Listen,

if you are beamed into 82 million households in the first 28

days of broadcasting, it's different from doing a big movie, or anything else.

You are ubiquitous.

Adjoa Andoh on being Bridgerton's Lady Danbury.

Of course Your Majesty, but remember,

a young lady cannot be a diamond until you anoint her as such.

What are you favourite Danbury lines?

I like it when she's having fun.

I love it when she'd kick back and she'd have a fag on the go and a drink.

I love that sort of just appetite and that 'here I am'.

Any actor who wants to stay interested in the part they're playing,

you have to put some blood into the writer's words.

From Bloomberg Weekend, this is the Mishal Husain Show.

Bridgerton has been a global TV phenomenon for more than six

years now,

from the moment the first episode dropped right up to and through this year's

season four.

And all the way through this tale of Regency England with

its modern twists,

there is one character who is not only very present,

but who I think has a particular role for the viewer.

Lady Danbury is kind of like the audience's guide,

their friend even.

And that is because of what a remarkable actor,

Adjoa Andoh has brought to the role.

And even if you have never seen Bridgerton and might not be planning to,

stay with me for this because she is an actor of tremendous depth and

thought. The daughter of a Ghanaian father and an English mother.

She honed her craft on stage and with Shakespeare and since has

ranged far and wide, including now with her own production company,

which is called Swinging the Lens. We talk about all of this,

but Bridgerton was fresh in my mind when we spoke and I wanted to know how some

of the Lady Danbury touches came about. The hats, the jewellery,

the backstory of the character, her origins in Sierra Leone.

I knew that Adjoa would have been embedded in the creative

process and that is what we get out of this, I think.

An understanding of the care which an actor of her calibre takes

with their material.

So to take us all to a magical place in midsummer,

here's Adjoa Andoh in the studio with me.

Adjoa, welcome.

Thank you.

Bridgerton's been part of your life for years now.

We started in 2019.

Right.

Yeah.

Do you mind me asking for you to take us back to how it began? The audition.

What was that like and did you feel at that time that you were on the brink of

something extraordinary?

No, it was a Friday afternoon. I had to nip to Shoreditch.

That's where the casting director, Kelly, that's where her office was.

You don't get the whole script. You only get the sides.

How much of the script? Just a passage literally?

You literally get your character talking to somebody.

I had a couple of pages worth because she was banging on.

Lady Danbury? She was 'Danbury-ing' it.

But it was really helpful because it gave me a real clear sense of who this

personality was. So I read the sides at home and I thought, yes,

I can do something with her.

I think sometimes jobs come along and it's almost like the sum of many of your

previous experiences as an actor, or your life or whatever,

can feed in and you just go, "Oh,

I know who this is." So it was a really pedestrian thing.

I didn't meet any of the team from Netflix or Shondaland or anybody.

I just went in with Kelly. We banged it out once and then I went,

"I've got a few more lines!" She was like, "Oh!

Do it again." We did it again and then she had a train to catch and I went to

see an exhibition. And do you remember feeling hopeful and really willing this

to happen? Or are you quite stoic about things like this?

Because I'm always struck with actors how resilient you have to be. Because -.

You have to be.

You must have had loads of noes in your life.

The majority will have been noes.

And what I did think that day was I love this character.

I could do something with this character. I've given it my best shot.

And all you can do is do your bit and then walk away and try to let it go.

I say that. You never let it go.

You think about the ones that got away, the roles that got away?

C ompletely, completely. Even now? Of course! I don't think that ever changes.

It's like a lifetime's self-fladgellation.

But do you have a different level of confidence now that you have a role that's

brought you global fame?

No. No.

I did a movie with Morgan Freeman when he was saying,

"So what are you doing next?" I don't think that changes.

I remember Richard Briers worrying about what his next job was going to be in

his late seventies. So, I just think it's part of the actor's tick.

I mean, I'm sure there are some people who deal with it better than I do,

but I don't.

It has been life changing for you though, I imagine?

It has. So there are lots of moving parts to it. So I would say it's on Netflix,

which in 2019 felt different from talking about it in 2026.

Shonda Rhimes is the queen of continuous,

fabulous storytelling and it's based on an internationally bestselling set of

books by Julia Quinn.

So those are three parts that mean you should have a good go with it.

You and I were both on stage with Shonda Rhimes in Edinburgh last year. Yeah

When she got the Edinburgh Fellowship.

Yeah.

The inaugural one, and I was really struck by her describing Bridgerton as a

workplace drama.

I'd never thought of it that way and the way she explained it was,

that this is a world where women only get power through marriage and therefore

that world of getting married, that's a marketplace essentially.

That's their workplace.

Yeah. I just think that's a brilliant way of, and you know,

she does workplace dramas. Yeah. So here's another one.

I think that's one of the things that I love most about what Danbury's role is

in the show, that thing about going, yeah, it's not just about going, "Oh,

he's quite cute. You're quite cute. Maybe you can get..." It's not. It's like,

"Do you want to live? Do you want to have an income?

Do you want to have some agency in your own life?

Let's find you the person who will allow you all those things.".

I guess that was always there in the script, the sides that you saw,

but you must have also brought a lot of yourself to it.

That character has grown with you.

Yeah.

I think any actor who wants to stay interested in the part they're playing has

to bring a deal of themselves to the character.

Even if you're playing a serial killer or whatever,

you are truthful within your own narrative.

I think there's a three-way thing that happens. There's the writer,

there's the audience and there's the actor.

And you have to put some blood into the writer's words so that the audience

can pump with their blood back at you. That's sort of what I feel about it.

When the new scripts for a new season come out and are shared with you,

is there a table read?

Yes.

Where you start with Shonda Rhimes sitting there?

She will be present at the table read, absolutely.

And what is it like?

You are literally seeing the script for the first time at that moment?

That moment? No, you'll have it a couple of weeks in advance probably.

And is that still nerve wracking, that process of coming together again and.

Starting on the.

Script together?

It's nerve wracking.

It's also fun because you won't have seen each other for a bit.

So they'll be all like, "How's your plumbing going?" Or all that sort of stuff.

From that and then into -.

"Did you get the cat neutered?".

But also the nature of our show is there's a new energy most seasons.

So you'll be seeing how does this all work together now? And quite often,

because everything's filmed out of sequence,

this may be the only time where you hear all the voices of a particular episode

altogether. So it gives you a really strong sense of the story.

And how much of that comes from Shonda? What does she say in moments like that?

She tends to just watch and observe and listen.

And she may have a little welcome to say,

but she's not giving you notes or any big wisdoms at that

point.

You hear from Shonda in the words on the page and in the shape of the narrative.

I was fascinated when we were together in Edinburgh on Queen Charlotte.

And I don't know if she always works like this,

but she said she hadn't written the last episodes when the first ones were being

filmed.

So sometimes she'd get feedback on how performance had gone and it would give

her an idea of how it carries on.

Is that what it's like in the normal seasons of Bridgerton?

I think there is a mixture of having an overall arc and

framework, but then there's space for creative play.

You will get a whole script, but that's not what will end up on screen.

Some of your favourite moments when you've been your most marvellous may end up

on the cutting room floor and you just have to accept that that's the process.

And do you not know until you see it on Netflix?

Oh, I see. Okay. Thank you.

Or you've done 75 million takes of a particular thing and you don't know which

take they're going to go with.

What are your favourite lines, Danbury lines or Danbury-isms?

I like it when she's having fun.

I love it when she'd kick back and she'd have a fag on the go and a drink.

I love that sort of just appetite and that "here I am".

I love that quality to her.

I love it when she gets a bit imperious with somebody who thinks they're the

great I am. And I love it when she's doing her tough love sort of, "Come on now.

Come on. You can do this. Come along." That sort of stuff.

And then in this season, we see a vulnerability when.

Mini spoiler here everyone,

but right at the beginning of this new season she says to Queen Charlotte,

"I want to go back to my country." Which is Sierra Leone.

Yeah. There's the regular four series of Bridgeton and then there's the Queen

Charlotte, the origin story.

And in that you get a little hint of the life that

Danbury was sort of raised to inhabit.

So she's sent over from Sierra Leone age four to be raised to be an

English girl in the English style in order to marry this much older

man with whom she has four children and then thankfully he dies.

Giving her, her freedom.

Blessed release. Giving her freedom.

But also making her entirely vulnerable and that's why she has this relationship

with the queen where she says to the queen,

"I've been in the court longer than you. We're both foreigners in this place.

I will give you knowledge. You give me power.

I need a title that's inheritable for my children, for the foreseeable future.

We need the income and we need the status and we need the land and all those

things that make us secure because it's me and the kids.

And I will give you all the runnings of how to do court.

I will teach you how to strategize and how to survive and thrive in this space."

So that's the deal, and she's done that happily all this time.

And then in season three,

her brother turns up and she's not very happy about it.

But I think there's something about when the brother turns up,

the tick starts going for her of what was my family life

before? My grandson's four and a half.

I've had tonnes of times with him. She left at four.

What was the first sky she saw? What was the food she ate? What were the smells?

What was the language she heard? Who were the people?

Where did she first take her little chubby leg steps? All of that.

And I think she needs to know where she's from in order to go forward.

And you need to know this as well in order to play her

in the moment.

Well, Shonda was really incredibly generous when she was doing the origin story.

And she said Sierra Leone, I was like, "Right.

I'm doing some research." So I came back and I was like,

"Okay." I found a general, female general,

who advised the most significant tribe at that time in Sierra Leone and her

given name was, Soma. So I said, "Can that be Danbury's given name?

Soma."

So I had little snippets and sniffs and flavours of who it might be.

But it was really interesting.

And Shonda took that.

Shondra is a hugely confident,

creative person and I think confident creative people will go, "Oh,

that's a useful idea.

We'll put that in." And then she took it in the way that suited her to use it,

but that information was there. And I love that. Yeah.

You shaped the look as well, didn't you? In the jewellery that she wears,

it was you saying to the costume designer,

"I would like West African symbols, patterns to be part.".

That's come laterally. I'd said, now that we know -.

Her backstory.

Her backstory, I would love to have little hints of.

So we've really used just two Adinkra symbols. One, Gye Nyame,

which means except for God, fear, nothing, which is her.

Mantra.

Keep it going. And then the other one which is Sankofa. And the Sankofa symbol,

it's a bird with a bead in its beak.

You have to go back to get the bead, put it in your beak,

and then you go forward.

So it's like you have to know your history in order to move forward.

When we left Ghana having visited my grandparents in 1976,

my grandmother didn't say goodbye or why are you leaving or anything like that.

She gave me a top with a great big Sankofa on it.

So the message was in the bird, the symbol of that bird?

Yeah.

It's so fascinating because there are probably a minority of people watching

Bridgerton across the world who will spot this symbolism in the costume.

But it's there if you know it. Yes. And perhaps people will know it and think,

I wonder what that design comes from and something in the process that the

detail is as authentic as possible and it will strike a chord with some and pass

others by and that's fine.

I love the granularity of stories because I think that's where you get

strongly grounded.

But it's also those little nuggets are there for people to find or

not find. So if I'm directing a show or I have any say over what happens,

every prop,

there must be a detail to it and it must have a connection to your character.

Because sometimes I will watch things I'll be like, "Oh,

what's that?" And I will be interested in that.

So any little nuggets that we can bung in there for people to -.

You're a perfectionist.

I don't know.

I think sometimes the interesting bit is in the failure and in the cracks.

Tell me about the contrast between seeing something like Bridgerton now

and what it was like earlier in your career as an actor,

when you're immersed in the classical canon and you've grown up with

all these great works, Shakespeare.

And then the reality of the acting world is a lot of these roles are not

suitable for someone like you.

I think when I started,

it was 84 and the roles for actors of colour were

not as widespread as they are now. Certainly if there'd been a costume drama,

romantic costume drama set in Regency England, moving on,

you wouldn't have even thought you might be in it unless you were

enslaved or maybe servant, maybe.

So, your zone is like the gritty urban roles.

There's a lot of that and then things shift.

So recently there was a trend where if there was a therapist in a series,

they would be somebody of colour just in the, "Yes, yes".

Or the ubiquitous judge. So you might have high status,

but you have absolutely no narrative. Nobody cares who you are.

So that would be a way of going, we are browning up the show here. But,

I would expect to have more roles that would be a

fully fleshed out person on stage, than on screen.

But in that period,

does it do something to you inside when you know that you are not even in

consideration for so many of the plum roles?

You have to make that equation really. I did several things.

I started a theatre company called Wild Iris with a friend of mine and we did a

lot of restoration comedies. We commissioned new work.

We did tours because in the end, at a certain point,

you can sit in the corner and bleat about it or you can get up and do something

about it. So Make it work.

But ultimately,

is it Bridgerton that you think has really moved the dial on that?

Is it part of a continuum or in its success,

is it a massive milestone in its own right?

Listen,

if you are beamed into 82 million households in the first 28

days of broadcasting,

it's different from doing a big movie or anything else in that way.

You are sort of ubiquitous in lots of places and they can watch it on repeat.

I think streaming has made the difference.

So your mother, English?

Yeah.

Your Late father, Ghanaian?

Yeah.

What was it like in the 1960s in your early childhood as you grew up in the

Cotswolds? Which is not a very diverse part of England.

No.

So that is a massive euphamism.

Yeah. So we actually lived in Leeds until I was four,

which is still the place of my heart, I think. It's my football team.

And lots of my mom's family were Yorkshire sheep farmers.

We have cups going back to the 1700s. What, trophies? Trophies for sheep.

Yes. Okay. Yes.

And my granddad was definitely a Yorkshire first and Englishman second and

everybody else was -.

That explains it because I was thinking otherwise, Leeds until you're four,

doesn't really explain the lifelong connectedness.

Yeah. Yeah. Then we moved to the Cotswolds.

So not only were we the only three black people in the village, me, my dad,

my brother, but I also had a really booming Leeds accent as well.

So we were like from planet "Hello?" What on earth?

But my dad lived in that village until he died and I still have

friends that I went to school with who still live there because lots of people,

they don't move. They stay in those communities.

And everybody remembers my mum because she taught at the secondary school.

There was only one secondary school in that catchment area because we all lived

in tiny villages and you did walk to the next village,

and your friends did ride over on their horses,

which they kept in the field behind their house,

because there was no public transport.

And you did hitchhike with random strangers.

And it was rough and tough and also achingly

beautiful.

That combination.

Yeah.

Were you conscious of racism growing up?

Of course. But when you're a kid, the world as it is,

is the world as it is. You know when kids say we were poor,

but we didn't know we were poor. It's like what you grew up with.

I had a really strong sense of - "but that's not fair".

Which meant that it might be something about not being fair towards me,

but I also became the person with, if someone was being bullied,

I would wade in.

And I think I'm probably still four as far as that's concerned going, "but, but,

why? Why would you do that?".

Children have a very developed sense of justice.

Really, really.

And did you see your father treated differently? Did that register?

Yeah. I mean, there's a really common narrative,

I think for lots of immigrants from that period.

My dad worked for a big company and he would constantly

be training people up who would then become his boss.

And I think that's really painful.

And it was really painful for him because he was a journalist in Ghana.

He was a chief sub-editor on a national newspaper. So,

he was a super smart man and I think it hurt him enormously.

And a talented man. Talented musically,

even though it was clearly not his profession.

Yes. It was his joy.

But it was something he loved and it was therefore part of your life.

He was born in 1932 in Cape Coast in what was still then the Gold Coast.

His first memory of his mother was her singing and playing guitar to him,

because she played guitar in a palm court orchestra.

I have fabulous photos of her in the 1920s with a cloche hat and the little

flapper dress and so my dad played in folk bands.

We would be schlepped around the country. I can do that.

[Sings] "I've been a wild rover for many's the year".

All of that folk and he loved that folk tradition. He played the mandolin,

and the flute, and the guitar,

and the piano and the harmonium and all sorts of things.

And my brother's a musician and my nephew's a music producer. So, on it goes.

So hence the acting, would that be fair that you thought, I too will perform?

I'm the child of an immigrant father and a working class mother and

I was supposed to do, be a doctor, be a lawyer. I do know. You do know.

I do. You do know.

In fact, both of those. I think I also moved from doctor to lawyer and.

Then.

Also disappointed him.

Yes.

I surrendered in the end and I did two years of a law degree and then I couldn't

stand it. And I left. And I just heard my dad,

"Just finish it." Which is exactly what I'd say to my kids if they bailed two

years into a degree. And I think he was kind of waiting for me to go,

but he's always been waiting for me to go back and finish my degree.

But what made you then think, okay, I get the not wanting to be a lawyer.

I totally relate to that. But the actor part, how did that come in?

I just think it's what I liked.

What you liked watching?

No, I would direct plays with my friends.

I directed Noel Coward's Blight Spirit, age seven. Never seen it.

We just did it in someone's front room.

We charged them and there was a lot of net curtains and lights going on and off

acting. So I loved all the Enid Blyton, Secret seven and Famous Five.

I loved a mystery. So I was always dressing up. I was always pretending.

But you weren't allowed to do drama in my school unless you were doing A levels

because it wasn't considered a proper subject.

So I did drama O-level in the sixth form and by this time my

parents were getting divorced. I was fairly unhappy.

And drama was my haven.

And I went to see David Hare's play Plenty with Kate

Nelligan.

And it was a play about a young middle class woman who works as a secretary

in London and she speaks fluent French.

So she gets hoiked out and sent over to do special ops in France.

And she supports the resistance and she's marvellous at this.

And of course she falls in love with a very handsome Frenchman who's in the

resistance.

And then the war ends and she comes back to London and she's supposed to go back

to being a secretary and put all that brilliance and all that skill that she's

acquired back in a box and just be a nice lady doing her job.

And she's devastated.

And I remember seeing that play and in the cheap seats at Bristol Old Vic,

just weeping and understanding two things. One,

that there may be something in the world that you are brilliant at.

You just have to find what it is.

And the other thing was that this story had nothing to do with my life in the

1970s in the Cotswolds,

but some magic had happened in that space that this story on stage could

touch me profoundly and make me weep.

And there was something about that I just thought I want a bit of that.

But I didn't know how you would do it. In the Cotswolds,

smart girls worked in the bank or maybe the building society or maybe even did

the Civil Service exams. So I just didn't, how would one become an actor?

It's like saying, well, I'm going to be a lion tamer or I'm going to,

I don't know, I'm going to go to the moon. It just wasn't a feasible thing.

So it wasn't until I was doing the law degree,

and I joined a black women's group,

and in those days black meant of colour.

So there were Turkish women and Asian women and African, Caribbean, all sorts.

And one of them was an actress from the San Francisco Mime Troop, Deb'bora.

And when I packed in my law degree, she just said,

"Come and take my class." And I was like,

"Okay." And then she got funding to do a play in London,

"Come and audition for my show - Okay." And I got the job. And so I sort of

came to London and did the job and then thought, "I'm in London.

I'm going to be an actor." And then didn't work for a year.

Cleaned a lot of toilets, did all of that stuff,

and then slowly other black actresses started telling me about

auditions. Which at that time was an incredibly generous thing to do because -.

It's a sisterhood. Sounds Like.

It's a sisterhood.

But also they were putting themselves potentially out of work by making me

extra competition for the few jobs that were available.

Because jobs would be very much,

we're looking for a black actor or black actress for this. Yes.

As opposed to, there's this part. Anyone could play it. Maybe you? Yeah.

So it's a small pool at the time. Yeah.

I feel like you've not only done many different things with your life from the

cleaning toilets to the global fame,

but also seen a lot of different periods from the 1960s in rural England to

seeing punk,

to seeing the 1980s in London and getting work at that

time. So there is a story of change in Britain that comes alongside yours.

There is. There is.

And political, right? Seeing politics as a part of life.

I think politics is a part of life.

It has a huge impact on who we are and how we live.

And some of our experiences that being treated unfairly

because of your race was nonsense.

Or my mum being treated unfairly because she'd married a black man.

I loved Andrew Young, the American Senator.

I used to clip newspaper articles and have them on my wall alongside my list of

what were the new punk bands. So, I'm interested in stuff.

And I trained as a therapist. I've been a bereavement counsellor.

I've done all sorts of things.

And I know you're involved with the Church of England today.

So I have to ask you then about Britain today because when the 2024

election happened,

you were on TV on election night looking forward to this new

era with Labour in power and Keir Starmer becoming prime minister.

So how do you feel now?

And are you worried about the rise of Reform and its support?

I think it's inevitable.

I think that there are lots of people in this country who feel like nobody's

listening to them and haven't been listening to them for a long time.

And they are looking for people who will pay them attention.

I think everybody ideally would like easy answers to their problems and life is

really complicated and complex.

And I think it's very hard to live within the complexity and

appeal to people.

And when you're on tour in the States, promotional or otherwise,

and then do you see the same themes, the same undercurrents?

Or do you think what's happening in the states is -.

I think it's happening all over the world.

I think you can see a level of people concerned that they want to

be able to put a circle around who they think are the people who should be there

and the people who shouldn't be there.

But I think you could see that if you went to South Africa today,

you could see it in Ghana, you can see it here,

you can certainly see it in the States, you can see it in Australia.

I think there's a global conversation and I think people are looking for

solutions to allay their fears.

And it may be that it comes out as an anti-immigration sentiment,

but actually what it might be is I need to get an appointment for my daughter or

there are no school places available for my kid or they've shut down the youth

club and the street lights aren't working and who will listen to me?

Who will help help me? Can somebody please help me?

So I think there's a lot of that absolutely genuine

anxiety and I think it manifests in a variety of different ways.

Because we've talked a lot in this conversation about this great opening up,

the difference that you've seen in your industry and in society in Britain.

Is where we are now more like a cliff edge where things can

very easily go backwards and some of that acceptance of difference that

many of us would have factored in and thought it's here to stay.

This is progress. It's at risk.

I think you always have to be alert in the world for love to

triumph. You have to keep an eye all the time.

And I think for me,

I can't change the macro,

but in the micro that I can do,

the work I want to do will continue to be militantly

about embracing people. So I don't ever look at anybody and go,

you're [makes noise]. I just think, what happened to you?

Where's all your sweetness gone? And to me, that's about anybody.

So I might be advocating in a context that's about class or

your industry. I toured to those mining and steelwork communities in the 1980s.

I was doing small scale socialist feminist touring.

But we were in working men's clubs and we were in canteens and we

were in school halls.

And I saw communities absolutely collapse in on themselves with people no longer

knowing who they were or what their role was or how to go forward. And we are

all vibrating continuously with the collapse of

industries that give communities a sense of who they are in the world.

And so I see a lot of distress and I don't dismiss it as people who were

bigoted or blah, blah, blah. I see a lot of distress.

And am I right in thinking that you've spent time with migrant families in the

US and the children of those families?

I've spent time with migrant families in Italy, in Poland.

Through your work with the International Rescue Committee?

International Rescue Committee. Yeah.

We talked to David Miliband here not long ago.

But when you sit with those families, some of it was in the US,

wasn't it? Recently was in Atlanta.

What were the stories you heard?

Oh gosh. I mean,

often I go to places which are safe spaces for mothers and children.

I hear so many stories from mothers who could be me or you,

or any mother watching, or anybody who has care of children.

Just in circumstances that they have absolutely no control of at their wits'

end, and all they want to do is protect their children.

And when they talk to you, do some of them want to talk about Bridgerton?

Of course they do. Of course they do. My God, it's like, please,

can we not just for a minute,

let's not talk about bombing or food queues or loss

or misery. Let's talk about who makes your frocks? Are those wigs heavy?

What's it like being in a corset?

And I'm really happy to do all the frothy stories because we do the frothy

stories and then we sit there and we cry together when they tell me about,

"I had to leave my husband and I haven't heard from him and I don't know what's

going on." Or "my mother refused to leave the house and the town's been bombed."

Some of the stories coming out of Ukraine.

And I remember one woman saying to me,

"My husband's a doctor and I was just a mom with the kids and we have a nice

life" and da, da, da, da.

"And I didn't believe that the bombing would come to us until the next door

house was bombed.

And my husband has to stay the fight and I just had to put the nappies in the

car, put the kids in the car and drive." And I said,

"So you drove to Poland?" She said, "I was just driving." And I said,

"Then did you know anyone who got. I didn't know anyone in Poland.

I don't speak Polish. I'm not a refugee.

I'm just the doctor's wife and I had to leave my country." And I just think

that's what it is.

It's just human beings dealing with dreadful circumstances who could be us.

You are a director and you have your own production company as well as your

acting.

The production company's called 'Swinging The Lens'. As in swinging the lens

around from -.

So it's two things for me.

So it's swinging the lens as in when you watch something and then there's a

couple of talking or something, and then the maid brings in the tea.

And I'm like, "Yeah, what's going on with that maid? Where's she going?

Do her feet hurt? Does she like this job? How long she worked here?

Who she left her kids with?" And I'm like,

"Can we just - lens off you onto the maid.

Thank you." I'm interested in just opening up the number of stories that we

tell. And also it sounds a bit like swinging the lead, which means bunking off.

But frankly,

I do silly voices and put on silly clothes and somebody pays me and I pay my

mortgage with it. So I'm like, woo-hoo, permanently swinging the lead.

So it's got a bit of both those things in it.

And what does it mean in terms of the projects you have coming or the ones you

really hope to do?

So we have a feature film in development,

which is about an artist who has to flee London because he's fallen out with his

dealer and he ends up living in this little boat community.

But it's people who are living in falling apart canal boats and living on a

little island.

And it's like they're the people that have got nowhere left to go.

They've been pushed right to the margins and it's about what happens when that

community's island looks like it would be a fantastic marina.

Gentrification. Gentrification. What happens to those people? How do we use art?

Is it just what are you talking about using art against gentrification?

So that's one thing.

And would you act in it and direct it?

I'd do a tiny bit in it. No, I'd produce it. We'd get a proper film director.

Waste money on me directing it.

But you've been on so many sets. You could do it.

Maybe down the line I could.

Does that mean that this is part of your post Bridgerton plan?

Because I'm assuming you're going to be in Bridgerton for the duration,

but we know for Shonda Rhimes.

Nobody's telling me.

I can't imagine it without Lady Danbury and I'm sure Shonda feels the same.

We'll see.

But it has to end one day.

She said it's going to be the stories of the eight children and maybe a few

stories like Queen Charlotte on the side.

Yeah.

So is this the post Bridgerton? Is this not the retirement plan,

but the post Bridgerton phase?

I'm hopefully doing it alongside.

I just think life is short and if you get the chance to grab it and shake it and

have a go with it and make it as interesting as you can,

then do so. And storytelling is the only - I have no transferable skills Mishal.

So that's what I've got to do with it. And I love it.

I like dressing up and telling stories like I did when I was a kid.

And long may you do so. Adjoa Andoh, thank you.

Thank you so much.