Ella Maisy Purvis might be starring in a new Channel 4 crime drama, but success is hard to gauge and has come with awkward moments.
“I was at a coffee shop and this guy came up to me,” she tells me. “He said, ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ and I thought, ‘Oh God. Here it is; it’s already started.’” Purvis told him she was in a new TV show. “And he said, ‘No, I don’t know you. I don’t watch TV’.” She grimaces. “I thought, ‘Why did you open your mouth, Ella? Why did you say that?’”
She does have reason to boast, however — she is the face of the much talked-about new show Patience. It’s streaming now and stars Purvis as the titular Patience, a woman from the York Police archives who has a knack for solving crimes.
For a 21-year-old barely out of drama school, it’s quite an achievement, especially since until a few years ago, it seemed she was set to become a ballet dancer. Although this Londoner always had acting in her mind.
“I don’t know how someone can watch a movie or play or read something and not want to be immersed in a world like that,” she says. “I remember watching all the James Bond films and thinking yeah, this is what I’m going to do. I didn’t even think of being an actor, I just thought, ‘I want to be a spy’.”
She channelled that energy into dance at first, but in lockdown, the ballet suffered, probably the result, she notes drily, of doing pliés in her bedroom. “It wasn’t really bringing me any joy,” she says. “I was 17 and genuinely I woke up one day and I thought, ‘Guess I’ll be an actor then’. I didn’t really give myself any other option.”
At around the same time, she was also diagnosed with autism. “It was lockdown, and my brain went into overdrive,” she says. “Often women especially are just generally medically ignored… I realised I wasn’t coping and then found out I was neurodivergent.”
After that, things clicked. Purvis applied for and got into Lamda. After leaving, she started booking jobs: roles in ITV show Malpractice and CBBC show A Kind of Spark followed.
Then along came Patience. Purvis channelled her experiences into the character, who is also autistic: “She’s so driven and so determined,” she says. “I definitely share that. I think I’m more obsessive rather than driven, but there is that trait of not being able to leave things alone.” What would her dream role be? “My guilty pleasure answer would be Mission Impossible or Bond. I think I would make a fantastic Q. This is vain, but I want to wear a nice dress and shoot people.”
