Simone Ashley is the lead in Season 2 of Bridgerton. She plays Kate Sharma and fans are so excited about all of it. I’m excited too! It’s so rare to see an Indian woman as a romantic lead in any kind of Western film or series. Simone covers the latest issue of Glamour UK to promote Bridgerton, and she halfway alienates the British readership by talking about how much she hates British winters and that’s why she moved to California. LOL. Some highlights from the interview:

She never watch period dramas: “I didn’t really watch period dramas much because I felt like I couldn’t relate to them, maybe because I couldn’t see myself within one. And then. Bridgerton came along.”

Moving to LA: She’d grown tired of British winters – “I’m a sun baby” and fancied “a change” when she moved to the States to be closer to her family and friends. “There’s a very nostalgic part of California for me because I spent a lot of my childhood out there.”

Wearing a corset: “That was… interesting,” she grins. A wardrobe crew had to help her dress “because when you’re in a corset, you can’t put your shoes on,” but no one warned her to watch what she ate. “On my first day, I was like, “OK, first day as a leading lady, got to eat lots of food, be really energised.” So, I had this massive portion of salmon and that’s when I needed to be sick, basically because I was wearing the corset. I realised when you wear the corset, you just don’t eat. It changes your body. I had a smaller waist very momentarily. Then the minute you stop wearing it, you’re just back to how your body is. I had a lot of pain with the corset, too, I think I tore my shoulder at one point!”

She wouldn’t have been able to cope during the Regency period. “Now women just have more freedom to be whoever they want to be. There’s not a small, tiny box that we have to fit into any more.” She feels “a lot has changed” for women, but also that “there’s still lots of room for development”. “I probably have dealt with a lot of sexism in my life. I don’t really feed any energy into it, and maybe there’s a problem in that? Maybe there are things happening that I should acknowledge, and should let affect me?”

Advice for women: “Don’t be afraid to be difficult. It’s a word that we hear a lot these days, ‘Oh, she’s being difficult or tricky,’ when, actually, maybe someone’s just following their instincts and speaking out for themselves, and I think why not? Why wouldn’t you? It’s not a bad thing. You’re just taking care of you.”

Desi women supporting each other: When she was cast in Bridgerton, amongst the messages of support were two from actresses she looks up to – Freida Pinto and Mindy Kaling, “just being really lovely and supportive and sending their congratulations. I remember watching Freida in Slumdog Millionaire and Mindy in everything she’s done. She’s incredible. There’s no one like her. She’s so cool. I’d love to work with her. I think she’s an amazing writer, producer.”

Being a dark-skinned South Asian woman in a romantic period lead: “I just always saw myself for my personality and not for the colour of my skin,” she says. But she acknowledges that, “Representation matters, and yes, there is a minority that needs to be represented more, and I’m very aware of that… Everyone should be seen. I think we can all relate to each other in some way.” In the past, Simone has spoken about how “Colourism is an ongoing issue.” Today she admits, “I felt very typecast sometimes,” although she quickly adds that that was “years and years” ago. Now she says it’s important to her to take both “culturally-specific roles and non-culturally-specific roles”. What she wants most is “to be seen as an actress who has talent and has a brain, and it just doesn’t matter what I look like.”

[From Glamour UK]

Colorism is no joke, especially within the Indian community, and we’re not even talking about colorism within the film/TV industry. I was so pleasantly surprised to see actual dark-skinned Indian women cast in these roles, because you know there were people trying to convince Bridgerton producers to go for lighter-skinned Indian actresses. Indian women don’t all look like Sarita Choudhury, Frieda Pinto and Archie Panjabi! I also wonder if Simone assumed her stage name to get more roles too – “Simone Ashley” will get more callbacks than Simone Ashwini Pillai.

Photos courtesy of Glamour UK.