Katie Leung says Bridgerton’s diversity made her feel ‘safe’ to play
Katie Leung joins Bridgerton’s fourth season. (Getty)
Katie Leung joins Bridgerton's fourth season. (Getty)
Harry Potter star Katie Leung has said the diverse world of Bridgerton made her feel “safe” and able to play as an actor.
Leung joins the Regency-era show’s fourth season as the steely Lady Araminta Gun, who is trying to marry her two daughters off.
At the same time, like Cinderella’s Stepmother, Gun keeps her own stepdaughter, Sophie (Yerin Ha), as a servant.
This will be a harder task after Sophie meets Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) at a masquerade ball and bewitches the Bridgerton man.
Discussing her new role with The Guardian, Leung, who played Cho Chang in five of the Harry Potter films, said she felt “blessed” to join the Netflix show.
“It feels quite familiar, in a sense,” she said recalling her Harry Potter days. “Also I’m older, and at a place in my life where I’m not too fazed going into something seemingly so huge.”
Assuring that Gun is more than “the archetypal evil stepmother role”, Leung touched on getting to play such a role where her ethnicity wasn’t important.
“Being able to play a mother who has daughters – this kind of family dynamic is something I feel is always lacking. That’s where we need to try and get to now,” she said.
The actress also addressed Bridgerton‘s diversity, something the program is famous for despite the Regency-setting of the show.
“Their inclusion and diversity behind and in front of the camera is just… You can see it and feel it, and that made me feel really safe to be able to kind of play as an actor,” Leung said.
And in the face of criticism of diversity, Leung said: “The more we can have it, the less of a thing it becomes. But for now, we’re kind of in the middle of it.”
She also shared that having seen more stories centred around Asian women while she was growing up “would have done me good”.
Bridgerton returns this year in two parts. The first arrives on 21 January with the second half on 26 February.
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