Jessy Yates burst onto fans' radar with her gripping performance in Netflix's Pulse.
Yates stars in the new streaming medical drama alongside big-name stars like Willa Fitzgerald and Colin Woodell, playing Harper Simms—a second-year Emergency Medicine resident who requires the use of a wheelchair.
The Netflix actress is originally from Cleveland, Ohio, arriving in Pulse with only five previous credits.
What To Know About Pulse's Jessy Yates
Jessy Got a Scholarship at Yale
Jessy Yates is a classically trained actor who attended the prestigious Yale acting program. In fact, Yates earned a scholarship to the Ivy League institution, where she graduated in 2022.
Before becoming a professional actor, the Netflix star trained at Yale and NYU, honing her craft and learning what it takes to be one of the greats. As a part of her education, Yates earned a Bachelor's Degree in Drama and Acting at NYU and a Master's of Fine Art (Acting) from Yale.
In a conversation with Observer in 2019, Yates described her education journey, describing the Yale acting program as "very hard," getting more and more difficult as time goes on:
"In the first semester we don’t do shows, and it’s kind of an easy course load, but I’m realizing that this is going to be very hard. I’m working on a new play where I play ages 1 through 50, and that happens in, like, an hour. You can’t become other people without knowing who you are. It’s like cognitive behavioral therapy. You have to give personhood to another person who might not think of being a person in the same way you do."
Yates noted that she was "the first visibly disabled actress at the Yale School of Drama," meaning the program had to make some changes to its "100-year-old buildings" so that she could move around freely among its ranks:
"I’m the first visibly disabled actress at the Yale School of Drama. [Yates uses a wheelchair]. There’s a girl in the year before me who identifies as disabled who is hard of hearing, but I’m the first that they’ve had to make a lot of brick-and-mortar access accommodations for. The rep theater that Yale runs was not accessible; half of the rehearsal studios were not accessible. They’re kind of scrambling to make these 100-year-old buildings accessible, and they’ve done a good preemptive job, but there are still rehearsal studios that I will just never be able to go to. They’re doing the best they can with the resources they have. Structurally, some of these buildings are quite old and historic."
Yates joins a lengthy list of notable alums from Yale's David Geffen School of Drama, including Aquaman actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Meryl Streep, and Paul Newman.
Jessy Dan Has Cerebral Palsy
Jessy Yates has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair in her everyday life because of it. Yates has not let her disability stop her from chasing her passion, getting jobs on series like Pulse despite her condition.
In a 2019 profile of the Netflix star, Yates talked about her disability and its connection to her career, saying, "My work will always include disability," as she "cannot hide from my cerebral palsy" (via Access/VSA International Network):
"My work will always include disability, from top to bottom, because I—the person embodying the work—cannot hide from my cerebral palsy. It’s as apparent as the fact that I am a white woman, so to disregard it would be cutting myself off from bits of my humanity."
However, she will not let that define the roles she can take on. "I started making my own work because I didn't feel there was enough empowering work for disabled women," she added, admitting she hopes "to make work so that some young disabled child can see themselves and know that they're wanted and valid:"
"In a practical sense, I started making my own work because I didn’t feel there was enough empowering work for disabled women. Unless I want to spend my career perpetuating the infantilizing narrative of Laura in The Glass Menagerie, then I need to take responsibility for my own career and carve out a place for myself. Growing up, I never saw my experiences in media, so I just assumed a body like mine didn’t belong in society. I want to make work so that some young disabled child can see themselves and know that they’re wanted and valid."
Given her condition, Yates has become an outspoken advocate for fellow cerebral palsy patients. When she is not working as a star of the stage and screen, Yates has devoted herself to various cerebral palsy-related causes, including the Cerebral Palsy Foundation (per Linkedin).
Jessy Previously Starred in Law & Order: SVU & Me
Jessy Yates has several other credits outside of Netflix's Pulse.
Before the Netflix medical drama, her most notable role was in Apple TV+'s Me series, where she appeared as Morgan in all ten episodes of the streaming superhero show. She has also starred in Law & Order SVU as a supporting character named Alicia Ford (the girlfriend of a documentary filmmaker who goes missing).
Yates' next project after Pulse is the upcoming Christian Nilsson thriller Westhampton.
Jessy Consulted with Physicians Who Use Wheelchairs for Pulse
For her role in Pulse, Jessy Yates consulted with physicians who use wheelchairs to ensure she best represented them on-screen in the series.
In the new Netflix series, Yates plays Harper Simms, a second-year Emergency Medicine resident who (just like Yates herself) happens to use a wheelchair in her daily life.
While Yates is no stranger to using a wheelchair, she has never worked in a hospital's high-intensity environment. So, as part of her research for the role, she talked to real-life medical professionals about their experience doing their jobs in a wheelchair.
Yates told New Mobility about her experience shadowing Mayo Clinic emergency medicine physician Dr. Daniel Grossman:
"When you are intubating a patient, they are slightly too high on the bed to reach them, so Dr. Grossman pulls them onto his lap and puts a blanket behind their head, and that’s what my character ends up doing. It became this vulnerable, intimate thing because you have someone who can’t breathe on your lap, and you are helping to administer their breaths. It feels less clinical."
Some of the things she learned included changes to how a doctor in a wheelchair has to intubate a patient and the difference in the relationship between doctor and patient.
"When you are standing over a patient, it can feel more like an authoritarian type of interaction," Yates revealed, saying that sitting down in the chair makes it feel like "a conversation:"
"So much of emergency medicine is detective work. You have to figure out what could have gotten them there,” says Yates. “When you are standing over a patient, it can feel more like an authoritarian type of interaction, but when you are sitting, it becomes a conversation. His patients opened up to him so quickly as a provider because they felt comfortable."
How To Follow Jessy Yates Online
Fans can keep up with Jessy Yates online by following her on Instagram (@JessyYates).
