Jessie Mei Li is squatting on top of a bookshelf in the loft of a converted church. I find the breakout star of Netflix’s cult fantasy series Shadow and Bone in this unusual position because she is having her photo taken – though I might not have recognised her without the camera pointing in her face.
The 27-year-old Li couldn’t look more different to her character, the show’s powerful protagonist Alina Starkov. Her primary focus is saving her world and all those in it from the devastating actions of a power-hungry villain (and Alina’s sometime romantic interest) known as the Darkling, played by Ben Barnes.
Starkov’s look is one of radiant, natural beauty: long dark hair that falls in loose waves, no makeup and certainly no piercings (apart from one particularly grisly prosthetic at the end of season one). Li, on the other hand, is growing out a bleached buzz cut and has at least eight piercings visible.
“That was tactical,” she says, “I don’t like being recognised. This disguise works – there’s been times where I’ve been at parties, chatting away to someone, I’ll tell them what I do and that I’m in Shadow and Bone and they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, I love that show! Who do you play?’” It’s happened several times.”
Li lives in Bristol and only comes to London every so often - she’s come down today in a rented hot pink Fiat 500. Born in Brighton to an English mother and Chinese father, she grew up in Redhill, Surrey with a huge appetite for life. “When I was a kid I wanted to do everything, which is what really led me to becoming an actor,” she says. “I wanted to be a detective, or a forensic scientist, or a doctor, but then I realised I could be all those things on screen. I wanted to be a storyteller, I love spinning a yarn and doing voices and impressions. It was about following the fun for me.”
She initially studied French and Spanish at the University of Sussex before dropping out after a year and a half. “I felt very cornered into going down a certain road. I just thought, I want to be free and easy and do things that I like. I went to an acting class for fun and the fun wheels just kept turning until I was going to auditions for things,” she says.
If she makes it sounds easy, her path wasn’t without its setbacks. Actors regularly face rejection; it’s a game of persistence and resilience, as Li knows, having been rejected from drama school herself: “I realised quite early on, I want to be gassed to work with you, and sometimes I go to an audition and I think actually, I’m not vibing with this director or this casting team, so instead of thinking I’m rubbish, I think it wasn’t the right vibe. They didn’t like what I was bringing and I didn’t like what they were bringing either.”
In 2019, Li landed a role in the West End production of All About Eve opposite Gillian Anderson and Lily James. Making the sudden leap to the West End “was a bit like jumping into fire,” she says. Anderson, especially, taught her a lot.
“I learnt so much. [Anderson] was on point every night. She’s also someone who was very good at preserving her energy, lovely and warm but super professional and just gets on with it. I felt so inspired.”
It was while working on All About Eve that Li landed the lead role in Shadow and Bone, which is based on the two Grishaverse series of books by Leigh Bargudo. Although thrilled to get the job, the actor was initially a bit sceptical about her own casting.
Unlike the books, in which Alina, a teenage orphan who becomes aware that she is in possession of a stupendous and vanishingly rare superpower, is white – “They decided to make Alina mixed race for the show,” she says. She had two primary concerns: firstly, that her casting might be a diversity box ticker, and secondly, how the series’ obsessive fandom would respond.
Now though, she’s relaxed about it. “I’m not particularly concerned with fulfilling fans’ expectations. As far as I’m concerned, an adaptation is an adaptation and if you like the books, read the books.” In terms of fulfilling a diversity quota, Li respects that the show is challenging stereotypes of Asian characters not just with Alina, but two new Asian characters, Tamar and Tolya, played by Anna Leong Brophy and Lewis Tan. “Anna is playing this super-cool, badass character and then you’ve got Lewis who is macho. It’s nice to have Asian stereotypes challenged.”
She praises the Oscar nominated film Everything Everywhere All At Once for its representation. “Having three Asian leads is going to help a lot. As time goes on, the silly comments you hear as an Asian woman get fewer and farther between. But growing up there would be all kinds of things, at school there were always the kids saying ‘We love you long time’ – I got a lot of that.”
Li is very different to Alina, she says. “I mean, she’s lovely, but she’s quite arsey. She’s a little sasspot, and she gets sassier and sassier in season two.”
There was however, a brief period where Alina’s journey resonated with Li on a deeper level: “Alina throughout season two is dealing with immense responsibility, so much pressure and a lot of stress and distress, and interestingly, while we were filming, in my personal life I was having quite similar feelings, which was helpful in a way. She is dealing with a lot of trauma and I identified with that part of her, on a raw emotional level we’re on the same wavelength.” She does not expand further on what she was going through.
Li identifies as queer and is proud to be part of a new movement of LGBTQ+ actors that have come to prominence in the past year or two, such as House of the Dragon’s Emma D’Arcy, The Crown’s Emma Corrin, and now The Last of Us and Catherine, Called Birdy’s Bella Ramsey.
“It’s a really big moment,” says Li. “Nowadays you mention someone being non-binary or gender fluid and people have a better understanding. I’ve noticed with friends and family too, because they’re seeing more representation, people are much better at just accepting things. Representation matters a lot because TV is how a lot of people see the world if they don’t get around much.”
Her first memory of queer representation on screen was Tipping the Velvet, the 2002 BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters’s debut novel, starring Keeley Hawes. “My mum would watch [it] and I’d sneak downstairs and sit on the staircase peeping in. But I was in love with Kate Winslet. My sexual awakening was Titanic. I drew Kate Winslet like ‘one of my French girls’ – I was only seven!” she laughs.
Li grew up in Redhill, Surrey and before she started acting she worked briefly as a teaching assistant; she especially enjoyed working with neurodivergent kids. Education is something she cares deeply about, but she thinks change is sorely needed. “School is just a memory test really, I was fine because I have a photographic memory. I remember everything. So many kids come out of school feeling worthless because they have bad grades, when actually they might have great social intelligence but just aren’t very good at trigonometry.
“Adults in offices are getting standing desks but we make children sit down all day in uncomfortable clothes. Everyone learns via play and we send children to schools where they are discouraged from doing that.”
She’s also passionate about the environment. “I’m a real tree hugger. I’ve spent the past six months practising nihilism in order to counteract very intense climate anxiety that myself and some of my friends were going through,” she says. Is she angry towards previous generations for not taking better care of our planet?
“Oh, bloody furious. I feel angry all the time to be honest. People talk about other political systems and say, ‘This doesn’t work, this doesn’t work’, well, what about this current political system in the UK actually works? Our planet is being destroyed by people who just want to make more money. Which is just about the most selfish thing you can imagine.
“Listen to your children,” she continues. “Lots of people who are voting a particular way are not going to be around to deal with the repercussions, and it’s going to be young people who have to pick up the pieces.”
