Charithra Chandran Reveals Friends Assume Her Bridgerton Casting 'Is Due To A Diversity Quota'

Charithra Chandran, who is gearing up for the release of Netflix's Bridgerton Season 2 recently opened up about playing the new leading lady of the show. Charithra Chandran will be seen playing Edwina Sharma, a new debutante who catches the eye of Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey).

For the unversed, in the books, Edwina and her family were written as white characters, but in the Netflix series, the family was reimagined to be of Indian descent. The move by Netflix had received mixed reactions from fans of the show.

Chandran also revealed that not everyone in her life has been supportive of her being cast in the romance drama. In an interview with the Telegraph, she said that people "assume my success is due to a diversity quota."

"I've even had friends say to me, 'Oh you got that because you're brown,' and that really hurts. What's really scary is that you can start believing it and thinking, 'The only reason I got cast as Edwina is because they were looking for an Indian family'," she revealed.

Chandran said she wanted to use the platform to fight and push back against colourism. Recalling her experience she said, "I remember strangers saying, 'You would be pretty if you were light-skinned like your grandmother,' and like, trying to blame my granddad for giving me my skin colour."

She added, "I would love to see more crew who are Black and Brown. I think that's really important. We should be careful about just sort of window dressing. Being a person of colour, we're not unitary, we're not one thing. There are so many different communities within that umbrella term. We should be more specific about making sure we're representing different groups of people."

She concluded by saying, "I've always wondered how we can accept aliens and superheroes, but, you know, it's a struggle to accept a brown or Black princess? Is that where you draw the line? Maybe a mermaid is OK. So I think as a society, we've just become more creative."

Bridgerton season 2 will begin streaming on Netflix from March 25, 2022.