Who Plays Emma on HBO Max’s ‘The Girl Before’? Meet Jessica Plummer

HBO Max‘s new limited series The Girl Before stars two familiar faces — Loki‘s Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Selma star David Oyelowo — but it might be sort-of newcomer Jessica Plummer who gets your attention. Plummer plays Emma Matthews, a twenty-something Londoner who convinces her boyfriend Simon (Ben Hardy) to apply to live in an apartment designed by a famous minimalist architect. Emma’s tragic story plays in flashbacks set three years before the events of the main plot. It’s explicit almost from the start that she wound up dying in that flat, but how and why is the central mystery of the eerie thriller.

The Girl Before was adapted by J.P. Delaney from his best-selling novel of the same name. The main plot follows Jane Cavendish (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as she applies to live in the apartment Emma lived and died in. Jane doesn’t know about the death at first, only learning about it in a creepy way after moving in. Nor does Jane learn that she is a dead ringer for Emma until we’re deep into The Girl Before Episode 1. The audience, however, does know these things, though, thanks to the show’s bifurcated plot.

Plummer dazzles in the role of Emma, who appears to be an easy-going, sweet and joyous twenty-something at first glance. However we soon learn she is carrying some dark secrets.

So who is Jessica Plummer? And where have you seen — and heard — her before? Here’s everything you need to know about the titular “Girl Before“…

Who is Jessica Plummer? The Actress Who Plays Emma in HBO Max’s The Girl Before?

Jessica Plummer is a 29-year-old British actress and singer from London, England. Before she starred in The Girl Before, she was best-known as a pop star. Yup, Jessica Plummer was a member of the British girl group Neon Jungle (not to be confused with the band Neon Trees). The girl group put out an album called Welcome to the Jungle in 2014 and had disbanded by 2015. Later that year, Plummer was cast in John Cameron Mitchell’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties. The following year she gave birth to daughter Noa.

In 2019, Plummer’s transition to actress was official with a role on the hit UK soap opera EastEnders. Her character was killed off in 2020 in a storyline intended to reflect the rise of domestic violence that occurred during the pandemic lockdowns. She went on to appear in the reality show, I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

If The Girl Before is your first introduction to Plummer, you can follow her on Instagram @jessicakate_plummer.