Bridgerton ’s straight-talking Lady Danbury is the queen’s closest confidante and is used to commanding respect. But that has not always been the case for Adjoa Andoh, the much-lauded actress who plays her.
She was raised in a farming community in Gloucestershire, the only black girl for miles around and with a strong Yorkshire accent too. That meant she often felt singled out.
Now proud to be part of Bridgerton’s diverse family, 59-year-old Adjoa says: “I can’t tell you how touched I have been to see the little black girls posting photos of themselves in a Regency dress, dressed up like princesses.”
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Talking to the Sunday Mirror just before the second season of the hit Netflix drama launches on Friday, she said: “I get pictures from little girls AND boys dressed as Lady Danbury. I think it’s lovely.
“You kind of go, oh these children are going to grow up feeling like they have a place – not like they are being tolerated.
“It is very touching because I grew up in the 1960s in the English countr yside in Gloucestershire.”
She had moved there from Leeds and as the daughter of an English mother and Ghanian father she felt ostracised.
Some of her family had Romany heritage and she says: “I sometimes felt as though I wasn’t seen for myself, although that also meant I was more resilient.
“In a small West Country farming village, to be mixed race with a strong Leeds accent meant I was already a different order of gravy.
“There were levels of familiarity, and people getting to know us. Having a strong Yorkshire accent was as much a part of that as my race.
“Some people were like, ‘We can’t have that coloured girl in here – what would the neighbours think!’
“But, similarly, there were other houses where I was enormously welcomed.”
Adjoa starred in Casualty for three years, Silent Witness, and the 2009 film Invictus, and has had the acting career her own mother had dreamed of.
She won a place at drama school in the 60s but never took it up, becoming a choreographer and a history teacher instead. Adjoa sees similarities between Lady Danbury and her mum.
She says: “Lady Danbury is a lot of my mum. My mum has got a swagger to die for.
“She loves a good frock and she loves to wear a hat. “I get messages all the time from people saying, ‘You remind me of my mum, you remind me of my auntie or my big sister. I wish I had someone like you around to give me advice.’
“Others tell me, I wish I had Lady Danbury around to go party with – when you see her drinking and at gambling and having a fag.”
In season two of the racy period drama, Lady Danbury takes in the Sharma family from India – sisters Kate, played by Simone Ashley, Edwina, Charithra Chandran, and their mother Lady Mary, Shelley Conn.
Both sisters ultimately fall for the charms of troubled Lord Anthony Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey.
The sexual tension between Kate and Anthony as they come to realise their feelings is palpable.
Lady Danbury knows some hard decisions need making, with potentially life-changing consequences for all of those involved.
Bridgerton’s first season, out in 2020, was the most watched Netflix original series until it was toppled from the top spot by last year’s South Korean dystopia survival drama Squid Game.
