Bridgerton season 3 will make you happy, sad, and everything in between — at least, according to Adjoa Andoh. Andoh stars as Lady Danbury on the hit Netflix series, and following the launch of International Delight’s limited-edition Bridgerton-inspired creamers and iced coffee, we got up close and personal with the actress at the NYC “Coffee & Courting” dating event on February 22. Andoh gave us the inside scoop on her most memorable dating story, and why Bridgerton viewers can expect to see Lady Danbury and Penelope Featherington grow closer than ever this season.
“I think Lady Danbury sees a lot of her young self in Penelope,” Andoh tells Brit + Co’s Chloe Williams. “I think she’s sort of an overlooked item who is shoved in one direction just as Penelope is an overlooked item who no one thinks is ever gonna get married. So both of these women in their young lives have had to understand that if they are gonna survive, they have to live on their own natural brilliance, strategy, intelligence, and gifts…She’s team Penelope all the way. She’s cheering for her.”
Adjoa Andoh repeatedly talks about making season 3 of Bridgerton for the wallflowers — and she has some advice for the wallflowers who might be watching. “Our time will come,” she says. “We just need to wait until the person who is the fabulous person comes…And the other thing I would say is don’t wait and pine. Hang out with your friends have a fabulous life. The world is amazing and interesting and just dive into your curiosity. Think about what’s fabulous about you and lean hard in on that, and don’t wait for someone else to give you the confirmation that you are as fabulous as you should know you are.”
Last year’s Queen Charlotte gave Bridgerton fans the chance to see Lady Danbury (as well as Queen Charlotte and Violet Bridgerton) in a whole new light. For Andoh, the prequel allowed her to explore details about her character she hadn’t thought of before. “Doing Queen Charlotte filled in a lot of the early life for me in concert with Shonda’s enormous storytelling brain,” she says. “So I could take all of that into season three. And the exciting thing about season three on that basis is that the audience is up to speed with [everyone].”
Not only does the series show viewers their favorite characters’ pasts, but it also helps us understand their motivations. “Now because of my beloved Lord Ledger — actually, I had such a crush on Keir [Charles], the actor that played Lord Ledger, [he] made me giddy — because the audience now knows that Lady Danbury had this great love of her life, you understand the investment she has in the Bridgerton family more because they are his grandchildren,” she says. “So I am invested in them because I loved him.”
Image via Adjoah Andoh/Instagram
Speaking of love, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask Adjoa Andoh about her own memorable dating stories, and she immediately took us back to being a teenager. “I was a punk rocker — I still am inside — I saw The Clash and I loved them at 14 and it transformed my life,” she says. “There was a boy who was a punk and I mean, it was as rare as seeing, I don’t know, snow in August. He was a punk, I was a punk, and I just yearned for him. Eventually I drew him to me and I cooked him spaghetti bolognese.”
“But no one had told me that you don’t cook the Parmesan cheese in the bolognese sauce, so it was a new experiment for me,” she continues. “He ate about four spoonfuls of it and he just went ‘Adj, I’m sorry, I can’t eat this.’ And I took a mouthful of it and it tasted like well, food that had gone down and come back up, let’s just say that. So, yeah. But he loved me.”
Andoh might have had a hard time figuring out the bolognese sauce, but she knows how she likes her coffee — with cream! “Creamer has got a smack of indulgence about it,” she says. But in addition to adding it to her morning cup of Joe, Andoh’s already dreaming up new dessert recipes as well: “What I would do is I would go super strong chocolate ice cream — a Belgian chocolate ice cream, something like that — mascarpone, and then [put] creamer on top. You could go International Delight English Toffee Creamer, but I would probably go International Delight Berries & Créme Creamer just for the contrast.”
And how would Lady Danbury take her coffee? “Strong with a little [splash] of creamer.”
