Follow TV Tropes

Following

Femme Fatale / Live-Action TV

Go To

  • Selena Coombs of American Gothic (1995). In an interesting inversion, however, her primary sexual usage in the show, aside from being Buck's mistress, is not to turn a good man evil, but to keep a man nominally on the side of evil—Ben Healy—from defecting to the good.
  • Babylon Berlin features Svetlana Sorokina, a shady Russian cabaret singer and supposed Trotskyist who promptly sells her comrades out to the Russian secret police and tries to make off with several tons worth of gold bars intended to fund a revolution. That said, she even supplies the show's theme song.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Inverted by Spike (a knowingly seductive, platinum-blond male vampire), who tells Buffy that she belongs "in the dark, with me." Especially pronounced in "Dead Things," the source of the quote.
    • Darla also qualifies. She is very manipulative (for example, she easily controls Lindsey in Angel — who is a lawyer) and exercises sexual power over Angel. She's also something of an Anti-Hero, however.
    • Drusilla is a wholly villainous example. She appears very innocent and vulnerable (for a vampire) at first and often uses this to lure men into her service.
    • Faith, who serves as a Foil to Buffy herself. She would often use her sexuality to her advantage, e.g., she tried to get Angel to sleep with her which would cause him to lose his soul and become evil.
  • Charmed (1998):
    • In the episode "Used Karma", Phoebe is accidentally possessed by Mata Hari, briefly becoming a Femme Fatale who tries to get her ex-boyfriend killed by demons.
    • Christy Jenkins is a less sexual version of this, but she acts as a corrupting influence to her sister Billie. Through a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, she pretends to be a Damsel in Distress captured by demons — when she's actually working with them and trying to lure Billie to her side.
    • Purposefully invoked by Paige in "Charmed Noir" after she and Brody are sucked into the noir-themed world inside an enchanted book. To move the plot forward Piper and Phoebe influence her to play up the role and flirt her way through the story by writing the Dirty Cop dialogue that she's "nothing but a regular femme fatale."
  • Dita Von Teese's character in the CSI episode "A Kiss Before Frying" is a serial killer who seduces Greg so that she can find out more about the case and tries to kill him like her previous lovers.
  • Maneater Edie Britt on Desperate Housewives seduces and uses any man she comes across, and she doesn't care if they're married either. Special mention goes to Mike, Carlos, and Karl.
  • Doctor Who: Lady Cassandra is a villainous example. When she was younger, she took the lives of many of her lovers in order to get away with their money. When she possesses Rose in "New Earth", despite showing some differences of personality with her, she actually does fool The Doctor into thinking she really is her by giving him a passionate kiss and even helps him find out the secrets of the hospital before turning on him like in the classic, film Noir fashion.
  • Dollhouse: Adelle DeWitt — charming, morally grey ballbuster who is equally at home with threats and seduction, and approaches Darth Vader levels of nastiness in the second season. She is. In. Charge.
  • A villainous example is Commandant Mele-On Grayza from Farscape. In addition to being very attractive with well-displayed breasts, she also secretes a chemical from a gland between her breasts that literally hypnotizes men into doing her bidding.
  • Femme Fatales was a TV series that was naturally about these. Every episode a story of women like this, based on classic film noir but in modern settings.
  • Saffron (or whatever her name is) from Firefly is a deconstruction of both this and The Vamp. She's sexy, smart, manipulative, resourceful, and morally ambiguous (if not outright evil), but she's also a borderline sociopath with a lot of other mental problems who seems incapable of forming a genuine connection with anyone. Even the one of her many husbands that she genuinely cared for doesn't trust her as far as he can throw her.
  • In a comedic vein, on I Love Lucy, Lucy's cousin Ernie, played by Tennessee Ernie Ford, was warned by his mama about "wild, painted-up, wicked city women." Figuring this would cause Ernie to flee home, Lucy plays a vamp with a black wig and dress. Unfortunately, when she "vamps" him (rubs his head, mussing his hair), he likes it too much. Doubled up with Squick, since the audience knows she's his cousin, in-universe.
  • Sam Marquez on Las Vegas works for a casino. Specifically, her job is to keep 'whales' — big spenders — happy. Once, she only slept with a guy because he was dying, and she has openly called herself a slut. Strangely, she rarely sleeps with any of the whales themselves, and had to start going to a therapist later in the series after she was abducted and nearly raped and killed.
  • Miss Parker from The Pretender. Makes her entrance stomping out a cigarette on an oil tanker, shoots at the good guy a lot, has UST with him, and regularly growls at and intimidates most men within range.
  • The Shadow Line has Petra Nayler, girlfriend of the missing Glickman. She seduces the married Joseph Bede using her apparent helplessness, and is later revealed to have done this to Glickman too, under the orders of Counterpoint. Not only that, she only went to Bede to look for leads on Glickman's location, so she could kill him for trying to expose the conspiracy.
  • Smallville: In the episode "Noir", an episode with all the characters in a Film Noir, Lana takes the role of the Femme Fatale, having an affair with Clark Kent, an undercover cop, killing her husband, Lex, and framing Jimmy for the murder.
  • The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Noir Episode "Necessary Evil" has a suspect who oozes this trope. It's a Red Herring, as while she is a villain, the real Femme Fatale murderer turns out to be series regular Major Kira, whom the investigator Odo is secretly in love with.
  • Supernatural: Ruby has been known to make use of her sexuality to manipulate others, although it doesn't seem to be her preferred tactic. In "Malleus Maleficarum", Ruby exploits it to lure her Evil Mentor into a false sense of security, and she also uses it throughout Season 4 to strengthen her manipulative relationship with Sam.
  • Cameron of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has more than once used her physical body's attractiveness to coldly manipulate people, up to and including John Connor himself. It is implied that this was, in fact, the entire reason she was built. Her external appearance was based on a girl named Allison Young, who was implied to be either a close friend or lover of the future John Connor, and Cameron interrogated Allison to learn her mannerisms before attempting to take her place.
  • Katherine Pierce from The Vampire Diaries is a classic example. She's willing to seduce anyone that can give her what she needs, and the many, many men that have taken the fall for her over the past 3 seasons are more than happy to comply.
  • Veronica Mars has a number of gender inverted examples, most notably Troy Vandergraff and Logan Echolls - both Love Interests to the female detective protagonist at some point. The former is a petty criminal masquerading as a Nice Guy, and the latter is a morally ambiguous charmer with shady motives, whose weapons of choice are a) sex and b) psychological manipulation.
  • On Weeds, Nancy may not seem like it at first, but she has this effect on men. They seem to be attracted to her despite the fact that she brings chaos to everything she touches.
  • Wedding Season: Katie is a modern version. She's a beautiful young woman with a mysterious past and a trail of bodies in her wake. She drags the hapless everyman protagonist Stefan into a cross-country adventure to clear her name, and he keeps helping her despite being told it's a bad idea at every turn because of how he is drawn to her.

Top