Alisha Boe

The Culture Shock of Los Angeles

Alisha Boe was born in Oslo in 1997. She was just seven years old when her mother decided to leave Norway and move to Los Angeles. It was a change of light and language that ultimately shaped her understanding of acting. At that age, she enrolled in local schools and began to take an interest in theater before moving on to professional sets.

She made her horror film debut with Amusement in 2008. It was a small role, but enough to get her into the audition circuit in California. Four years later, she appeared in Paranormal Activity 4 during 2012. Back then, young actresses often started in the genre of cheap scares to rack up set time.

And TV contracts soon followed.

She appeared in big-audience productions like Modern Family and Days of Our Lives between 2014 and 2015. But these were paycheck jobs. They were supporting roles that offered little room to build a character with real depth. The industry quickly typecast her as the American high school teen.

From Scares to Generational Drama

In 2017, she landed the role of Jessica Davis in the series 13 Reasons Why. It was a Netflix production that ran for four seasons until it wrapped in 2020. Her character tackled complex themes such as abuse and emotional recovery in a hostile environment. That project gave her global visibility that few actors her age manage to achieve.

It was her ticket out.

But success in streaming is fickle. After the series ended in 2020, she looked for projects that would take her away from conventional teen dramas. In 2022, she took part in When You Finish Saving the World under the direction of Jesse Eisenberg. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and allowed her to work in a much drier, more restrained register.

That same year, she shot Do Revenge for Netflix. It was a black comedy that did well with young audiences. Her name then started to come up for bigger international projects.

Period Productions and Tight Budgets

In 2023, she made a turn toward historical drama with The Buccaneers. The Apple TV+ series placed her in 19th-century London, playing Conchita Closson. Filming took place at various locations across Scotland. It was a complete change of register, where the period costumes and protocol demanded a physical restraint she had never practiced before.

Because the market waits for no one.

In 2024, she appeared in the film Miller’s Girl alongside Jenna Ortega. The budget for this movie was just four million dollars, and it focused on the tense relationship between a student and her teacher. Critics were divided over Jade Halley Bartlett's screenplay, but Boe's performance was one of the most talked-about technical highlights on specialized forums.

Production on the second season of The Buccaneers set up base in Glasgow during 2024 to shoot the new episodes under strict confidentiality protocols.