'Bridgerton' star Adjoa Andoh spoke up about 'color-blind' auditions: 'I delight in my race'
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Ayomikun Adekaiyero
Nov 3, 2022, 17:23 IST
Adjoa Andoh plays Lady Danbury on "Bridgerton."LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX
"Bridgerton" star Adjoa Andoh said she was surprised to get an audition for the show.
Andoh recalled in the new "Inside Bridgerton" book that she asked whether she had a shot at a part.
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"Bridgerton" star Adjoa Andoh said she questioned the show's casting director about its "color-blind" approach to roles when she was first called to audition for the series.
Andoh plays Lady Danbury in the first two seasons of the hit Netflix series and is set to star in the spinoff series "Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story."
Kelly Valentine Hendry, the casting director, said in the book: "We checked her availability, and I held my breath because she is not available very often. When she came in to read, her question was: 'Kelly, why am I here?' She meant as a Black woman, a Black actress. I love that she asked the question because the question needed to be asked."
Andoh then added: "As someone who has grown up in this country with the history of this country — you know, you can't try out for costume dramas, you can't go for historical romance. And so typically, actors of color think, 'Oh, another job I won't get.' I needed to know that this was an opportunity to be in it — and also that I was expected to be myself, a Black woman, not a Black woman pretending that she is white."
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The 59-year-old actor continued: "I needed to know that the auditions weren't color-blind. Because when we say we're color-blind, whose color are we being blind to? I am the color I am. I delight in my race, and I wouldn't want to be anything else. I think I was born with a winning ticket, thank you very much."
One of the reasons that "Bridgerton" stood out to audiences was its diverse cast, something that has become more prominent in recent years in films such as "Belle" and "The Personal History of David Copperfield."
"For a long time, people of privilege have been in charge of the storylines and storytelling. I don't know whether they have intentionally written out Black people because we know that there were Black people and people of color," she said.
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