Interview: Ella Maisy Purvis

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There’s been something of a renaissance in police crime dramas. Where once the main characters were always white middle-aged men with alcohol and family problems, the genre has seen a fresh approach with more nuanced and diverse leads. Channel 4’s new series Patience is set to be particularly groundbreaking in that the titular character is an autistic young woman. Playing her is 21-year-old neurodivergent actor Ella Maisy Purvis. Her character, Patience Evans, works in the criminal records department of Yorkshire Police, filing the evidence produced during major cases. A self-taught criminologist, she has an instinctive eye for crime scenes and Detective Bea Metcalf (Breaking Bad actor Laura Fraser) recognises her talents.

Ella tells us what drew her to the part: “Patience is so deeply empathetic and feels everything to the max, but the way that she expresses it is very internal. We’re so used to seeing on screen these robotic Rain Man types of autistic characters but she’s the complete opposite and connects so deeply to animals, to people, to her work.”

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Patience attends a group for autistic adults, and it was a pre-requisite for the production company Eagle Eye that these characters should be played by neurodivergent actors.

To prepare for the series, Ella says: “I read Forensics for Dummies. I watched all of Line of Duty again, which I can’t really count as prep because I love Line of Duty.”

Filming took place in Antwerp and York. Ella loved the process, and working with Laura. “We developed our own sort of little language. Not literally, but we’d pass notes to each other under our apartment doors. Also, this is my first big job and so everything was daunting but she’s been doing this for ages and she knows what’s what. It was nice to have someone that was confident in her work so I definitely learned a lot from that. The whole cast was fantastic, and it’s shot gorgeously and directed gorgeously.”

Ella hopes audiences will see what daily life can be like for a variety of neurodivergent people. “There are some characters in the show that haven’t experienced neurodivergence or come across it in a workplace situation, and I think the audience will sort of learn along with them. I don’t think we’ve ever had a TV show or film that’s authentic and actually shows what it’s like day to day in a workplace being neurodivergent. There are loads of scenes where we see the overwhelm and also the gloriousness that is the autistic brain and how it lends itself to the line of work that she’s in.”

It’s rare to see such portrayals of neurodivergency on screen, particularly so in a woman. “There are so many lovely storylines in the show, and she’s not infantilised, she’s not an asexual robot. She forms these connections with people, she’s not talked down to and holds a lot of power.”

The series may well pave the way for more women and girls to seek a diagnosis. Ella says of her own diagnosis at 17, which came during lockdown when she was massively struggling with all the changes, “I think, like a lot of neurodivergent women and girls, you don’t find out until you’re at crisis point. Women in general have their health issues ignored, their mental health is ignored or it’s just like, well, you’re on your period or it’s your weight or you’re anxious. So I think when I found out I started to piece my life together. I realised that’s why I need to do this or that and suddenly the world becomes a lot easier to navigate because you don’t blame yourself.

“I remember in school, when a teacher asked a question, everyone would always answer the same way and I would say something different. I was like, god, I’ve got it wrong. After the diagnosis, I realised that there is nothing wrong with me, it’s just that my brain connects in a different way.”

Ella had always hoped to go into the performing arts, but it was originally as a ballet dancer. She then saw Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke with Patsy Ferran and she decided she wanted to become an actor. “I think I just made a commitment to myself. I was like, right, I’m going to drama school. I’m going to read all the plays in the world. It was like a switch in my brain, my mind’s made up.”

She counts her drama teacher Miss Woolrych as being one of her mentors. “She would feed me plays and she’d help me with my drama school monologues. I remember a really good piece of advice she gave me was don’t have a backup plan because otherwise you’ll use it.”

After LAMDA, a role in A Kind of Spark soon followed, which saw her nominated for an RTS Breakthrough Award. The series featured neurodivergent actors, following the story of an autistic girl who wants a memorial for the witches of her home village. Ella says of the nomination: “That was really cool. It’s nice to be a part of something that means something to people, especially children or teenagers.”

When she’s not working, Ella loves long walks in Wimbledon, having moved to the area in the summer. She also loves going to the Curzon, pub quizzes and life drawing. “There are fantastic pub quizzes in Wimbledon, and my friend and I have got quite good at them. But some weeks are hard so we’ll slip out before the end! I’ve recently got into life drawing and I remember the first time that I went, I don’t know why I was like this because I knew that the sitter would be naked, but it just comes as a shock as it was in the afternoon and you don’t know where to look!”

I ask Ella about what’s next, and what would be her dream role. She’d love to play Tallulah Bankhead in a biopic. “She’s just the epitome of hedonism, she had all these affairs and she was a fantastic actress. She was outrageous. My friend gave me her book for Christmas a couple of years ago. And I just thought she’s so exuberant.”

Ella is looking forward to 2025, but isn’t revealing her plans. All she’ll say is, “The year is looking very exciting and very cool. It all feels surreal. I’m actually doing this thing I wanted to do for ages. It’s amazing.”

Watch Ella Maisy Purvis in Patience on Channel 4 from 8 January

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