The actor Claudia Jessie greets everyone – including journalists, I discover – with an almighty hug. “Hello bab,” she says as we embrace, before returning to the barista, still grinning. We’re meeting in a central Birmingham café, not far from where she lives, and Jessie is displaying the terrier enthusiasm of a kid on holiday. For two straight hours, through tough topics and all, she’s a flurry of sunshine and smiles. “Really,” she declares, “I’m just the happiest I’ve ever been, I couldn’t be happier. My life has, unequivocally, been a lot better than I thought it would be.”
It’s not hard to see why she’s flying high. Jessie is best known as Eloise Bridgerton, the fifth child of a wealthy family finding its place in high society, in Netflix’s boundary-breaking Regency-era drama. We’re here to discuss Bridgerton’s third season, which is just about to air, and in which she remains the show’s much-loved protofeminist cynic. Now 34, she has been working on-screen steadily for a decade. From 2013, leading BBC One’s police drama, WPC 56. Then her turn in ITV’s Vanity Fair miniseries, before her infamous run in season four of Line of Duty as hoity-toity PC Jodie Taylor. There have been bit-parts in The Detectorists, Call the Midwife and Doctor Who.
