Patience is a British detective drama that makes its American debut later this evening on PBS. The story follows Patience Evans, a worker in the Criminal Records Office. Her autism allows her to view the world from a unique perspective. A detective inspector sees her potential and enlists her help in solving cases.
Recently, we spoke to star Ella Maisy Purvis about the series. She discussed several topics including what her character means to neurodivergent representation.
There were several aspects that interested Purvis to the role originally. “What drew me to Patience was her empathy and her tenderness and her agency as an autistic person and the relationships we get to explore in season one.”
Like her character, Purvis is diagnosed with autism. Though she relishes the opportunity to represent a neurodivergent person on screen, she is careful to say the depiction is not universal. “The one thing about the show, and what we try to emphasize is that this is just one person,” she explained. “It’s really hard when there’s such little representation to kind of not have this person speak for everyone. She doesn’t. She’s just one woman with one experience.”
However, Patience does have facets that people with autism can relate to. “One thing [we] get right is her love of animals. And her sort of this drive inside of her that needs things to be done and finished so she can wipe them out of her brain. This sense of justice and needing to be served is very common. I think is very very common at least with my autistic friends within the autistic community. That really strong sense of justice.”
Purvis continued, “Also not really being able to tell when someone doesn’t want to speak to you. You keep talking like I’m doing now going blah blah blah and you can see the person going <making a face>, but I don’t register that. I think this show has a lot of lovely moments where Patience sort of realizes and goes, Oh, sorry.”
The actor can’t wait for people to watch the series. “I am excited for autistic love to be on screen. That can be something you can look forward to.”
Patience premieres tonight at 8pm/7pm central on PBS.
