Practicing that sense of self-given joy is also something that Jordan is trying to do in The Beauty. Yes, she has her partner Cooper (played by Evan Peters) there to remind her that she’s always been beautiful and has always held value as a person outside of that, but much of the work required to overcome this emotional obstacle must be done internally. As the series unfolds, we watch Jordan find her sense of confidence by taking control of the narrative she tells herself about who she is and how she’s allowed to move through the world. Jess, in many ways, is working her way through this same journey, one solo dance session and kind pep talk at a time. 

In addition to discussing The Beauty and what it was like working on an American television show for the first time, Jess and I talked about the importance of being kind to others, creating a sense of community where we live, yelling at cat callers, and, amazingly, platypuses (it’ll make sense when you get there).

What’s your ideal way to start the day? 

Ooh, my ideal way to start the day. I mean, honestly, I quit drinking probably seven months ago, and I’ve sort of come back and started dabbling, but ever since I basically cut drinking out of my life, I’m so buzzing for my morning coffee now. It’s the most exciting part of my day. I go to sleep, and I lie in bed, and I’m like, “I can’t wait to get up and have my coffee in the morning.” And then after that, it would just be going to the gym, which is really boring, but a nice walk in crisp, fresh air, and then a workout class, or where I sweat loads, and then I can feel good for the rest of the day. If I can move my body first thing, then I feel like I’m more mentally present afterward. 

I completely understand that. Every night when I go to sleep, I get excited for my coffee and breakfast in the morning. I’m always looking forward to it. 

It’s the best part of the day. I’m on my second coffee right now. Just absolutely buzzing, having a great time. [Both laugh].  I do love a good morning walk. I love walking through a beautiful garden that has a pond in it so I can watch the swans have their babies every year, watch them grow into big swans, and see the ducklings in the Spring. 

Set Joseph / Shoes Miista / Bangle Alemais

That sounds beautiful and peaceful to be present in nature first thing in the morning. It must be a great way of centring yourself and calming your nervous system.

Totally. That’s one thing I loved about living in New York. Obviously, it’s a bit harder to get a nature fix out in New York, especially compared to London, which is a very green city, but New York has amazing parks, and they’re not quite like the ones we have here because it feels like a different park culture there. New York is such an apartment city. No one has gardens. People treat the parks like they’re gardens, and so once summer hit in New York, I started going to a nearby park, and it was amazing because people were playing tennis, barbecuing, and hundreds of people were there vibing out together. There were people sunbathing in bikinis and vendors selling ice creams. I loved that. 

I feel like the world can be really isolating right now, so it’s nice to have those spaces where you know that even if you go to the park by yourself, you can chat with people there and share space together and create a sense of community for yourselves in doing that.

Definitely. I feel like there’s actually so much community in Brooklyn. I loved spending time there because it felt like a proper community. London feels like it’s maybe losing that a little bit, but I do believe it’s going to make a resurgence, and we’re going to be able to resurrect a sense of community and our connection to nature. Hopefully, everyone can stop being so divisive and horrible to one another so we can make that happen.

It would be amazing if we could find a way to focus on our commonalities and create a genuine sense of community through that.

Wouldn’t it? If we could all do that, we’d be so much happier. My mum is a Northerner, and in the north of England, people are very friendly and hospitable. It’s completely normal to say good morning to someone you don’t know when you’re walking down the street. So, I try to bring that to London. I say good morning to strangers and ask them how their day is going. Some people love it and respond well to it, and other people are confused and are trying to figure out if they know me before they respond, if they do at all. I’m trying to make a conscious effort to bring that back.

In doing that, you’re bringing a sense of community back to London. I do that as well. Every time I’m out for a walk, I’ll always smile at people, or say hi to them, and ask how they are. It’s important to have those moments of connection because you don’t know if that might be the only time this person is interacting with someone who’s kind to them. 

Exactly. You don’t know what kind of day someone’s having. I’ve lost track of the number of times that a stranger has been nice to me when I’ve had a shit day, and they’ve saved my day in doing that. It’s better in cities because cities force you to rely on your neighbour. They force you to rely on your community. That’s a good thing. We need to embrace it more. There are so many of us in one city, but no one says good morning to each other. That’s fucking weird. 

Jacket and skirt Sandro / Boots Kalda

Totally. We’re all doing our best, and we all want to get through the day as easily and kindly as we can. To shift into The Beauty, which I’m so excited to chat with you about, you play the post-Beauty version of Jordan, who’s portrayed initially by Rebecca Hall. Did you two meet prior to filming to figure out if you wanted there to be physical overlaps between your portrayals of the same character? Or did you want them to exist as two separate entities? 

It’s funny, we didn’t talk about it at all, and so far, I have seen some people saying, “Wow, she captures Rebecca’s mannerisms and her way of speaking.” But actually, I just think Rebecca and I are quite similar in many ways, so it ended up being a natural fit. Ryan [Murphy] casts really heavily based on instinct. I did a self-tape initially, but when I met him in the room and did a screen test, I didn’t even do the scenes that much. He was more interested in talking to me, and in hindsight, I now realise that it was probably more important for him to watch me naturally speak and interact with people in the room and see if I had natural similarities to Rebecca. Otherwise, you feel like you’re imitating someone. Rebecca does a fantastic job of opening the show and opening up this character, but at the same time, I then have the responsibility of carrying that character across the rest of the series. If I had just been imitating something for nine episodes or whatever, I think that would’ve felt stiff. I didn’t think about it when we were filming, though, to be honest. Rebecca and I did meet in Venice, and we had a coffee when we had a little overlap shooting, and I did catch a bit of her doing her crazy transformation contortion thing, which was awesome. She really fucking threw herself into that. I think she’s so cool, and I love Rebecca, so it was nice to have that experience.

It’s so interesting that there happened to be these natural similarities, but it makes sense that you would play the character differently, because even though it is the same person, if you’re in a brand new body, you’re going to inherently be a different version of yourself because you’re getting used to how everything looks and feels and how all the mechanisms work. 

I think the main thing for my Jordan was probably getting used to being short, because Rebecca’s tall and I’m not. I remember in the casting when I first got the email, it said they were looking for someone who was preferably 5’9” or above, and I am definitely 5’5”. Like, maybe 5’6” on a good day. [Both laugh].

You look tall in the show, for whatever that’s worth.

I am in the most fantastic YSL heels the entirety of that show. I’m in like six-inch heels. I can’t tell you how painful it was. It’s not that the shoes were uncomfortable, but being on your tiptoes that much was tough. I wasn’t into Pilates back then, so I did not have the calf strength for that. I remember I would take those shoes off at the end of the day, and it would be such a relief, but I never wanted to take them off when we were shooting because I looked so silly with the trousers that were too long for me when I was walking around in my little slippers. I felt like a toddler shuffling around in an adult’s costume. The girls on set would be like, “Are you sure you don’t want to change out of the boots? You’re probably getting uncomfortable.” And I’d be like, “I’m fine! I just need to sit down!” [Both laugh].

You’re like, “I need to sit down in my boots and not look like I’m 12 years old.”

Exactly. But, movie magic! Even to my screen test, I wore high heels and I bought these trousers that were boot cut to kind of hide the heel. 

You were elongating your legs. 

I was like, I’m going to trick them into thinking, “she’s so tall and perfect for this role” when I walk into the room. 

You do carry yourself in a tall way.

I’ve been told I have a tall personality, whatever that means. [Both laugh].

I’m shorter than you. I like to say I’m 5’1” also on a good day, but a lot of my taller friends have generously told me that I’m a tall 5’1”, so I’ll take it. 

Hey, you definitely seem tall. We’re just two short girls on Zoom, seeming tall. 

Jacket and skirt Lurline / Shoes Miista

I’ll write it into my intro that you’re definitely 5’9”. After you’ve emerged as post-Beauty Jordan, there’s a scene between you and Evan Peters, who plays her partner, Cooper, where Jordan’s recalling her initial feelings about the transformation. You delivered a line I found really moving, which was “Here I was with some life-altering crisis and yet being out in the world, no one knew because of how I looked.” It felt like such a strong reminder of how we often let our physical judgments of someone inform the way we view them, or what we think they’re emotionally capable of experiencing, which I think is something a lot of people can learn from. How has playing Jordan influenced either your perception of others or how you approach other people’s perceptions of you? 

That is such a good question, babe, and I’m so glad you picked up on that line. Honestly, I think that piece of writing rings so true. Early on in my career, I played a role in a TV show where the character was this popular girl who seemed stuck up on the outside, but she had a plethora of problems underneath, and there were layers beneath her. And I remember this director saying to me, “People assume that pretty people don’t have problems or anything to worry about, but all the prettiest people I know are so fucked up.” She said that, and it was such an interesting conversation to have, especially in an era where people talk about pretty privilege a lot, which is absolutely a thing. The Beauty addresses that head-on because it’s showing how much your appearance dictates how you’re going to move throughout the world. It absolutely impacts exactly what you said, how people assume you might be dealing with things emotionally, or people might assume you don’t have much to worry about if you look or present yourself a certain way. And it’s especially true when it comes to how women dress or do their makeup. There’s a level of confidence that comes with all of that, and quite often people are using that confidence to help override something, like some level of insecurity we might have. The show definitely touches on the fact that you never know what anyone is going through. I always personally just assume anyone I meet is going through something worse than what I am going through at that present moment, because there are so many people on this planet, and we all look so different, but everyone has just as nuanced a life as you do. I think people fail to remember that sometimes, like when you’re sitting on the tube, and you’re surrounded by 200 people, because it’s hard in that moment to remember that everyone is dealing with an incredibly complex life with relationships and trauma and everything. Playing Jordan was interesting because it’s quite close to my experience as a young woman who is, by society’s standards, young and attractive. I definitely feel like I enjoy my beauty and my youth, but then there are other times where it feels like a burden because it gives you all this unwanted attention. I remember saying to someone the other day on one of the carpets that I look forward to being 80 when the burden of youth falls away from me, and I can be invisible, and I don’t have to appease anyone’s vision of what a young woman should look like. I try to stay away from that, but I feel like it’s hard, especially in this business. I do find myself worrying about how I look, and that annoys me.

I think that’s such a human thing in general to be conscious of how you look, but it seems especially prevalent because of your profession, since there’s an increased spotlight on your appearance. 

Then again, I think that’s how everyone has it now because we’re all on social media, and because of that, how you look in photos is a genuine concern for everyone. It’s probably in everyone’s top five things they think about. Even if you try not to, it’s hard to escape because we’re not designed to see ourselves this much, and yet we constantly do. 

I think about that all the time. The way you worded that was interesting because I also wrote down that, during that conversation between Jordan and Cooper, she’s talking about exactly what you’re saying, where initially she’s enjoying her own beauty and the transformation she’s undergone, but once she becomes objectified by men, she feels ashamed of reveling in being beautiful because that has now been weaponised against her, which removes her joy from the situation. Thankfully, in that moment, she has Cooper to remind her that she’s beautiful and always has been, regardless of how other people perceive her.

He’s such a good boyfriend. [Both laugh].

Jacket Reverie / Jeans Miista / Boots Casadei  

I need one of those, quite frankly. It was this beautiful moment of showing how other people can sometimes see you more clearly than you can see yourself. To build off of that and what you were saying a moment ago, what helps you maintain joy during those moments where you want to celebrate being happy with yourself and how you look, without layering someone else’s enforced guilt or shame over that? 

I try to remind myself that it’s for me to enjoy first and foremost. I do look forward to being 80, but at the same time, youth and beauty are fleeting, and one day you’ll look back on yourself with much kinder eyes and wish you had appreciated yourself more. We’re all going to get to an age where we look back at photos of ourselves from right now and go, “God, I was so beautiful.” Even now, when I look at photos of myself from when I was 17, and I felt so insecure about how I looked, I can see now that I was beautiful but I spent so much time worrying about my weight, or how I looked in a pair of jeans, and I didn’t think I was attractive at all and I wasn’t confident. I can’t believe I didn’t appreciate my looks at that time in my life. So, I do try to remind myself of that, and also outside of how I look and how my body looks, I remind myself to enjoy what it can do for me. It’s like that thing where people say how it’s good to imagine yourself at 90 years old, and if you woke up in your 26-year-old body, what would you do with it? Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a spin class, and I feel like I can’t do it anymore, I look at myself in the mirror, and I’m like, “If I were 90 years old and I woke up in this body right now, I would be pumping those pedals.” I also like to dance on my own in my room in my underwear and allow myself to feel young and free and sexy when no one’s watching, and I can just enjoy it by myself, for myself. And yelling back at cat callers is a good thing to do when it’s safe to do so. I always shout back at people, or I’ll give them a face that shows that I find them disgusting, or I laugh at them, which makes them feel small and makes them second-guess what they’re doing.

I found a thread on Instagram once where all these women wrote what they respond with when they get catcalled to throw men off and get them to stop. We definitely need to be able to do that safely whenever we can, so they don’t make us feel bad for feeling beautiful.

I saw a video of a woman who was on a bike, and these guys leaned out of the van they were driving in, and one of them actually touched her. They were clearly cat-calling her, and they touched her, and then the van turned a corner, and in the video, she cycled after them, and she just ripped the mirror off the side of their van at the next red light and threw it in the street. Seeing that video made me feel alive and made me feel proud to be a woman. Women are allowed to react to things like that in other ways aside from feeling ashamed and crying. Sometimes you just get angry. I mean, Jordan literally smashes a guy’s face into the bar in The Beauty, and I loved filming that scene. I came into the hotel to shoot, and we did that maybe twice, and everyone was like, “That was great. We got it. You can go home.” But I was like, “No, I want to do that more.”

You’re like, “I would like to continue channelling this female rage that has been lying dormant so I can release all of this in a safe environment.” I loved that scene because then she just goes back to calmly having her drink. 

I’ve got to get a stunt team to teach me some good moves like that. I could utilise them. Well, my mom is actually a black belt in karate. She has three black belts. 

First of all, that’s incredible. Secondly, you’ve gotta learn some moves from her. 

My mum is way fitter than me. She’s way more ripped than me. She’s got a six-pack, and she can do press up on her knuckles. I cannot do that. My mum’s gnarly. 

Jacket Lurline / Shoes Charles & Keith / Tights Falke

[Laughs]. I also cannot do that, so shout out to your mum for being such a good example of strength to follow. In terms of your scenes with Evan, one of the things I enjoyed most about watching the show is how a lot is communicated between your characters through the looks on their faces, or the way they’re looking at each other when something is happening. How did you two work together to build that unspoken camaraderie between yourselves so it would then reflect in Jordan and Cooper’s interactions? 

It’s funny, Evan and I really only got to know each other on the job, which I think worked well for where the characters are at in their relationship, because there’s obviously a degree of total unfamiliarity with one another, and it’s a little strange. They have a lot of history in their relationship, but they haven’t been able to tell each other how they feel about one another until then, and all of a sudden, you have them dealing with this absolutely insane change in their relationship because of Jordan’s transformation and what it means. I think the fact that Evan and I didn’t know each other very well at the beginning was helpful, especially on these TV shows, because they’re so fast-paced, and I came in when they were already up and running. I was kind of thrown in at the deep end to naturally find that chemistry. But Evan’s incredibly easy to work with in that sense, and he’s such an embodied actor. He has such a strong grasp of character when he’s playing a role, and so we slipped into it easily, honestly. The dinner scene was the first one we shot, so it was a bit weird to be looking deeply into the eyes of this person whom I’ve essentially not really spoken to. I met him once at the screen test, but we didn’t have an opportunity to get to know one another until we started filming. 

You’d never be able to see on screen that you two didn’t know each other well before filming. There are so many instances where your characters are having a full conversation without even speaking, and it can be hard to build that sort of relationship in general, but I’m sure it’s even harder in a situation like this, where you didn’t know Evan, but you had to pretend you were the closest people in the world to each other.

We both understood the journey of these characters and what it needed to feel like. We knew exactly where the characters were, so it felt natural. It felt easy. I’ve admired Evan’s work for such a long time, so I was nervous to work with him on that first day. Honestly, I did not want to fluff my lines, and I knew I had to get to an emotional place quite quickly on my first day, and I also didn’t want to get fired. But I locked in, and I remember when we finished filming the scene, I picked myself up some tacos from around the corner, and I went back to my hotel and sat on my bed eating my tacos, and I was so happy. At the end of that day, I was like, “Okay, I did it. I don’t think I’m going to get fired. I think it went well.” In any job, it always feels like I can never sleep the first day before a shoot because I’m excited and I’m nervous. When you’re an actor, you are not necessarily always acting. So when you do get a job, and you have a big opportunity like that, the pressure is mounting. But I really had a moment of feeling like I knew what I was doing and that it had gone well and that they were not going to fire me.

It’s good that you were able to have a reaffirming moment of trusting that you do know what you’re doing, and that you deserved to be there as much as everyone else did. 

A lot of the guys on set had worked with Ryan before, and I was the youngest person coming in. I was the only Brit other than Rebecca, and of course, I didn’t get to work with Rebecca, so I did feel like a bit of an outsider, but I was warmly welcomed in. It was so fast-paced, and the hours were insane. I had never done American TV hours before, and I was honestly kind of shaken the first few days. There were a lot of firsts happening for me. It was the first time I ever held a gun because obviously I’m English and we don’t have guns here. There’s that scene where Jordan and Cooper come back to the apartment, and someone’s broken in, and Evan and I have to clear the room with these guns, and I remember people on set being like, “Here you go, Jess. Here’s your gun.” And I think I opened my hands out as if I was being handed a baby bird. I was like, “Okay, thank you. What should I do with it?” And they were like, “Hold it like a gun…” and I had to tell them I’d never held a gun before and didn’t know the proper way of doing it. So someone got on their radio and requested assistance, and we had an actual person who’s worked with the FBI before as an advisor on the show, and he showed me how to hold the gun and how to clear a room properly, and to make sure that me and Evan we doing that safely and were covering each other like people would do in real life. I think he found it quite amusing that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was like, “Guys, I’m from England. I’ve only ever held a water pistol.” [Both laugh]. 

Which is admittedly a very different thing. You’re like, “Am I treating this the same way as I would a water pistol because it doesn’t feel like I should?”

Evan just grabbed his and put it in his holster, and it looked super cool and natural the way he did it. 

In fairness to you, he’s done that once or twice in different roles.

And he’d been doing the FBI thing for three months before I got there. I was behind. I needed some extra training. 

Dress Dala / Heels Casadei

You figured it out in the end, which is all that matters! I like to end my interviews with a random question as a little palate cleanser, so what is your favorite fun fact? 

I’ll tell you a good one. I actually got a good one that my friend Ruby told me about the other day. She’s the coolest person I know, and she knows loads of cool facts, and she told me that platypuses don’t have nipples, so their babies just latch onto any part of the mother’s belly, and the milk seeps through any part of their skin. Is that not fucking weird? [Both laugh].

That’s actually the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.

Platypuses are such prehistoric-looking animals, and I think it’s insane they don’t have nipples. I’ve been bringing that up a lot lately because it’s actually something that gets quite a good reaction out of people, and it’s a good icebreaker.  

I’m going to think about that every day for the rest of my life, honestly. My random fun fact is that every gorilla has a unique nose print, like how we each have unique fingerprints. 

That’s such a good one. Who figured that out? And who figured that out about the platypus? Like, what were they up to there?

The Beauty is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+

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