The 28-year-old actress tells THR why she wanted the role, even though she hadn’t watched ‘Bridgerton’ when she sent in her audition tape.
Arsema Thomas had not seen the Netflix hit Bridgerton before she sent in an audition tape to play young Lady Agatha Danbury in its prequel series, Queen Charlotte, while doing her master’s degree in fine arts in London. But even without having seen the show that has captivated fans globally, she knew she wanted the role.
“There was something interesting or different about this type of storytelling because it’s clearly grabbing people,” Thomas tells THR. “There was something about the fact that I have never seen a character written like this for a Black woman before. Usually, if she’s supporting the main narrative, she doesn’t have a three-dimensional narrative of her own — she only exists in the realm of the lead. And to see that this woman was just so engaging, so mysterious — but in a way that didn’t detract from her complexity, but rather added to it in a beautiful way … I was like, ‘I want to be this woman when I grow up.’”
The prequel, created by Bridgerton producer Shonda Rhimes, delves into young Queen Charlotte’s (India Ria Amarteifio) rise to power. Lady Danbury, whom Thomas calls an “empowered, strong, resilient woman,” is played by Adjoa Andoh in Bridgerton, and Thomas says she worked with Andoh to craft both the younger and older versions of the character given that Queen Charlotte flashes back and forth between the past and the present Bridgerton universe. The 28-year-old actress also worked closely with 62-year-old Cyril Nri, who plays Lord Danbury, as well as with intimate coordinators for the sex scenes between Agatha and her character’s much older husband.
But there was much more that went into Thomas’ preparation of the character. Thomas is American but kept a British accent throughout all of her auditions. “Shonda didn’t know until three months into filming that I was American. She thought for sure I was British,” she says.
Thomas also interviewed her mother and grandmother ahead of production. “Both of them are women who have been in extremely difficult situations and have come out not being bitter or holding a grudge against the system, but rather understanding that there is a larger purpose than their own comfort,” she says. “That’s something that Agatha really taps into. She’s so driven by principle, by values and morality and ethics, and this idea of equality in its simple form. That’s not something that comes naturally in me, so I needed to call upon the women in my life. Also, she was African in heritage, and I wanted something that anchored her in that throughout the show.”
Most of Thomas’ previous work has been school plays, and she says those projects didn’t really prepare her for a nuanced role like the one of Lady Danbury. “Those were not the most fulfilling,” Thomas admitted. “I felt like a lot of the drama schools I went to tend to overlook a lot of racialized students, so I wasn’t really prepared to step into a role that encompassed my experience so accurately. I think that’s the beauty of having a Black female character written by a Black woman herself.”
