‘Bridgerton’ Star Adjoa Andoh Reveals Lady Danbury ‘Applauds’ Penelope’s Evolution in Season 3 (Exclusive)
Adjoa Andoh opens up about Lady Danbury witnessing Penelope blossom in season 3 and reveals how she feels about a Lady Danbury spinoff series.
It’s Bridgerton season! The highly-anticipated third season is just a couple of months away, and your favorites will be back in the Ton for glamorous balls, society drama, and more. The inquisitive Lady Danbury will be watching it all very closely. Hollywood Life spoke exclusively with Adjoa Andoh about Lady Danbury’s journey in the third season.
“I will say that the confident, in charge, on top of everything Lady Danbury has to navigate what happens when she’s slightly less on top of everything and slightly less in charge in season 3,” Adjoa revealed. “It’s interesting to see people who feel like they are in control of the world around them and suddenly something comes left field. How do they deal with that? I hope audiences will enjoy that, and I think we see in season 3 Lady Danbury can see Penelope Featherington. She can see there’s another woman who’s having to use her wit and her intelligence and her smarts to navigate the situation she finds herself in. I think Lady Danbury applauds that mightily.”
Adjoa noted that this season is all about “celebrating wallflowers” like Penelope Featherington, the “ones who maybe weren’t the prom queen, the top jock, but are interesting and rich and curious and have an appetite for discovery. That sometimes goes uncelebrated. I think in this season, we get to see them come into their own to blossom, to open out, and to find that the qualities that they have that may not be immediately visible are qualities to be loved and cherished and celebrated. I think there are lots of us in the world who may feel that maybe we were that wallflower, and maybe we weren’t necessarily seen for all the qualities we possess.”
As we’ve seen in the first 2 seasons of Bridgerton and in Queen Charlotte, Lady Danbury knows the power of information. So, how does Adjoa think Lady Danbury would react to Penelope being Lady Whistledown? “Well, we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?” Adjoa quipped.
Queen Charlotte only increased her interest in all things Lady Danbury. Adjoa would be open to exploring more of her character’s journey in a spinoff series. “I think what’s interesting about Lady Danbury is just that thing of having to forge her own identity and her own path in a society that she has to make herself familiar with,” Adjoa noted. “I think she shares that obviously with Queen Charlotte. Lady Danbury comes from West Africa, Queen Charlotte’s come from Germany, and they are in this new world and have to survive.”
She continued, “Lady Danbury has been strategic from a young age. She understands what it is to be in a difficult marriage. She understands what it is to fall in love, so I think we really get a sense of her commitment to the Bridgertons by seeing how much she loved Lord Ledger, who was Violet Bridgerton’s father. She also understands the power of having her own agency, her own money and being able to operate as the Queen’s probably closest, most long-lived confidant, along with Brimsley, but that’s a kind of different relationship. I think seeing that in Queen Charlotte will make season 3 a more enriching viewing for the audience to have seen these four characters — Lady Danbury, Brimsley, Charlotte, and Violet in an earlier life — and understand what made them tick. I’m always interested in what makes people tick. It’s fascinating to me, and I hope that will enrich the experience for audiences.”
Adjoa has teamed up with International Delight as the company launches limited-edition Bridgerton-inspired creamers and iced coffee with Shondaland. International Delight and Shondaland will be helping give NYC singles the opportunity to meet their most desirable match at its “Coffee & Courting” dating event on February 22.
Coffeehouses were popular in the Regency era just as they are today. In December, International Delight released International Delight Berries & Crème Creamer, International Delight English Toffee Creamer, and International Delight Iced Coffee Berries & Crème. For Adjoa, her go-to is the Berries & Crème Creamer because it reminds her of the classic English cream tea.
“I think they were trying to find a way to recreate that Regency sense of how people get together and how important coming together would have been then and how we translate that now into the dating scene,” Adjoa told Hollywood Life. “For 21st-century kids, I guess it’s a lot about Tinder. It’s certainly where my daughter met her husband, but the coming together of people has I think shifted post-pandemic. I do think grabbing a cup of coffee as a first step has become a sort of initial weigh-in to seeing if this person has potential.”
She added, “For me, those initial meetings, that first possible date, that little toe in the water in this relatively neutral space of grabbing a cup of coffee, it’s a really interesting moment to see actually what connects you with another person. I think with my Lady Danbury marvelous hat on, I would say that finding a connection that allows you to be 100% of who you are, that may pique your curiosity in the other person, and may surprise you because maybe they’re not what you thought you were looking for. Maybe they don’t look how you thought they were going to look or sound or present, but we may have some spark of a soul connection. There may be something there where the same things amuse you or you’re curious about the same aspects of life or culture or art or music or whatever it may be. I think that those initial moments of grabbing just something nice and easy breezy as a cup of coffee is a really easy way into doing that.”