TV PREVIEW

A pinch me moment. That’s how Golda Rosheuvel describes the moment she found out her popular Bridgerton character was going to be the central figure for a prequel to the Netflix series that’s become so hugely popular since it debuted in 2020.

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story will give fans a chance to see the rise of Rosheuvel’s

Queen Charlotte and the story of the young Charlotte’s marriage to King George.

The series sees The Evermoor Chronicles star India Amarteifio, 21, playing young Charlotte, with a young King George played by Corey Mylchreest, whose other credits include The Sandman.

“Gosh, it was one of those whirlwind kind of ‘pinch me’ moments,” reflects Rosheuvel, 53, whose portrayal of the monarch in the Netflix series, with characters based on those in the books by Julia Quinn, has resulted in an army of fans who can’t get enough of her quirky ways and her desire to track down the identity of Lady Whistledown.

“You know, when you hear Shonda Rhimes saying the words ‘Oh, we’re going to create a spin-off and you know, a prequel of your character’, it’s like: ‘OK, that’s great. That’s really great!’

“And it’s humbling. And you always want your work to be appreciated, when it goes out there, but for Shonda Rhimes and Netflix to really invest in this character and want to kind of explore a deeper dive into her and her history, and I think it was really clever to keep it in the world of Bridgerton, which was really great.”

Showrunner, series creator and executive producer Rhimes, who is also behind long-running hit medical series Grey’s Anatomy, shares her excitement at wanting to show fans a new part of the Bridgerton puzzle.

She explains: “I’m really excited for fans to see Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, as we’re calling it, because it is part of the Bridgerton universe, but also because it’s a completely new world.

“We’re going back in time to a very different era of costumes, customs, the way things were done. And we’re going back to the beginning of how the society that we know of in Bridgerton started.

“She comes from a place that was already well formed and integrated, but here in England she’s an outsider, she’s new.”

Talking about how the series discusses themes of race and race relations in this historical period through the lens of a period drama, Rosheuvel says it is a conversation moved forward through storytelling.

“I think it’s fascinating to be doing a period drama, something of history, but yet, through our storytelling, we can discuss these difficult, uncomfortable discussions, situations, ideas.”

For Mylchreest, taking on the role of a young King George was “a pleasure the whole time”.

“I didn’t feel maybe like a massive pressure to enter it just because it felt like such a different beast, and there was so much work to do in this series, but also on that character that it was like a great sort of fidget spinner, like there was no time for my mind to do any other anxiety stuff, it was just like ‘OK, right, I’ve got to dive in’”, he says, adding: “And it was a pleasure the whole time.”