Adjoa Andoh talks Bridgerton and directing Richard III
Richard III strides into Kingston this month in the shape of Adjoa Andoh. Miranda Jessop meets the monarch.
If you thought you had Richard III taped, think again. Adjoa Andoh may be most familiar these days as the formidable Lady Danbury in Bridgerton – the roaring Regency era romance-drama keeping Netflix on the compulsory purchase list – but it’s Shakespeare’s evergreen villain that brings her to Kingston this spring.
In the month that Charles III finally gets his crown, Adjoa brings the crowd-hungry Richard to the Rose Theatre, both starring in and directing the production.
Except that you have never seen him quite like this. The ambition and manipulation are there, but behind this fresh and imaginative staging lurks a key question: What happens when the person who is punched down upon punches back?
Not the least formidable in real life, Adjoa fell in love with the historical figure of Richard III before she was 10, after her history teacher mother and her auntie introduced her to two novels by Rosemary Hawley Jarman.
“And then I read the play and was horrified by how mean Shakespeare was to poor Richard,” she recalls. “I resonated very strongly with Richard. It was that sense of: ‘It’s not fair, everyone is so unkind to him; it’s not his fault the way he looks.’ Which is exactly how I felt growing up in a tiny Cotswold village in the 1960s and 70s. It was a beautiful childhood in many ways, and I can milk a cow by hand if called upon to do so, but there were also the spaces that were not welcoming to me because of how I looked. A bit like Richard.”
So when Christopher Haydon, Artistic Director at the Rose, asked Adjoa what she might be interested in directing for their 2023 spring season, her response was as clear as glorious summer.
“I had always wanted to direct Richard III, and I also wanted to play him. Although I’d been outraged at his portrayal when I first read the play as a child, I now appreciate one of the big questions Shakespeare posits: What happens to a person and their sense of self if, throughout their life, bad intentions are ascribed to them based solely on their appearance?”
It’s a case of “body pathologising”, she insists.
It happens to many people in many circumstances across the world, and in this production I want to explore all that through the lens of race.
She will be the only black actor in an otherwise all-white cast, and the play is set in that childhood place where her fascination with the story was born.
“It’s a West Country setting and, as my father sang in folk groups all through my childhood, the music will be folk. There’s a cappella, Morris dancing and all that country culture, and we’ll just tell the story.”
When Adjoa first left school, acting professionally wasn’t even vaguely on the cards, though she has fond memories of school plays and improvisation in the front room at home.
“I used to write little books and act them out with the neighbours’ kids. There was lots of net curtain action, children giggling and lights going on and off, and we used to charge our parents 2p to sit through hours of horror,” she laughs. Not until the midpoint of a law degree did Adjoa realise that acting could be a viable choice of career. “I bailed on the degree, my father wept and I started acting classes with a woman who’d been in a black women’s group that I had been involved in as a student at Bristol. She was invited to do a show in London, so I came up, did the show with her and never went back.”
Success followed in spades. Bridgerton aside, TV credits have included Doctor Who, Casualty and Law & Order: UK.
In 2019, Adjoa played Dr Isaacs in the psychological thriller Fractured, followed in 2020 by tough cop DI Nina Rosen in BBC1’s Silent Witness.
Then, at the end of 2021, she starred as Nenneke in the Netflix fantasy drama, The Witcher. On stage she has been feted for lead roles at the National Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in 2019 – in an intriguing foreshadowing of her current project – she conceived, co-directed and starred in the UK’s first all-women-of-colour Shakespearean production, Richard II, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe.
As for Hollywood, her debut came in 2009 alongside Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, as Chief of Staff to Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood’s rugby union film Invictus about the 1995 World Cup.
Other film credits include Adulthood and Brotherhood from crime drama series The Hood Trilogy. She has also been a BBC radio actor for over 30 years and narrated more than 150 radio books.
Fame, however, brings responsibility with it. As a thriving black actor, Adjoa is clear about her duty to break down barriers for those following on behind.
“When I first came to London, I cleaned a lot of toilets and did a lot of life drawing classes. All my early breaks came solely because other black actresses told me about the auditions – putting me in direct competition with themselves for really scarce work.”
Their generosity ever on her mind, Adjoa believes it to be her job always to open doors, not pull up ladders.
“There are doors and ceilings,” she says candidly. “Sometimes you knock your head on them and aren’t allowed to go any further. I just think that’s a waste of talent. We should all be firing on all cylinders; being brilliant at whatever it is we want to do.”
And brilliant Adjoa certainly is. Not least as Lady Danbury, the Bridgerton role which saw her nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress at the 2021 NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – Image Awards.
With a call time of 4am tomorrow morning, she is currently filming season three. It is a production in which she is thrilled to be involved.
“As my mum was a history teacher, I know all about the presence in this country of dynamic women and people of colour through the ages. But that gets sort of ‘written out’, which makes it difficult for current generations to feel that they have a part to play in the British story. So I’m very happy to be in a drama that features Queen Charlotte [wife of George III], who did have African heritage.
“Bridgerton also opens the door to conversations about how not all women want to get married, and how not everyone is in a heterosexual relationship. I think it has a lovely warm embrace. There is all this fabulousness about it.”
And what of Lady Danbury herself?
“I love her strategising; her ability to sort out who’s vulnerable and needs protecting, and who’s grander than they ought to be and requires taking down. And all that while still keeping her own autonomy and having a great appetite for life; a huge sense of fun.”
Reminiscent, says Adjoa, of her own female relatives, all “dancing, laughing and telling stories” in their 70s and 80s.
They are tough, fabulous women and I want Lady Danbury to be a celebration of them
And while Bridgerton clearly brings her joy, Adjoa is equally delighted to be bringing her Richard III to Kingston.
“I lived in Brixton for nearly 40 years, so it’s sort of one of my local theatres and I’ve never actually performed there. It’s a really lovely space and I am looking forward to sharing this show that I’ve been dreaming about for decades. “When I buy a theatre ticket, I want to be made to laugh, to cry, to think; to feel gripped. So I really hope that we will bring all that to bear on our audience.”
