Bridgerton's Lady Danbury: All-white casts in costume dramas have gone

Bridgerton’s Lady Danbury: All-white casts in costume dramas have gone for good

• Adjoa Andoh predicts Bridgerton’s impact will see all-white casts in the past
• She said there’s a rising realisation people of colour played a great role in history

It was the hit TV series that reimagined England in the Regency era as a country of equals when it came to race – and now Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh has predicted that its impact will mean period dramas featuring all-white casts could be a thing of the past.

The star, known to global audiences as the waspish Lady Danbury, said there was a growing realisation that people of colour played a greater role in British history than previously thought.

‘That genie is out of the bottle,’ she said. 

‘I don’t think we will cast historical period pieces with entirely white casts unless there is a reason to do so, perhaps if the production is set somewhere like Iceland in 5,000 BC. But even then I think there would have been a plucky traveller from overseas selling scientific instruments or fabrics.’

Bridgerton, which launched on Netflix in 2020, features an ethnically diverse cast and has changed the way viewers see period dramas. 

Representing the past: Adjoa Andoh and Simone Ashley in the television series Bridgerton

Andoh, 60, has previously said she is not playing Lady Danbury as a ‘fake white person’, adding: ‘I am the colour I am – and I’m playing that.’

The acclaimed Shakespeare actress said it was important to have an accurate representation of the nation’s past.

‘The point is that, historically, we have excised all those people of colour who were a part of this nation, particularly in the metropolitan areas,’ she said.

‘It’s a question of restoring the historical accuracy of the presence of people of colour in this country going back centuries. There is a thought Othello was based on a black tailor who Shakespeare might have used in the 1500s.’

Andoh’s words echo those of actor Ashley Thomas, who defended the new BBC adaptation of Great Expectations against claims it was ‘woke’ for its diverse cast.

The star, who plays scheming lawyer Jaggers, told The Times: ‘London at that time was a melting pot of cultures. You had people from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, before the Windrush era. It’s important that shows represent that. I don’t think it’s about being “woke”, it’s about being accurate to the time.’

Andoh, 60, has previously said she is not playing Lady Danbury as a ‘fake white person’, adding: ‘I am the colour I am – and I’m playing that’

Andoh is starring as Richard III at the Liverpool Playhouse but has not followed recent trends in changing the gender of the evil monarch.

She is playing him in her West Country accent and said that as a black girl growing up in the Cotswolds, she identified with the alienation felt by the disfigured King. 

‘I read it in a child-centred way,’ she said. ‘It resonated, the lived experience of it. It’s really basic, that idea of “it’s not fair”. It doesn’t matter what the prejudice is. It’s what it does to the human soul.’

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