Nice Girls Posts
Thursday Three with Malese Jow
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage month, so we’re spotlighting some of our favorite women on TV with that heritage. You can read all the entries in the series here.
Malese Jow – also known simply as Melise in reference to her birth name, Elizabeth Melise Jow – was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but she moved to California with her mother and three siblings when she was 9 years old. She who is of Chinese-American and Cherokee descent would often sing the national anthem at local baseball games and also appeared in several McDonald’s commercials. She later competed on Ed McMahon’s Next Big Star, winning four rounds in the kids’ vocalist category.
While she appeared on the children’s show Barney and the crime drama Dellaventura at the tender of age of 6, her acting career got underway when she was a teenager, landing a co-starring role alongside Emma Roberts in the Nickelodeon sitcom Unfabulous in 2004, which aired for three seasons.
She followed that role with appearances in other children’s programs, including Wizards of Waverly Place and iCarly on Nickelodeon and the Disney juggernaut Hannah Montana as well as the teen-centric box office films Bratz: The Movie and Aliens in the Attic.
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES
Malese appeared in the first season (2010-2011) of The CW series, playing Anna, a vampire who was over 500 years old. In the beginning, it seemed she was evil, but it was eventually revealed that she was looking for a way to free her mother, hoping that she could get help from the Salvatore brothers and Elena Gilbert. She used Elena’s young brother Jeremy as a way to approach the trio, but Anna ended up falling in love with Jeremy. She was unfortunately killed by Jeremy and Elena’s uncle John in the final episode of the debut season of the show.
STAR-CROSSED
In 2014, Malese appeared in the short-lived series Star-Crossed which aired mid-season on The CW. She played Julia Yeung, a young teen with a deadly disease who longed for a cure. The Atrians, an alien race who crashed landed on Earth 10 years prior, played a major part in her eventually being cured, thanks to a special herb, which gave her a second chance at life. She was a staunch supporter of her best friend Emery, who was in love with one of the teen Atrians named Roman – the Atrian responsible for saving her life.
THE SHANNARA CHRONICLES
Last year, Malese joined the cast of the fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles for its second season, which moved from MTV to Spike TV. She played Mareth, a young woman with magical abilities. It was later revealed that she was the daughter of the Druid Allanon and his lover Pyria Elessedil, the estranged Elvin princess of Arborlon. Her innate abilities were inherited thanks to her father, making her not only one of the last Druids in that universe but also the only female one.
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