Jess Bush

From Canvas to the Survival Runway

Jess Bush did not want to be a runway hanger. In 2011, she took part in the ninth season of Australia’s Next Top Model, and that experience nearly pushed her out of the industry for good. She was only 19 years old and soon realized the fashion world felt far too narrow for her creative ambitions.

That first taste of television fame was a miscalculation. But it helped her realize her place was in acting and the visual arts. Bush has never stopped painting or sculpting. For years she balanced her work in front of the camera with an artistic practice that let her pay the bills without compromising her integrity.

And the gamble paid off.

Before breaking into the international market, she worked in her home country's television with small roles. In 2017 she appeared in the iconic series Home and Away. It was a brief but necessary step that taught her the rhythm of a professional shoot. Then came projects like Playing for Keeps in 2018 and Les Norton in 2019, where she began refining a naturalistic style that steered clear of the usual artifice in Australian television drama.

The Assault on the Bridge

Her big break came in the most unexpected way. In 2022, it was announced that Bush would play nurse Christine Chapel in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It was no ordinary role. She had to take up the torch from Majel Barrett, which meant facing an extremely demanding fan base.

Bush chose to ignore direct comparisons. She built a Chapel who was much more than a romantic interest or a medical assistant. She gave the character a physical energy and an emotional depth that didn't exist in the original 1960s series. She made Chapel feel independent and vibrant from the very first episode.

But the casting process was a months-long ordeal of waiting.

In 2023, the Hollywood writers' and actors' strike brought production of the series' third season to a halt. Bush used the pause to return to her artistic roots in Australia. There she kept developing her jewelry label and her visual art pieces, which often explore the human body and nature. For her, acting is just one branch of a much larger creative tree.

Many actors are wary of being typecast in science fiction.

She doesn’t seem to mind much. In 2024, filming the new episodes in Toronto demanded a remarkable physical effort from her. Bush performs many of her own action scenes because she prefers the body’s movement to match the emotion of the scene. So she trains intensely to meet the standards of a production that works with budgets of more than seven million dollars per episode.

The production contract for the series' third installment was signed with a shooting schedule that ran through May 2024 at the Ontario studios.