Will Jasmine Top be Girl?
After a tough start in life, the Baftas beckon for TV’s newest rising star, so...
Jasmine Jobson was 15 when she put herself into foster care, to save herself from the streets. Ten years later, the star of netflix hit drama Top boy is vying for a bafta in a category that includes The Crown’s Helena bonham Carter.
being nominated for a best supporting actress in the Virgin media british academy Television awards was, Jobson told me, ‘an absolute dream come true’. it’s also a shining achievement for the Londoner who turned to social services for help when family circumstances soured.
Her foster mother gave her stability and structure for more than four years. During that period she was introduced to maggie norris, who founded The big House arts centre, now based in islington, which works with young people at risk to gain skills to turn their lives around .
many members of The big House come from the care system, Jobson explained, and as well as acting, they’re taught how to become selfsufficient, with instruction in everything from cooking to housing matters, if they’re homeless.
norris, along with award-winning casting director Des Hamilton — who would later cast her as drug dealer Jaq in Top boy — gave her the freedom to be ‘unapologetic about my skills’. They told Jobson she had a raw edginess, combined with an empathy that lifts many of the performances i have watched her in, including Good Thanks, You? a searing short film by director molly manning Walker about a 16year-old (Jobson) traumatised following a sexual assault. it had been listed for the Critics Week section of this year’s cancelled Cannes Film Festival.
i also saw her in aneil Karia’s powerful bbC Films and bFi psychological thriller surge, which looks at the monotonous grind endured by security workers at stansted airport. she and ben Whishaw (unbelievably good) play guards who man the X-ray machines. Jobson said surge ‘opened my eyes’, and made her see how ‘doing that job could drive a person’ to do what Whishaw does in the film... which i won’t give away here. she said she enjoys projects with a message, especially if that message concerns a subject that’s ‘taboo’, and she described her work ethic as ‘grab the bull by the horns...and sprint with it’. There are tentative plans to film a second season of Top boy, though Jobson hinted that there’s something else in the pipeline that will ‘mean a busy few years’. a prequel to a successful, long-running, star-making fantasy series, perhaps? she wasn’t giving anything away. next Friday she told me ‘Jas will be all jazzed up, looking jazzy’ for the baftas. she won’t be in the studio with host Richard ayoade and the socially-distanced presenters when the behind-closed-doors show is screened on bbC1. but she’ll be watching with family and friends — and she says she’s prepared a speech, ‘just in case’.