The name Alina Starkov may not mean much to someone who has yet to read Leigh Bardugo’s book Shadow and Bone, the basis for a Netflix adaptation debuting Friday. But for millions of Bardugo fans who have spent nearly a decade exploring the corners of her fictional Grishaverse, Alina is the kind of Chosen One heroine who—like Katniss Everdeen and Bella Swan before her—has the potential to turn any young actor into a household name. That’s why Jessie Mei Li, a 25-year-old actor without a previous major credit to her name, has already spent more than a year as an object of fascination for Alina fans who are eager to see what she will bring to the role.
Li beat out hundreds for the coveted Shadow and Bone spot; her next gig, in Edgar Wright’s buzzy One Night in Soho, is already in the can. She’s on the verge of something very big. But much like her fictional counterpart—whose heroic reputation overwhelms the reality of her life—Li is just trying to keep her feet on the ground.
Over the past few years, the posh-U.K.-school-to-film-career pipeline has come under much scrutiny, from both within and outside the acting world. “They’re so talented and they’re so confident,” Li told me, speaking of her co-stars who took that more traditional route. “There’s part of me that wishes that I’d had that experience.” Lately, however, there’s been a rise in British talent coming from other avenues, with performers like John Boyega and Letitia Wright vaulting to franchise stardom after participating in a part-time program at the relatively new Identity School of Acting.
Li struck out when she auditioned for the big British acting schools. She took a position as a teaching assistant for children with special needs—a job she loved—to make ends meet. Identity is where she too was able to train part time and get her foot in the door. “What’s nice about places like Identity,” she said, “and lots of places that are just more diverse and not too expensive, is they give opportunity to people like myself, who may not have been able to afford to go to [university] for three years.” Li would work with kids during the day; twice a week at night, she’d take the train to London to hone her acting skills.
Just a few months before landing Alina, Li booked her first stage role: 2019’s All About Eve, opposite Gillian Anderson and Lily James in London’s West End. Playing Claudia Casswell, a tiny part that Marilyn Monroe herself made a meal out of in the 1950 film version, Li turned in a performance that was broadcast worldwide via National Theatre Live. In between performances, Li went in to audition for Shadow and Bone, not knowing quite how coveted the role was.
During the lengthy audition process, Li devoured Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books—seven installments and counting—and found she connected deeply with Alina, despite living in a very different world. Alina, as Bardugo writes her, is an orphan who grows up in a war-torn and fantastical version of Russia known as Ravka. She’s been kicked around her whole life. Unlike genre heroines like Katniss Everdeen, who seem like they were born to lead, Li liked that Alina “doesn’t start off as being really strong. She’s like a sort of a stray dog that you might find in an alley.”
Though Alina isn’t described this way on the page, both Shadow and Bone showrunner Eric Heisserer and Bardugo herself, who served as an executive producer, liked the idea of casting someone nonwhite in the role. In the books, Alina grows up on the border of Ravka and Shu Han (Bardugo’s fictionalized version of China). For as long as Alina has been alive, Ravka and Shu Han have been at war.
“There was something very powerful about the idea that this girl has had to grow up in a country where she’s constantly being reminded that she looks like the enemy,” Bardugo explained to me. “This is the person who is going to have to sacrifice so much for this country that hasn’t treated her very well.”
Jessie Mei Li was born to an English mother and Chinese-born, Hong Kong–raised father. “I grew up with that,” Li said. “Which is why I felt so connected to Alina. I grew up in a predominantly white area in the South of England. Racism towards Asian people in the U.K. generally, I think more so than the States, is so weird and not taken seriously.” Li said in her childhood, people were “outright racist and mocking” to her: “You know, the silly accents and the pulling eyes.”
She didn’t see much representation onscreen to empower her either. “Asian characters were laughed at. Their accents were mocked. Asian men are emasculated and Asian women are sexualized. Even my own dad makes fun of himself for being Asian, because that’s just how things are and how people are socialized.” The rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in America, Li said, is forcing a discussion that has long been swept under the rug.
In the show, even as Alina grows in her power and renown, she still faces similar indignities. “It comes out of nowhere,” Li said, describing a particularly brutal exchange in episode six. “It almost feels a little bit shoehorned in—but that’s how it feels when you’re walking along and going about your business and someone just randomly says something to you.”
Making Alina multiracial in the show allows for an additional layer of commentary about the disparity between Alina’s rise to fame as a powerful hero and her reality as an orphan from Ravka trying to survive. Alina becomes known throughout Ravka as “Sankta Alina” (or Saint Alina). But posters and murals depict her with blonde hair and fair skin, highlighting how little the legend has to do with reality. That detail helped Li understand and navigate the sudden fame and scrutiny that comes with playing a beloved fictional heroine.
“They don’t really know who I am,” she said of anyone who has formed an opinion by sifting through her sparse social media presence. “Anything people say about me who don’t know me personally, it doesn’t really matter. I think that’s really important for me going forward…. Alina having that realization of ‘that’s not me’ has helped me in lots of ways.”
As much as Li relates to Alina, there are plenty of ways in which they differ. After she is plucked out of the army and taken to a palace, Alina is somewhat seduced by the finery she discovers there. Trading in her muddy uniform for intricately embroidered coats (called keftas) and gowns, Alina is a stray dog no longer. “Her coats are shiny, you know?” Li said.
