A little more Patience
British star Ella Maisy Purvis reflects on making two seasons of Channel 4 crime drama Patience, beating impostor syndrome and why the audience is rooting for her character.
Ella Maisy Purvis is a huge fan of Channel 4 drama Patience – so much so that she binged its recently launched second season in just one night. She also happens to be the show’s star.
“I was only sent episode one [in advance], so I was watching it alongside everyone else,” she tells DQ. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what we were doing for half the year. Lovely.’”
Yet even though she might not know what the finished episodes will look like, she can pick up their “really clear pace and style” just from the scripts and the way the show is filmed in the English city of York.
“But the nature of filming, you’re up at five, you don’t get home until eight, and so the days just merge into one,” she says. “We’ll do five weeks in the police station, and then everything blurs together and you’re like, ‘I don’t know what episode we’re doing.’”
One of Channel 4’s biggest dramas of last year, Patience introduced Patience Evans (Purvis), who works in the City of York Police’s criminal records department, cataloguing and filing the evidence produced during major cases. A young autistic woman, she craves routine and order, relishing the solitude and structure her job provides. But the self-taught criminologist also yearns for more – and has developed an instinctive eye for crime scenes and a passion for problem-solving. Her talents are soon spotted by Detective Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser), who brings her on to a series of seemingly baffling cases.
In season two, which launched in January, Patience is continuing her work in the criminal records department after establishing herself as an invaluable member of the team. But when a new boss – Jessica Hynes’ Detective Frankie Monroe – brings a different management style, it proves tricky for them both to navigate. Love is also in the air as Patience begins a relationship with colleague Elliot (Tom Lewis).
The cast also includes Nathan Welsh as DS Jake Hunter, Mark Benton as Calvin Baxter, Adrian Rawlins as Douglas Gilmore, Ali Ariaie as DC Will Akbari, Connor Curren as Billy Thompson and Liza Sadovy as Dr Loretta Parsons.
After S1 set up the world of the show and the character of Patience, Purvis didn’t find it any different returning for S2, which is once again produced by Eagle Eye Drama. “She’s such a defined character with such definite ways of talking and operating, but in general, I felt a lot more at peace coming back to do a second season because I didn’t have as much impostor syndrome,” she says. “You know people better. Everyone in the crew and cast is just so lovely. We’re all friends and we all hang out and text outside of work. So, more than anything, it was nice to see all your buddies again.”
On screen, meanwhile, Patience faces a sense of déjà vu as she is forced to prove herself all over again when new boss Frankie doesn’t immediately approve of her role in the team.
“A lot of people expected her to go back to square one. She was quite meek and lacking in confidence. But she has a higher sense of self-worth, I’d say, and bite. She’s got a lot more bite,” the actor says. “What’s also great is that she has people behind her. Jake isn’t wary of her, Will’s tapping away on his computer and likes her, and Baxter feels a real affinity towards her, and she knows her worth.
“There are lots of funny little dry, deadpan moments where she bites back to Frankie, because a lot of the time autistic people and women in general, especially in a place like the police, get walked all over. It’s like, ‘Well, sorry, no, I deserve to be here. Let me finish.’ So that’s really nice to see on screen.”
In a crowded field of crime series, Purvis has found viewers are rooting for Patience – and her blossoming relationship with Elliot. “It’s so nice that people, neurodivergent or not, are like, ‘Oh my God, will she talk to him?’ Or, ‘Will they get together?’ Because as much as what sets the show apart is that she’s an autistic woman and we see the world through her eyes and what she experiences, she is a young woman in a high-pressure job, navigating relationships and whatnot. What people have said to me that they like is that it’s interesting. Her life is interesting. Her relationships are interesting, and then a central point to her identity and my identity is that she’s autistic, and suddenly you get this whole other world opened up to the viewers.”
Purvis stresses that she’s quite different from the character she plays on screen, however. “A lot of what I say and do, it’s very illogical and very heart-led, but she’s very head-led,” she explains. “She’s very internal and runs on logic, and she’s very justice-driven – not that I’m not justice-driven, because I am, but just in a very different way. Even things down to the costume, she’s got such a particular sense of style, and she’s very efficient as a person and how she moves. I’m really gangly and I talk with my hands a lot, and once you notice those things and you don’t do them, suddenly you’ve got a character.
“There’s a saying that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. It’s a spectrum for a reason.”
Filming S2, Purvis describes travelling to different locations and living out a suitcase in random hotels as the production moved between York and its iconic Minster cathedral and locations in Belgium. “That’s always difficult,” she says. Yet like Patience on screen, she’s embraced a found family in the shape of her co-stars, who support each other away from the camera and share numerous dinners.
“It’s a serious show, but the more serious the show, the sillier you are off camera,” she says. “We just had so many giggles, and we all knew each other better, so we did more giggles than last season. Filming in the Minster was gorgeous. We had it all to ourselves, and I was actually so deathly poorly when we were shooting it. I was just lying in the middle of the Minster; it was fantastic.”
After appearances in Heartstopper, Malpractice, A Kind of Spark and Bergerac, Purvis is now leading a series for the first time. But despite appearing in the majority of Patience’s scenes, the only pressure she felt was that which she put on herself.
“I’ve noticed that people touch you a lot more and fix your hair a lot more, because when you’re like number 13 [on the call sheet], or ‘dead body number four,’ people are like, ‘She looks alright,’” she says. “Then suddenly you have loads of people being like, ‘Oh God, we need to make sure her collar is straight’ because a lot of the show is just me looking at things, looking stressed, or maybe even being moved.”
She’s also come to understand the “lingo” on set and how the various departments work together. “As an actor, you should learn that, because I’d argue that’s also part of your job to understand how everything works around you,” she says. “Then you know where to stand more or to stop [moving], because I’m often playing with things and sound are like, ‘Can you stop? You’re rubbing your mic.’ It’s little things like that.”
Purvis is delighted that the belief she and the cast and crew of Patience have in the show – which is adapted from French series Astrid & Raphaëlle – has been reflected by the audience in the UK. Beta Film is handling international sales of the series, with PBS Distribution holding North American rights.
“S2 is doing so well,” she says. “It’s just so lovely to see people tuning in and loving it, because when you make it, you’re like, ‘This is ours. This is mine.’ It’s like an inside joke, and then the inside joke gets explained to the world, and sometimes people get it, sometimes people don’t, but it’s lovely to know that people get it.”
In the early stages of a “very busy year,” Purvis is still getting used to being recognised in public. But some more transformative roles could be in her future.
“Well, I’m quite Gollum-esque. I would love to be some sort of creature covered in goo that walks on all fours, just all slimy and something not human. I’d love to do that,” she says, “or some sort of an Elf creature, because I’ve got quite pointy ears and a very severe, gaunt-looking face sometimes. But then I always say [I’d like to appear in] Bond, because I fucking love Q. I’d love to be Q. I’d fight Ben Whishaw for it.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Astrid et Raphaëlle: An autistic, hyperlexic police archivist with an encyclopedic memory is recruited by a rule-breaking homicide cop, and together they crack bizarre Paris murders by pairing pattern-spotting and instinct.
Sherlock: A consulting detective with razor-sharp observation skills and little patience for social conventions solves high-profile crimes in London with the help of long-suffering partner John Watson.
Ludwig: John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor takes on his identical twin brother’s identity to uncover the truth behind his disappearance. But there’s a twist: John has lived a quiet, uneventful life, designing puzzles and avoiding the outside world, while his brother is a high-flying DCI leading a major crimes team in Cambridge.
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tagged in: Beta Film, Channel 4, Eagle Eye Drama, Ella Maisy Purvis, Patience, PBS Distribution