Bridgerton star Charithra Chandran made a shocking reveal recently when she said some of her friends believe she only landed her role because of her race.
News broke a while back that Chandran would join the epic cast of Bridgerton in Season 2 as Edwina Sharma, whose charm and mystique would intrigue Anthony Bridgerton.
In a recent interview with Telegraph, Chandran disclosed the reactions to her being cast.
“I’ve even had friends say to me, ‘Oh you got that because you’re brown,’ and that really hurts,” she shared. “What’s really scary is that you can start believing it and thinking, ‘The only reason I got cast as Edwina is because they were looking for an Indian family.'” Her friends assumed there was a quota on diversity that had to be filled.
Chandran isn’t going to make light of her platform. She plans on bringing more awareness to colorism.
“I remember strangers saying, ‘You would be pretty if you were light-skinned like your grandmother,’ and like, trying to blame my granddad for giving me my skin colour,” Chandran said. “Being a person of color, we’re not unitary, we’re not one thing. There are so many different communities within that umbrella term. We should be more specific about making sure we’re representing different groups of people.” Chandran continued: “I would love to see more crew who are Black and Brown. I think that’s really important. We should be careful about just sort of window dressing.”
The 25-year-old actress also shared that Netflix's decision to be more inclusive changes the expectation for diversity going forward.
“I think that Bridgerton has done for TV what Hamilton did for theatre,” she said. “It encouraged a totally different audience to watch period drama and romances. And it made us feel seen on screen.”
Bridgerton season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
