Is it just me, or did anyone else immediately google ‘Hot Duke’ the second he hit the screen during Netflix’s Bridgerton? Well, the hot duke’s name IRL is Regé-Jean and by golly, he’s just as dreamy off-screen as he is on screen. But what really intrigued me about his entry to the show was that he was a black man in the middle of a Regency period piece. He wasn’t a servant or a slave. Homeboy was straight-up the most powerful man (besides that sweet prince) in the entire show. But he wasn’t the only one. Other black characters kept popping up and at first, I was confused but then I realized that Bridgerton is a color-conscious period drama.
Think of it as Hamilton meets Gossip Girl—mixing a period piece drama with color-conscious casting, while someone’s dishing out the town’s juiciest secrets in the local paper.
Anyway, I was staying at my parent’s house for the holidays when I saw that the show dropped and needless to say, I binged the series in 48 hours. It only took that long cause, you know, I had to take breaks to spend time with family so they didn’t think I was completely dependent on Netflix for my happiness.
I won’t spoil the show for those of you who are behind and haven’t watched yet but I’ll just say that many of the main characters are people of color. And at first I was confused but then about episode 2, I realized color had no bearing on the story and that made me happy. I thought, “this black man is just walking up in this town and people aren’t upset?” “Wait, the queen is black? And so is she and so is she.”
Bridgerton is originally a book so I’m sure a color-conscious cast was not what the author of any of the readers had in mind for this period piece but I have to say it was genius casting and I can’t imagine it any other way.
This feels like a new way of casting. I know my parents never saw anything like this growing up and I truly think it’s beautiful that we’ve grown to this point. I love it and I hope period dramas will continue to use this type of casting in the future. I love to see diversity.
Let me know if you’ve watched ‘Bridgerton’ and your thoughts on the casting below.
