information. And it was such a misrepresentation. It was only a loopy, loopy factor to put in writing.” She laughs. “It was so on the market that even the readers had been commenting, saying, ‘I learn the story and she or he’s offered like 500 issues on Depop. You’re portraying that to be one thing fairly sinister.’ You generally assume, nicely, , I could possibly be doing that. There’d be nothing unsuitable with that if I needed to, however I’m really not, so let’s simply preserve the details straight.”

She was additionally recognised a good quantity in public. Six million individuals watched Outnumbered in its prime. And being a teen is tough sufficient as it’s, with out so many individuals figuring out who you might be. In 2016, after attending Studying Competition, she was pressured to close down rumours she had taken medicine. “I actually loved Studying and assembly a number of followers and funky individuals it was so lit,” she wrote on social media on the time. “It’s fairly upsetting although now seeing individuals posting about me and saying that Im doing medicine and actually horrible issues like that,” she added. “I simply don’t perceive why individuals really feel the necessity to being assholes, it’s such a piss-take.”

“That one 12 months at Studying Competition, that was most likely the one time it’s ever been tremendous humorous or loopy,” she tells me now. “Fortunately I used to be with a giant group of pals and we simply made a joke out of it. Each time somebody requested for a photograph, all my pals would get in, it’d be like an enormous group photograph. It was fairly humorous. However with out these individuals round me, I wouldn’t be so snug going someplace like that alone. Since you do really feel susceptible in a approach.”

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At this time Marquez is now not recognisable as that curly-haired grasp interrogator. After we meet over Zoom, she’s dressed all in black, her hair dyed darkish, with winged eyeliner and a crucifix necklace. However she nonetheless has that very same husky voice, and she or he can also be now a vegan, which can or could not have been a consequence of the Outnumbered scene through which Karen attracts felt-tip footage of cows killing individuals as a result of they don’t wish to be made into hamburgers. She hasn’t been on display screen because the 2016 Christmas particular, aside from a quick Outnumbered Youngsters in Want skit final month. However she may be very energetic on social media, and her function as Karen has nabbed her a not-insignificant fanbase – she has 129,000 followers on Instagram.

She may be very level-headed concerning the consideration, good and dangerous. “I normally discover it fairly humorous,” she says. “Possibly I’m simply desensitised to it. I do know the individuals who like me and there’ll all the time be individuals who don’t such as you, aren’t there? Particularly in case you’re perhaps a bit on the market or a little bit bit various or posting about having furry legs.” When she did precisely this in 2022, it sparked on-line debate. “I simply assume, nicely, you wouldn’t wish to enchantment to these type of individuals anyway.”

In the course of the filming of Outnumbered, Marquez notched up a handful of different childhood display screen credit; she appeared within the 2009 TV film Enid concerning the lifetime of Enid Blyton, and within the 2010 Colin Firth movie The King’s Speech as a younger Princess Margaret. Now that she’s completed uni, she’s hoping to get again into performing. “I really like that world,” she says. “It’s my full ardour and ambition. However I’ve been doing different stuff on the aspect, reminiscent of studying to tattoo, as a result of clearly for an actor, there could be massive durations between jobs.” She additionally values the next that Outnumbered has given her on socials, the place she will publish about causes she cares about, reminiscent of veganism. “Lesbian, vegan and a sober girly,” reads her Instagram bio. Marquez is definitely not an impish five-year-old worrying about lethal fairies anymore.

The ‘Outnumbered’ Christmas particular airs at 9.40pm on Boxing Day on BBC One