Netflix’s Bridgerton has earned most of its flowers for its lavish and dramatic adaptation of Julia Quinn‘s Regency romance book series, marrying a talented cast with the skills of television giant Shonda Rhimes to create one of the streamer’s most addictive hits. However, beneath the soapy storytelling and steamy moments from Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate (Simone Ashley) to Benedict (Luke Thompson) and Sophie (Yerin Ha) is a purposeful team of directors. While the series’ set design, costumes, and makeup have been praised with Emmy wins and other nominations, the work behind the camera has gone relatively unsung. According to Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story star India Amarteifio, the effort that goes into shooting the Ton is particularly extensive.
Compared to some of the other Bridgerton mainstays, Amarteifio’s stay in the romantic period drama’s world was relatively brief, but highly acclaimed. She starred in the six-episode prequel spin-off limited series, playing a younger version of the titular Queen Charlotte as her arranged marriage to King George of England (Cory Mylchreest) unfolded. Although scrutinized by the monarch’s mother, Charlotte sparks a legendary romance that will forever change high society. Her story is juxtaposed against the main series’ present timeline, both showing how the leader of the Ton, played by Golda Rosheuvel, became who she is with her husband and adding context to the succession crisis that occurs upon Princess Charlotte’s death. Throughout the story, Amarteifio experienced the painstakingly thorough process of director Tom Verica as he aimed to perfect the look of the origin story.
Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke to Amarteifio at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival about some of her experiences in the industry, including the most takes she’s ever had to go through on a production. Without any hesitation, she thought of Queen Charlotte and how many times Verica would go over the same scene to the point of near frustration. While it wasn’t the most fun at the time to redo certain sequences over and over again to capture his exact vision, the annoyance of it ended up helping her and producing better, more raw takes that fed into her emotional portrayal of Charlotte.
“Oh, countless. Over 13. It would’ve been for Queen Charlotte, over 13. And our director just knew exactly what he wanted and was just like, ‘And again, and again, and again,’ and it gets to the point where you can kinda start using that passion and a bit of anger to be like, ‘I just want to get this done!’ And it tends to be the last take that works.”
“Oh, countless. Over 13. It would’ve been for Queen Charlotte, over 13. And our director just knew exactly what he wanted and was just like, ‘And again, and again, and again,’ and it gets to the point where you can kinda start using that passion and a bit of anger to be like, ‘I just want to get this done!’ And it tends to be the last take that works.”
Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.
You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.
- When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening. - You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers. - The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it. - You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.
You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.
- This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
them equally seriously. - You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
rival, and that never entirely goes away. - It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
other, but whose turn it is this year. - You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.
The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.
- Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned. - You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
more real than public ones. - The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
it would cost either one to say it out loud. - Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
stop hiding.
You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.
- Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
days, which is precisely the point of it. - You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
decades of something merely comfortable. - The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
enormous life afterwards because of it. - You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
same way.
What Has Amarteifio Been Up to Recently?
Image via Netflix- Image via Netflix
- Image via Netflix
- Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via NetflixQueen Charlotte was released in 2023, but Amarteifio only recently made her return to television. She joined forces with Ruth Jones for the BBC’s The Rapture, a dramatic thriller that casts her as an inmate in a juvenile facility named Bethany Krall, who’s charged with murdering her mother. She’s no ordinary criminal, though, claiming to have psychic powers, which leads to her having sessions with Gabriela Fox (Jones) when the forensic psychologist takes a job at the facility. If Queen Charlotte put her through the most takes, the emotionally intensive Rapture put her through her hardest take, the actor said. She described a scene in which her character has a panic attack that unfolds in a complicated way that forced her to call upon real experiences.
“Last year, I filmed this show called The Rapture, which is only really available at the moment in the U.K. from the BBC. And there was a scene where my character has to have a panic attack but you don’t see… it doesn’t start from the beginning. There’s a whole conversation and there’s a lot of movement in terms of her emotions, and then halfway through the scene, I have a panic attack, and then I come down off it, and then I’m fine. I think finding that journey was something that I had to really dig deep in, especially someone who’s had it, had a panic attack. I really had to kind of think of all the motions and like all the steps to get there.”
</blockquote>“Last year, I filmed this show called The Rapture, which is only really available at the moment in the U.K. from the BBC. And there was a scene where my character has to have a panic attack but you don’t see… it doesn’t start from the beginning. There’s a whole conversation and there’s a lot of movement in terms of her emotions, and then halfway through the scene, I have a panic attack, and then I come down off it, and then I’m fine. I think finding that journey was something that I had to really dig deep in, especially someone who’s had it, had a panic attack. I really had to kind of think of all the motions and like all the steps to get there.”
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is currently streaming on Netflix. Amarteifio is expected to return in Netflix’s next Bridgerton spin-off following Lady Violet, but no casting announcements have been made yet. Stay tuned here at Collider for more updates and insights into all things Bridgerton as the series continues to unfold.
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story
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