Beau Jessup, the daughter of British actress and television presenter Lisa Maxwell, has died at 27. Her mother is known for playing Samantha Nixon on The Bill and appearing on Loose Women.
Jessup, whose father is Paul Jessup, was the couple’s only child. She was studying in Columbia Journalism School’s Master of Science program and expected to graduate in May 2027.
Columbia Journalism School announced her death in a statement dated November 9, saying it was working with her family to provide support. The cause and circumstances of her death have not been disclosed.
With her family’s permission, Columbia News published a previously completed interview on November 11. The conversation explored her ambitions, earlier projects and experiences of studying in New York.
Columbia Remembers Jessup Through Her Own Words
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Dean Jelani Cobb described Jessup as a “cherished member” of the community in an email to students, according to HELLO!. “Any loss within our school family is difficult to process,” he wrote.
The university had contacted Jessup in October for its Notebook student interview series. She reviewed an edited version before her death, and school leaders and classmates encouraged its publication.
Growing up with a mother in television had made her interested in the gap between people’s lives and their public image. “I want to work as a journalist and writer,” she said, describing plans to report on people and culture while continuing to write for theater.
A Request in China Inspired SpecialName
Jessup’s naming project began during a teenage trip to China, when one of her father’s business associates asked her to suggest an English name for a daughter. After discussing the qualities the mother hoped the girl would develop, Jessup suggested Eliza, inspired by Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion.
She built SpecialName around that approach. Parents selected five desired characteristics from a list of 12, and the website offered three possible names. The service provided supplementary English names, leaving families to make the final choice.
Jessup discussed the project in her October 2016 TEDxBrighton talk, How I Named 250,000 Chinese Babies, which was uploaded the following year. In March 2019, HELLO! reported that the venture had helped name more than 677,000 children and earned over £300,000, helping finance her university education.
Her personal website says she stopped charging for the service in 2020 and describes it as remaining free for parents in China. In the Columbia interview, she estimated that SpecialName had helped name around one million babies.
Her Writing Included Community Stories and Theater
At 16, Jessup started Beau’s Community Bakes, a weekly newspaper column that used recipes to begin conversations with older people experiencing loneliness. She wanted to share their memories and help them feel connected to their community.
She later studied Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Writing for Performance at Cambridge. There, she wrote The Sandbag, a play exploring family, memory and inherited stories.
Jessup was preparing a New York workshop and hoped to collaborate with actors and directors from across Columbia. She was represented by THORO Artists as she developed the play.
Maxwell Had Celebrated Her Daughter’s Achievements
In September, Maxwell shared Columbia’s photograph of its incoming journalism class on X. She congratulated the students and singled out Beau, writing that her daughter was “over in NYC making us all super proud.”
In a 2008 interview with Take It Easy, excerpted by PEOPLE, Maxwell called the then-eight-year-old “a little mate to me.” She recalled attending the Strictly Come Dancing live tour together and said Beau was more interested in showing her homework than hearing about her mother’s acting.
Maxwell also described handmade Mother’s Day cards and her daughter’s ambition to become a marine biologist. “I’m constantly amazed by all the new things she’s learning to do,” she said in that interview.