Shadow and Bone’s Jessie Mei Li on representation and her ADHD diagnosis

Conversations about ADHD mostly, traditionally, focus on the negatives, but like her onscreen character, Jessie wants to prove there is a power in what makes us different. “I’ve been successful in my job probably due to the fact that I do have ADHD in some ways,” Jessie shares. “That impulsivity, always on the search for something fun and something a bit zingy is what led me to jump into things I might not have been very prepared for. It’s like having a superpower as well. 

“So many people I know with ADHD are highly intelligent, or are so talented at something, or just have such an interesting outlook on the world. With many of the people in my life, I look around and I think, ‘well, we are a big old bunch of neurodivergent people.’ I think we gravitate towards each other, which is why I cherish all my friends so much – because they’re all just completely bonkers.”

Having interviewed Jessie a couple of times now, I can attest that IRL you certainly gravitate towards the “little weirdo from, from Red Hill” – as she calls herself – who really hasn’t changed at all since finding fame. She’s still in a flatshare and still figuring out life, just like all of us.

On screen, part of her gravitational pull is the fact that she is blazing a trail for Asian representation on screen – a mission that is not lost on Jessie, who is of Hong Kong Chinese and English descent.

“What’s important about representation on screen is the fact that there are some people who just don’t meet many people. That is so badly phrased,” she laughs, but what she is saying is so accurate. “That’s why bigotry happens because, let’s say you’re in a community where you haven’t met many people who aren’t like you, anyone who’s outside of your kin is an ‘other,’ and they’re not real humans as far as you’re concerned. 

“They are different from you and therefore you don’t understand them. We spend so much of our time looking at screens and consuming media and it is sometimes the best way for people to see other human beings who might not look or sound like them and understand they are the same as you are.

“I grew up in a smallish commuter town in the southeast of England,” she continues. “It was not that multicultural, it is a little more now but at the time it was a predominantly white area. And so you can understand in some ways why some people just have completely bizarre ideas about people from other groups because they haven’t met anyone from there. 

“So, the idea that someone might see a character in Shadow and Bone, and maybe they’ve never met someone who’s East Asian or gay or Black, or whatever they may be, and they really relate to these characters going through relationships and emotions is important, it humanises everyone that’s on your screen. That would’ve been great for me growing up.”  

What Jessie likes about her Shadow and Bone character Alina is that “she’s a female protagonist, but she’s also got a lot of human qualities that everyone can understand”.