Adjoa Andoh is perhaps best known for her role as Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, but her acting career has been nothing short of incredible. Andoh has starred in Casualty, EastEnders, and The Witcher amongst many other shows on screen.
The actress has also worked extensively in theatre, her credits including His Dark Materials, A Streetcar Named Desire, Troilus and Cressida, Julius Caesar, Tamburlaine and The Odyssey.
Born in Clifton, Bristol, and raised in Wickwar in Gloucestershire, the 63-year-old recently appeared on the BBC podcast, ‘Dear Daughters’, where she wrote and shared an open letter to her three children.
Andoh shared her life philosophy of following instincts but added that doing so has found her in some unexpected situations during her lifetime.
The actress shared that whilst she was pregnant she “surrendered” to her body after she felt an instinct to eat fish, despite being a vegetarian since she was 16. She described it as “a liberating moment”, saying in her letter to her children: “When we’re alert to it, my babies, we are guided by millennia of ancient wisdom and experience, accumulated in this universe-filled data bank we called our bodies.”
Despite the instinct causing her to give up her vegetarian lifestyle, she encouraged her children to follow similar instincts, saying: “I know life keep coming at you thick and fast, kids, but listen for that unique, ancient voice that warns and encourages, seek it out.”
Speaking about what it was like eating fish for the first time in years, Andoh said: “In my head it was like ‘I’m eating flesh!’ But my body was like, ‘yum thanks!'”
Andoh also opened up about parenthood, sharing the one thing she wished she’d been told before having children that “nobody” speaks about.
“Nobody tells you when you’ve got the tiny baby, that is your tiny baby until you die,” she said. “You’re never off the clock for the rest of your life. My 38-year-old will ring me and we’ll be having long conversations about stuff and she’ll need stuff, and so will my 27 year-old and so will my 28 year-old. So you know you’re never off the clock.”
During the podcast Andoh also spoke about Bridgerton, saying she was filming the fourth season when the podcast was recorded.
Since starring as the much-loved Lady Danbury, Andoh spoke out about comments that the hit series uses “colourblind casting”. She said it was “really important […] to refute” the claim, hitting back at those who “mean the people of colour are playing white people.”
“We’re playing exactly what you see. It’s who we are, Bridgerton is not a documentary. You would never see a woman of that period wearing the Featherington’s psychedelic orange, and you may not see people of colour, in that number, in Regency Britain but we were absolutely here.”
You can listen to the Dear Daughters: Stars podcast on BBC Sounds.