Jessie Mei Li Is Netflix’s Latest Breakout Star—and She’s All Kinds of Cool
If you were about to star as the lead in a new show dubbed the next Game of Thrones , you’d probably freak out, right? But then again, if you’re Jessie Mei Li, you’ll probably just carry on as normal. The up-and-coming 25-year-old British actress stars in Netflix’ s latest mega-production, the adaptation of author Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone young-adult (YA) series. The show follows Li’s character, the protagonist, Alina Starkov, as she navigates discovering and ultimately revealing her hidden powers. It’s a classic underdog-to-superhero tale. I’m talking to Li over Zoom only a week after the release of the show—the peak of Shadow and Bone ’s hype. Since landing on our screens, it’s stayed at number one on Netflix UK’s most-watched shows and is currently number two in the U.S. I can’t help but immediately ask the obvious: Has life changed overnight? “I’ve never been drawn to the idea of celebrity and that kind of thing. I’m not cool enough to be in the public eye,” she laug