The Bridgerton star on how last year’s prequel changed her approach to season 3, the importance of building community, and why she’s got her eye on Francesca.
Charlotte has been a fan-favorite since the Netflix series debuted in 2020, even earning a spin-off miniseries last year that illuminated her youth and backstory. For that prequel, India Amarteifio stepped into the Queen’s shoes with little oversight from Rosheuvel. “I don’t own her,” Rosheuvel tells ELLE.com about allowing Amarteifio to define the character for herself. “India needed to bring her own experiences to it and what I did was support her in that.” The final product has since informed Rosheuvel’s portrayal of Charlotte in the forthcoming third season of Bridgerton, which airs the first half of its season on May 16 and promises to dig deeper into the sisterhood between her and Lady Danbury as well as the long-standing friendship with her right-hand man Brimsley.
The third season of Bridgerton finds the Queen once again searching for the Diamond of this year’s debutantes—a feat that proves more difficult than usual. That is, until she finds Francesca Bridgerton, whose insistence in forging her own path and focusing on her own happiness reminds the Queen of her own headstrong instincts.
Over coffee in L.A., Rosheuvel opened up about the audition process, what she believes the Queen is looking for in each season’s Diamond, and what it’s really like to wear those heavy wigs.
When the show first premiered, there was a lot of talk about the diverse casting and how Black characters populated the series—especially in higher positions, like Queen Charlotte, who is biracial like you. How did you feel when you first auditioned and learned that Shonda Rhimes and her team were constructing the show in this way?
I don’t think that was something that I thought about—as an actress, you want to work. It kind of feels weird saying that four years down the line and with everything that the show represents in the positivity, representation, inclusion, and diversity. But at the beginning, it wasn’t like that. I was an actress who got an audition. I originally auditioned for Lady Danbury and didn’t get that. Then I got Charlotte. It was about working. It was about knowing Shonda’s work and having real respect for that.
When I take on a character, most of the time I find something that I can hold onto whether that be music, art, dance, or a TV show. When I played Othello, Scandal was that show that I linked to the character. That was 2-3 years before I got Charlotte, so I had already been immersed in her genius of writing characters that really reach out of the screen. Also, Queen Charlotte is a very easy role to understand because she is my mother. That essence of Englishness and etiquette and wicked sense of humor…it’s my mother.
Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte in season 3.I read that you forgot your lines in your first Bridgerton audition. What was it about this audition that unnerved you so much?
Oh it was terrible! It’s because I’m dyslexic. There is a barrier for me sometimes when the time is not enough for the amount of work that I am given. I’m a perfectionist. When it comes to language and knowing what I’m saying, I want to be natural. When I’m talking to you now it’s just a natural flow, and I demand that of myself to do the storytelling that I want. So if I don’t have that time it can be very frustrating because I feel like I’m only half or three-quarters done. That’s what happened to me—I didn’t have that last bit completed and it’s about not being able to create the whole character.
Having said that, I only had a few hours to audition for Charlotte and that was a different ball game altogether. I knew her instantly. I knew the woman; The woman was my mother. I knew her in my gut and we did [the audition] in 45 minutes to an hour, and that was it. It just sat so easily in my body and in my thought process—the words were there. Sometimes that happens and that’s the joy.
In the second episode of the new season, the Queen witnesses Francesca Bridgerton playing piano and is immediately enamored. What is it about her presence or her talent that draws the Queen to her?
I think season 3 is a really interesting one for a lot of the characters because you find them in a place where they’re a little wobbly and unnerved and searching for something else. The Queen is fidgety, wondering now what? When she finds Francesca, there’s that intrigue of, “Oh, you’re creating a world for yourself. You don’t need anyone else. That’s interesting.” That’s empowering and I think that’s the ignition that the Queen needs to continue on to what she gets up to this season. I loved doing that scene because it felt new and different to everything else that we’ve seen mapped out in seasons 1 and 2. We have a new showrunner [Jess Brownell] this season, and she injected her desire to see these characters and storylines and worlds a little bit differently.
I read that moment as a personality trait coming to the surface—that Queen Charlotte isn’t looking for the pomp and circumstance or who can bow the lowest. She doesn’t really buy into the performance of the season’s announcements; she seems to want something more from the people of the ton.
Exactly. It’s all been done, it’s like, “Ugh, this is so boring. Why isn’t anybody trying to do something else?” I also think she feels like there’s something about herself in [Francesca]. If you think about Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, does she see a bit of Francesca in herself? Does she want a bit of that for herself—living life on her own terms rather than having 15 children and a husband that’s going mad? She might want to escape that and be alone in a room playing piano on her own time.
Throughout Bridgerton, we’ve seen that Queen Charlotte is really picky in her search for the season’s diamond. In your words, what is she looking for during each season?
Someone to inspire her. I think Charlotte’s very passionate about moving forward and the future—not only the future of the monarchy, but of the community. How do you form a solid community in high society? I think it’s really interesting what you said about the pomp and ceremony and who curtsies the lowest—all of that is so surface-based and she strives for something deeper and more authentic. That’s the whole point of the Diamond. There are interesting layers to that because of course she loves the pomp and ceremony, but the human side of it is what she’s searching deeply for.
