While filming the second season of Netflix<\/a> hit Bridgerton<\/a> (wig the size of a mature shrub, 20kg dress strapped on like a bomb disposal suit), actor Golda Rosheuvel, who plays Queen Charlotte<\/a> in the drama, received a text message.<\/p>\n \u201cIt said I needed to go to a meeting that evening with [Bridgerton creator] Shonda Rhimes. So I got on to Zoom, there were a few other faces on the screen, a few things were announced and then Shonda said, \u2018Oh yeah\u2026 we\u2019re going to see if we can do a spin-off about Queen Charlotte.’\u201d<\/p>\n Rosheuvel, who\u2019s speaking to Radio Times magazine<\/strong> via Zoom, does her own impression of the shocked emoji to illustrate the group reaction. But actually, she says, it makes total sense: an origin story for her character, the Queen of Great Britain from 1761, after her marriage to King George III, is an origin story<\/a> for the hit series itself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s set in the same world as Bridgerton, with the same costumes and colours. We wanted to show how Charlotte came to be, the first steps of a 17-year-old young woman who came to this country from Germany and married George, a man she\u2019d never met before. You see the first encounter of George and Charlotte, which is beautiful. And then you see how they live and how they interact with each other and how they get used to each other. Ultimately it is a love story.\u201d<\/p> Rosheuvel also points out that in spite of the title, Queen Charlotte isn\u2019t just about the young Charlotte, who\u2019s played by India Amarteifio, the young King George (Corey Mylchreest), or the queen in her middle years, when Rosheuvel takes over the role again.<\/p>\n \u201cLady Danbury and Violet and the whole matriarchy are there, too, both young and as they are in Bridgerton. It\u2019s about how these women came to be \u2013 how a woman of colour, in Danbury\u2019s case, got into the court and then all of the emotional love, the relationships between the women and how they were built up. But throughout, it\u2019s all kept under the umbrella of Bridgerton.\u201d<\/p>\n The mechanics that enable the older Queen Charlotte and her 17-year-old persona to exist in the same universe are described by Roshuevel as \u201ca behind-the-scenes [version of] Bridgerton\u201d.<\/p>\n The two series overlap in flash-forward and flashback. \u201c\u2026So where in Bridgerton I might have been at the Presentation Ball and then leave the room, in Queen Charlotte I walk straight into a scene that\u2019s in the spin-off.\u201d<\/p>\n This format functions like a series of elaborate footnotes. Queen Charlotte offers an explanation for Charlotte\u2019s psychology and character in her later years \u2013 haughty, magisterial, aloof \u2013 by showing how minor German princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was treated when she first came to England.<\/p>\n \u201cShonda has been really clever in connecting the worlds, connecting the two series together,\u201d says Rosheuvel. \u201cLady Whistledown [the anonymous author of the weekly gossip pamphlet that scandalises society, known as \u2018the Ton\u2019] is there, the young and older Danbury [played as a young woman by Arsema Thomas and as an adult by Adjoa Andoh] are there.<\/p>\n \u201cThe universe sort of swirls round within itself, so it will be fascinating to see whether the fans notice little nuances and Easter eggs that we\u2019ve put in both productions. It\u2019s a fascinating way of telling the story.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosheuvel is delighted with the story Queen Charlotte tells, too. Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz doesn\u2019t appear in Julia Quinn\u2019s source novels<\/a> at all: her inclusion as a mixed-race queen in Bridgerton was Shonda Rhimes\u2019s idea, placing race front and centre for the first time in a TV period drama.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great to see somebody like me in a wonderful, amazing, fantastical, beautiful, glitzy and glamorous period drama,\u201d says Rosheuvel. \u201cThat\u2019s really important to celebrate.\u201d<\/p> ![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/03\/BRIDGERTON_201_Unit_01190R-54380e1.jpg?quality=90&crop=1103px%2C1px%2C2449px%2C1632px&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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