Top Boy’s Jasmine Jobson: from ‘the most difficult child in Westminster’ to Netflix hit

Jasmine Jobson by Charlie Shoemaker

With a role in “Noughts + Crosses”, co-stars like Ben Whishaw and a Bafta nomination on her CV, Jobson talks about how a no-nonsense foster career turned her life round and why change in the industry is inevitable.

Jasmine Jobson always knew she wanted to be an actor – she just took an irregular route to get there. At 26, the Bafta-nominated Top Boy actor is one of the most exciting new talents in the industry, scoring a starring role in the acclaimed BBC adaptation of “Noughts + Crosses” and acting alongside thespian favourite Ben Whishaw in the gritty 2020 thriller “Surge”. To hear Jobson talk about her career is to listen to someone still in amazement at her accomplishments, and for good reason. Jobson says she was branded “the most difficult child in Westminster” by social services as a teenager.

“Singing, dancing, acting – I could pretty much do anything,” Jobson remembers of her early childhood, speaking from a hotel room in Cape Town, where the second series of “Noughts + Crosses” is currently being filmed. She started singing at the age of two – “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, all the Disney songs – you name it, I sung it”. At four or five years old, her mother got her a Madame Butterfly CD and said: “You really think you can sing? Try that.” Jobson laughs: “I was up at 6am singing opera in the bath.” Her parents sent her to Paddington Arts, a west London youth centre that develops young people’s creativity, but she had to leave once the family began struggling financially.

Jasmine Jobson by Charlie Shoemaker

Jobson – whose father is Jamaican and mother is Irish and Greek Cypriot (“I’m not gonna lie, I’ve got some fire in my belly,” she says of her heritage) – was sent to live with her grandmother as a child. “I used to take the absolute mick,” she recalls. She disappeared for hours after school – “I’d go out on a Friday and come back on a Sunday” – and was sent to a pupil referral unit. The rapper Fredo was in the year above, but she remembers most keenly what people thought of the students there: “Everybody knows they’re all bad breeds. What it is, we’re misunderstood.”

Eventually Jobson realised the effect her behaviour was having. “I was upsetting my nan. She had to be a parent all over again.” Jobson took the unusual choice of putting herself into foster care – “the best thing I ever did” – and was sent to live with an experienced carer called Valerie, a tough, no-nonsense woman in Westminster with kids of her own. “Four or five years later, I was a professional actor. That was with a lot of her guidance,” she says.

Jobson describes herself as a “typical kid who was always interested in performing arts” – as a young child, she says, she “dreamed of having my face on billboards”. After getting her GCSEs, Jobson ended up at the Big House Theatre Company, where a 12-week programme teaches young care leavers and ex-prisoners independence and theatre skills. (In a stroke of providence, the poet Lemn Sissay visited with a bundle of Malorie Blackman books and gifted a copy of Noughts & Crosses to Jobson.)

Some of the people on the course didn’t even know how to make beans on toast; Jobson left with a film and TV agent on the strength of her starring role in Phoenix, a play about the experiences of those in care. “I walked in there as a troubled teen, and I stepped out as a strong, independent Black female with a career,” she says, pausing to wipe away tears. “I’m getting emotional just thinking about it.”

Jasmine Jobson, Actress by Charlie Shoemaker

Jobson’s biggest challenge so far, she says diplomatically, has been needing to “step away from certain friendship circles when realising they weren’t good for me”. She adds: “It’s hard. But, I mean, one thing that Valerie taught me is that we keep going no matter what – it’s as simple as that.” In 2019, Netflix cast her in a breakout role as the streetwise lesbian drug dealer Jaq in the newly resurrected “Top Boy”. Jobson saw her face plastered on billboards across London and received a Bafta nomination for best supporting actress. This year, she was named one of Forbes’ “30 under 30” in the European entertainment section.

You can count the number of Black or minority ethnic foster care kids in British film and TV on one hand, but Jobson – who idolised fellow Londoners John Boyega and Letitia Wright – thinks times are changing. “Des Hamilton is living proof,” she says, pointing to the “Top Boy” casting director best known for plucking diverse talent with no experience from the street. “When you’ve got people like that within the industry, change is inevitable.”

Jasmine Jobson, Actress by Charlie Shoemaker

But for those from what social services might delicately describe as “challenging backgrounds”, she has some words of advice: “Be prepared to have knockbacks – I’ve had more noes than I’ve had yeses,” she says, counting an unnamed Star Wars role among them. Jobson, as a rule, also doesn’t do nude scenes: “It’s something that I’m just not comfortable with,” she explains. “My parents have to watch that – and my nan!” Being able to advocate for yourself is something she’s keen to stress to younger people coming into the industry: “If you feel that it’s not right for you, then don’t be afraid to say no.”

What she would like to see more of, she says, is “community work within the [film and TV] industry”. She points to the number of derelict or unused community centres in the UK. “Why don’t we rent them out for the weekends and host [drama] workshops for everybody on the estate and get all the young people – even adults – to come out and join you?” she suggests. “You’re helping the community and you’re saving lives. Not only that, you’re keeping so many young people off the streets.” She grins: “That’s something that I might actually look into – I’ve just had an epiphany!”

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This content was originally published on theguardian.com as part of the Adobe and Guardian Labs Create Change campaign.