Written by Scott Drucker
My friend Jessica Rotolo is an actor, a sister, a daughter, a Humber graduate, and so much more. She has one of those infectious personalities that finds a way to touch everyone she meets in life… truly, a rare find. And did I mention she has a great head of hair? This is where this story picks up, because that was not always the case.
At 16 years old Jessica went to a sleep clinic where she was prescribed a drug that was followed by extreme and rapid hair loss (not to mention it
Jessica Rotolo in 2016, 2 years after developing alopecia areata (left) and in 2021 after a successfully participating in a clinical trial (right).
made her pass out!). As a young woman living with Down syndrome, she was no stranger to new medications, but this stuff was scary: it was way too strong and had alarming side effects to boot. So here she is, in her first year of high school, navigating this fragile landscape bearing a bald head in a sea of youthful hair. Can you even imagine? She tried everything including 30 to 40 steroid shots to the skull and eyebrows every 3 months for a 2 year period. That didn’t work. Alternative medicines? Why not. It went on for years like this, as she fought to stay positive and follow her dreams, which she did in remarkable fashion even though it was not easy all of the time.
Jessica is now 24 years old, with a new head of hair and ready to tell her heroic tale of living with Alopecia Areata. To help her come to terms with this traumatic experience, she wants to make a wig of her new hair and donate it to a child at Sick Kids who has Alopecia. Thanks to a JAK-inhibitor trial drug, Jessica finally has her hair back. And yet, the first thing she wants to do is cut it all off again so that someone in need can benefit. What an inspiration!
A story full of hope, humanity, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit, this is a film that the world needs now. And while this is very much Jessica’s personal story, it is also about her relationship with her mother and father and the lengths parents will go to help their children. In the face of adversity, sometimes the only choice is to persevere. For me, as a filmmaker, the story is what her mother, Dorlean, left me with after our initial call, when she said:
“The only time I saw Jessica cry was tears of joy when her eyelashes grew back.”
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Scott Drucker, Director and Producer of several documentaries featured at Slamdance, Hot Docs, Tribeca, and the Cleveland International Film Festival, is producing a short documentary film temporarily titled, “Jessica.” The film will follow Jessica Rotolo, a young woman born in Toronto with Down syndrome who, after years of battling Alopecia Areata, has successfully grown her hair back.
