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The fantasy TV series Shadow and Bone is currently casting a spell over the worldwide Netflix charts and its star, Jessie Mei Li is the show’s true superpower. In a well earned break from fighting evil, Jessie joins Josh Smith for his latest, GLAMOUR UK column, Josh Smith Meets and opens up about being diagnosed with ADHD as a young adult, building boundaries, letting go of people pleasing, representation and her end game role: cat grandmother.

Jessie Mei Li may be leading Netflix’s blockbuster fantasy series, Shadow and Bone – playing the complex hero, Alina Starkov – but she has got her eyes set on another long-term role. 

“The future that's waiting for me is being a cat grandmother specifically. Not a cat mum, a grandmother, the proper matriarch,” Jessie laughs, moving one of her two “clingy,” cats, Maurice and Hamish out of the Zoom call’s shot.

Whilst Jessie prepares for her future role, season two of Shadow and Bone – based on the books by Leigh Bardugo – has finally arrived on Netflix after a long, two-year wait for the show’s thirsty fans. 

And it picks up right where season one left off, with The Darkling (Ben Barnes) returning to cause havoc in the Grishaverse and bring Alina – AKA the Sun Summoner, one of the most powerful Grisha who had ever lived – more drama just as she finds happiness with her childhood friend turned lover, Maleyn (Archie Renaux). 

"So much blood, sweat, and tears went into it,” Jessie says as we talk about the season, which throws everything and the kitchen sink at you, and posed greater challenges for Jessie personally over a six-month long shoot in Budapest at “the ass end of Covid,” as she puts it.

“Season one I was finding my feet. I was just so excited by everything and just so happy to be there. In season two what I realised was I'm not very good at looking after myself. It's not my forté," she said. “I definitely struggle with work-life balance, and being able to turn up at work and give a hundred percent. I wasn't very good at having downtime outside of work. We were out in Budapest with my best friends and I just wanted to see them all, but then that's a late night.”

Jessie smiles mischievously and I immediately want to book a flight to Budapest for a night out OUT with this cast, because it clearly sounds like a hoot.

“I had things going on in my personal life that were very much affecting my mental health during filming,” Jessie continues in a shift of tone. “It was this constant treading of water with incredible highs and some of the best experiences I've ever had, but also some really real big lows as well. I needed some time to recover after filming. 

"I was just completely burnt out. I've definitely learned a lot from that and the last few months I've been trying to learn how to make a bit more time for self-care and make sure that I'm setting boundaries, because until this point in my life, I've certainly grown up as a people pleaser. 

“I’ve been trying to get over this deeply ingrained need to please people which is to the detriment of your own health. This year I've been getting much better at saying, ‘no, I can't do that. I'm exhausted,’ or asking for extra help or allowances because I've got ADHD that affects my life negatively in many ways, as well as being a wonderful thing."

I wonder if being honest about having ADHD – which Jessie was diagnosed with as a young adult – has made it easier for Jessie to build better boundaries. “Yeah,” Jessie instantly replies. “When I was diagnosed with ADHD it allowed me to be a bit kinder to myself. I have more self-awareness and more understanding of what I need in order to be comfortable and relaxed. Talking to other people who have ADHD helped too, and understanding, ‘oh, okay, it's alright for me to be having quite a severe reaction to a costume that I might be wearing,’ or, really struggling with extremes of temperature – which was a real thing for season two of Shadow and Bone, as Budapest gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer.

“I was looking for behind-the-scenes photos recently and there was an array of photos of me overheating,” Jessie adds. “It just looks like I'm having such a terrible time. From the last month of filming, in every photo I'm sprawled out with fans and water sprays. I was really struggling but it wasn't till towards the end of filming I started to be like, ‘Hey, actually I need a little quiet space to go and decompress. I'm really struggling with this.’ 

"I realised that actually when I did ask for things those needs were met, it was my own pride that was an obstacle. I've definitely got over that hurdle now and hopefully going forward I’ll be a bit more solid on my feet and say, ‘you know what? I can't do that,’ and that's all right.”

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. 

I've been successful in my job probably due to the fact that I do have ADHD in some ways

"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”. 

“She's frightened through a lot of season one and incredibly stressed dealing with responsibility in season two and those are just human feelings anyone can get on board with,” Jessie explains. "Representation is super important and I've come to realise that it's not just a shallow aesthetic I might have thought initially, like ‘oh, people just wanna see something that looks like them.’ I understand now on a deeper level how important it is.”

Has bringing that level of representation to the screen in Shadow and Bone given Jessie a better relationship with her own identity, I ask? “Yeah definitely,” she replies, “my understanding of myself and my identity has changed and shifted so much over the last few years. I'm 27 now and I still feel like the tiniest baby in the world with so much to learn. I feel like we never lose that. 

"What has been really nice recently is rather than thinking of myself as being in lots of different boxes and that I've got my limbs in different boxes, now I don't. We're so keen to categorise and I just think everyone's different. I'm still very proud to be all the things that I am, but I'm also just me and it's just that simple.”

With such an empowering protagonist, it’s no wonder the show’s first season racked up over 1.2 billion viewing minutes, and won legions of fans who love to share their own storyline theories online. Even Jessie isn’t immune to falling down a Shadow and Bone fan theory rabbit hole. 

“I don't really have Twitter but I can still have a little look and see what the fans are saying," she says. "The comments are fascinating because sometimes people are incredibly close to the mark. When the show first came out I would be quite sensitive to the kinds of things I might read about myself, but now it’s my little naughty thing. I like to go have a little look and get a bit of tea every now and then when I am on the train somewhere,” she smiles.

But there is one number one fan who takes things to another level: “my dad very nearly wet himself watching the trailer,” Jessie admits. 

“He's taking the day off work to watch the whole season. The man is so excited. He’s such a legend, honestly.” 

It truly takes one to know one.

Shadow and Bone season two is streaming on Netflix now.

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