Shadow and Bone star Jessie Mei Li explains how Alina’s mixed-race heritage presented an easier way to relate to her. This month will see the release of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, the first-ever adaptation of author Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse. Bardugo created this fantastical world in the 2012 novel of the same name and expanded it with additional novels and spin-offs. For the Netflix series, the characters of Shadow and Bone will collide with familiar faces from the Six of Crows duology, which is actually set years after the former series.
Shadow and Bone primarily follows Alina Starkov (Li), an orphan drawn into her country’s conflict with an ominous presence known as the Shadow Fold. It’s there where she discovers the immense power within her: Alina is the Sun Summoner, or someone with the ability to summon light. Alina possesses a very rare ability, which makes her valuable to General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), aka the Darkling. As the Shadow and Bone trailers have teased, many people will want to use Alina’s powers to their own advantage, which looks to be where the Six of Crows crew comes in.
Screen Rant recently received the opportunity to participate in a Shadow and Bone round table, where Li discussed how she approached playing Alina. Readers of the books know Alina faces a great deal of adversity, between being torn from her chosen family and thrust into an unknown environment, all while trying to master her new abilities. According to Li, Alina’s new mixed-race background helped her find a way into the character:
Jessie Mei Li: I was so lucky, we were all so lucky that our writers were all so amazing and they have such a good sense for these characters and how they were going to develop it. I think I was able to bring quite a lot of my own experiences to Alina given the fact that they decided to make her mixed-race. Which is something that, in my own life, has definitely shaped who I am, it’s definitely something that I think lots of mixed-race people understand is that you never really feel like you belong anywhere and that can really affect you and how you interact with people, so I could take that and give that to Alina. You know, she’s told every day that she looks like the enemy and she’s never really accepted and that’s going to affect who you are as a person. You [think], “I’m not the enemy! Look at me, I’m – I’m gentle, I’m soft-spoken,” but also have this thick skin and ability to stand up for yourself.
It was so easy to slip into this role given that I had experienced that kind of thing before. I’m just so grateful to our writers, who just did an amazing job of really making Alina feel like a real person and also having so many amazing actors to work with. That’s half of it – it’s only 50% me, the other half of the scene is whoever I’m acting with, so I owe a lot of these relationships to these guys [gesturing to Archie [Reneax] and Ben] and whoever else I was able to share a scene with.
Alina is not mixed-race in Bardugo’s novels, so this is a new addition for the Shadow and Bone series. The way Li speaks of it, Alina’s updated heritage has added a unique layer to the character that will be fascinating to explore on the show. Audiences have been pushing for diverse stories more and more every year, and Shadow and Bone presents an opportunity to depict a hero that hasn’t really been seen on screen very often. Li’s own story holds some similarities to Alina, and it’ll be interesting to see how she injects that into her performance.
Right now, Shadow and Bone is only set for one season on Netflix. However, it’s clear the streamer has high hopes for the series, and should it prove to be a hit, it will be renewed. This will allow Alina’s story to go even farther, something book fans are surely eager to see. This is the first time she’s being brought to television, and hopefully her depiction will be everything fans have dreamt of. It all begins in a little less than two weeks.
Shadow and Bone premieres Friday, April 23 on Netflix.
