From the MOTHER CITY to MOTHERLAND

Jessica Sutton has enchanted audiences around the world with her breakout role as warrior witch Tally Craven in Motherland: Fort Salem, but off-screen she's just a South African girl making her way in the world.

- CHARIS TORRANCE

Jessica Sutton is all smiles, despite the fact that our whirlwind FAIRLADY shoot ended with her drenched in a swimming pool - on a winter's day, no less. This is what I love about collaborations,' she says, laughing. 'You end up not wearing any of the things you planned and soaking wet in a pool!'

Jessica is spending some much-needed time back on home soil in Cape Town after she and her partner Stephen made the move to Canada in 2020. When she landed her first lead role in an international series in 2019, Jessica moved to Vancouver, where it was being filmed. Stephen joined her there and they both fell in love with the Canadian city, but their plans to put down roots were placed on hold when the pandemic hit and lockdowns were announced. At the time, Stephen was living in Vancouver while Jessica was in New York on a press tour. 'I decided to fly back to South Africa (on what would turn out to be the last direct flight from New York to Cape Town), and nine months of long-distance crawled by before we reunited in Vancouver for Season 2.'

They were thrilled to be back together, even though being so far from home was not easy. 'We found ourselves without a community or any sense of familiarity on top of the isolation of lockdown,' she says. 'Those feelings of homesickness were amplified, but we had each other and we had employment, which was remarkable.'

The two have been inseparable since they were teenagers. 'I met him when I was 15 years old, back when he delivered newspapers around our neighborhood. We laugh, thinking of how those two kids from Kreupelbosch would not have believed it if you'd told them where they'd be now.'