'Shadow and Bone' makers cast half-Asian actor Jessie Mei Li in lead role

Shadow and Bone is an upcoming Netflix fantasy series set to premiere on April 23. Created by Eric Heisserer, it is based on the bestselling Grisha trilogy, the first of which is the titular novel, and the Six of Crows duology by author Leigh Bardugo. The show has Chinese British actor Jessie Mei Li in the lead as Alina Starkov, the orphan who discovers magical powers that could change the world. However, in the book, the character was a white person. Now, the creators explain their decision of casting a half-Asian actor and detailed its significance.

'Shadow and Bone’ cast has Jessie Mei Li in the lead

According to The Straits Times, Author Leigh Bardugo and showrunner Eric Heisserer decided to cast Jessie Mei Li as the lead because they wanted to make a more ethnically diverse series than the novel. Quite different from the book, Alina is an explicitly mixed-race on the show. She has a parent from Ravka, the Russia-inspired country where the story takes place, and another from neighbouring Shu Han, a place that Bardugo based on China and Mongolia.

Leigh Bardugo said that Shadow and Bone was the first novel she ever wrote, and she thinks she was “unconsciously” echoing a lot of the straight, white fantasy that she had grown up on. The Israeli American author mentioned that when she first sat down with Eric Heisserer, one of the first things they decided was that they wanted Alina to be half-Shu. For them, it was a “very poignant and powerful way to highlight somebody who felt she didn’t belong. Bardugo stated that the character was someone who “looked like the enemy,” but was still being forced to fight for the country and could in fact prove to be the salvation for her country.

Shadow and Bone series creator Eric Heisserer asserted that the casting choice also gave them the “Where do I belong?” quest which many superheroes have. So, it made sense to them to have Alina’s be mixed race. He stated that the decision deepened when his first hire for the show was Christina Strain, a mixed-Asian writer who used a lot of her personal experiences to speak to the show.

Jessie Mei Li’s mother is English, and her father is from Hong Kong. She expressed her gratitude for being cast as the lead in Shadow and Bone. She said that growing up as a mixed-race person in a “predominantly white area” in England, she rarely saw anyone who liked her. The actor stated that if Asian people were on screen, they were always “fairly two-dimensional,” especially in Western TV shows and films.

Jessie Mei Li mentioned that she was thrilled that the makers made this decision and she was able to bring her own experiences to Shadow and Bone. She asserted that for a lot of people who are mixed-race or first-generation immigrants or anything like that, they spent so much of their life not feeling like they belong anywhere. Sharing her personal experience, the actor said that she was always ‘the Chinese one’ to her white friends, but to Asian friends and family, she was very English. And she never feels like she really belongs anywhere and that is Alina’s problem when she meets her. And it really shaped who the character is in the same way it does for her.

Jessie Mei Li said that her race is a big part of her life, but it is not everything she is, and the makers have done such a good job of making Alina’s background important to who she is but not everything that she is. She explained that the audience will see Alina doing these amazing things and then in the next episode, she is getting racially abuse in the street. Mei Li noted that the series highlights to people how stupid it is to insult or attack someone based on how they look. She thinks it is a really important time for everyone to see these things and she is “super proud” to represent her community on screen.

Promo Image Source: Netflix YouTube