Devery Jacobs is an award-winning actress, writer, director and producer who is quickly establishing herself as one of Hollywood’s most exciting rising stars. As a socially conscious voice from Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, she uses her platform to advocate for Indigenous and LGBTQ2S+ rights.
Jacobs will next star in the highly anticipated Marvel series Echo, which is set to launch on Disney+ in 2023. She currently stars as one of the leads in the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed series Reservation Dogs. For her performance as “Elora Danan,” Jacobs earned a Critics Choice Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and a Gotham Award nomination for Outstanding Performance in a New Series. In 2022, the cast won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series. She joined the writers room in season two and will be writing and directing for the third season as well.
Up next is Jacobs’ producorial debut narrative film Backspot, which is also executive produced by Elliot Page. In addition to producing, she will star as a lead in the drama about competitive cheerleading, showcasing her skills as a former provincial champion gymnast.
Jacobs has amassed a significant body of work in film and television productions with a wide reach in genres including Netflix’s The Order, Starz’s American Gods and Blumhouse Productions’ The Lie. Her breakout role came when she was cast as the lead in the award-winning film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls, which resulted in her nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at the 2014 Canadian Screen Awards. Additional film credits include Blood Quantum, Cold and This Life. Jacobs won Best Actor in a Canadian Film at the 2016 Whistler Film Festival and Best Actress at the 2017 American Indian Film Festival for her work in the film The Sun at Midnight. Jacobs starred in Caroline Monnet’s French-language feature, Bootlegger, which was awarded the Dramatic Feature Award at the 2021 ImagineNATIVE Festival Awards and received Best Screenplay at Cannes’ Cinéfondation in 2017.
In 2022, she landed on the cover of Teen Vogue’s New Hollywood issue, and in 2021, she was in the Out100 list. In 2017, The Hollywood Reporter named Jacobs one of Canada’s Rising Stars and she was honored by Telefilm Canada with the 2017 Birks Diamond Tribute. She was given the title of TIFF Rising Star at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.
Jacobs has also explored the other side of the camera, with her directorial debut of the short film Stolen, which won Best Aboriginal Film at the 2017 Yorkton Film Festival. Her second short Rae garnered Best Youth Work prize at the ImagineNATIVE Film Festival. It was also an official selection of the 2018 Palm Springs International ShortFest and named as one of the Best Women-Directed Films by Refinery29. The feature This Place, co-written by Jacobs, was a recipient of the Talent to Watch fund from Telefilm Canada.
While pursuing her acting career, Jacobs studied to be a counselor and worked at the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.
Outside of acting and filmmaking, Jacobs is fulfilling her goal of learning her Native language and taking Kanien’kéha (Mohawk) classes. Her other passion lies in Indigenous rights and LGBTQ2S+ activism. She was an original founder of the Kahnawà:ke Youth Forum, where she led and organized protests and rallies. Recently, Jacobs has been focusing her activism through her art, hoping to create change within communities and to alter the perspective of how modern Indigenous people are seen.
