The celebrity cameos in Netflix's Missing You
The twisty thriller world of Harlan Coben is back on Netflix and Missing You viewers will have recognised some celebrities hiding in the cast.
Netflix gave thriller fans a great start to the New Year with Missing You — a five-part adaptation of Harlan Coben's 2014 novel of the same name. It comes hot on the heels of the streamer's blockbuster adaptation of Coben's book Fool Me Once, which became one of the biggest Netflix original series in history when it debuted in 2024.
Given the success of the previous Harlan Coben series, famous faces were queueing up for the chance to appear in Missing You. That meant several big names made surprise appearances in the new thriller, which tells the twisty story of a police detective who finds her fiancé on a dating app — a decade after he disappeared without a trace.
Let's look at some of the celebrities who managed to wangle themselves a role in the show that will almost certainly rank among the most popular Netflix series of the year.
Matt Willis
Within the first few minutes of Missing You, there's already a slightly distracting cameo on show. Busted singer Matt Willis turns up as a slightly dull man who's on a date with Rosalind Eleazar's protagonist DI Kat Donovan after they met at the gym. He's very focused on calories and more than a little boring, so it's almost a relief when something kicks off. After Kat intervenes in a blood-soaked fight in the kitchens, Willis's character is stunned to discover that she's a police detective and not, in fact, an air hostess as she had previously told him.
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This is far from being Willis's first acting gig. He played Stacey Branning's boyfriend in a short run of EastEnders episodes in 2014 and also appeared in the Birds of a Feather reboot. Even before his fame as one of the stars of Busted, he had a series of brief acting roles in long-running dramas including EastEnders (again), The Bill, and Casualty.
GK Barry
Fresh from her stint in the jungle on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, fans will be able to spot GK Barry in Missing You. She plays a character called Vanessa who is mysterious and may have a significant role in the central storyline. The character is an online cam girl who specialises in pictures of her feet, earning money through a platform similar to OnlyFans.
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Barry told Cosmopolitan that the role "made me laugh so much because it's very on brand". She added: "I just wanted to do it because I thought it was kind of iconic. I want to build the CV up so my parents cannot moan about anything! I would do [more acting], like The Office vibes, or something that doesn't involve tense acting. I couldn't do Game of Thrones."
Harlan Coben's Missing You is available to stream on Netflix now.