Patience and Purvis: kindred spirits, and yet …

These two women seem to have everything in common. They’re young, autistic, heading into new worlds.
And yet, they’re also opposites.
Patience Evans (shown here) is fictional, the compelling central character in “Patience,” at 8 p.m. Sundays on PBS. Ella Maisy Purvis, 22, is the actress who plays her.
“I’m very different from her, but I’m also very similar,” she said, by Zoom. “There are no gray areas with us.”
They offer proof that autism really is a spectrum, and a huge one.
The opening two-parter (June 15 and 22) slowly unlocks Patience’s character. Burrowed deep in a police station’s records section, she avoids contact. But she’s also obsessed with a case and spots trends no one else sees.
Detective Inspector Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser) soon becomes deeply fond of her. So will viewers.
But this character isn’t easy to know; her words and gestures are sparse.”
“Patience is very internal,” Purvis said, “and I’m very external. It just goes straight from my brain to my mouth.”
And yet, Purvis understands the reluctance. Like Patience, she finds comfort in a carefully prescribed landscape.
When she was 8 or 9, she began intensely studying dance. “A lot of ballet is just technique …. You’re doing the same thing over and over again.”
There was something comforting in having no choice points, with everything mapped out. It’s the same pleasure she finds in a scripted role.
“I find acting from a script is so not-laboring,” she said. There’s no struggle to uncover social cues. “Someone has told me what to say.”
The shift from dancer to actor showed her spontaneous side. “It was literally overnight. I just woke up one day and decided I was going to be an actor.”
She promptly read every theater book she could find. She got into the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
Around that time, the Covid shutdown changed her life. She had more time at home, pondering the world. At 17, she was tested and diagnosed as autistic.
It was a relief, she said. “It was, ‘Oh, I’m not difficult; I’m not too sensitive ….. On a chemical level, my brain connects in a different way.'”
And then came a chance to be surrounded by kindred spirits. She was cast in an Irish series, “A Kind of Spark,” working with similar people.
Purvis now shares a flat with one of her “Spark” castmates, Caitlin Hamilton. “Neurodiverse people form connections very quickly,” she said. Little time is wasted on social niceties; “we get really, really personal.”
“Precious” offers the same opportunities, she said. In scenes set in an autism-support group, every actor (including the group’s leader) is neurodiverse.
Still, this role was a major challenge. At 20, with little experience, she moved to Antwerp for four months of filming with a Dutch-speaking crew.
Sort of an outsider anywhere, she was further outside. Fortunately, people stepped in. Figuratively, “I’m a baby …. I was scooped up and held.”
As babies go, Purvis seems to tower above others. “That’s all on Laura,” she said with a laugh. “She’s tiny.” (Officially, Purvis is 5-8, Fraser is 5-2.)
Soon, Purvis was linking with Patience’s quirks. She admired “her just-innate desire to connect with people and how she maybe doesn’t do it in a way that people understand.”
She shares Patience’s fondness for animals. She’s a cat person, but “I love a mouse, I love a rat, I’m fond of an otter …. I’m warming to large spiders.”
And she enjoys scenes with a bearded dragon. “They need to conserve energy, so they’re very still. All you can feel when you hold one is the heartbeat. It’s so comforting.”
Patience needs comfort while solving crimes; Purvis needs them while tackling new worlds. After filming this six-episode season she returned home, caught lots of sleep, acted in an episode of a British series and in a movie (“CC: Emily”) coming to Netflix. Then it was back to Antwerp.
And if there’s time for fun? “I like to go out with no money and walk until my feet ache. Or karaoke.”
Patience would understand the walking … and be appalled by karaoke.