In the first episode of “Queen Charlotte,” a prequel spin-off of Netflix’s period romance hit series “Bridgerton,” we meet a young Lady Agatha Danbury (played by newcomer Arsema Thomas) in bed. Lips pursed, eyes averted, she’s on her back waiting for her much, much older husband, Lord Danbury (Cyril Nri), to finish having sex with her. We watch her from above as she's roughly jostled about, our perspective is that of Lord Danbury, who either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about the visible disgust roiling beneath his younger, detached wife’s flimsy mask of consent. Finally, he rolls to the side, satisfied and spent. “That …,” he pants, “was a good ride.” He plucks a pair of slimy, blackened dentures from his mouth and falls asleep shortly afterward.
An unsettling incident bordering on marital rape becomes a running gag of sorts throughout three episodes.
Before watching “Queen Charlotte,” I’d never seen a complete episode of “Bridgerton,” never mind a full season. I had tried to jump on the bandwagon when the series first premiered in 2020, but the pilot just didn’t hook me. As the show quickly ballooned into a global phenomenon, so did the backlash from Black viewers frustrated by the show’s blatant colorism toward the handful of Black characters in the color-conscious cast. I figured the show just wasn’t for me and moved on. But three years later, a steady barrage of billboards showcasing a young Black woman royal with an immaculately styled afro convinced me to give “Queen Charlotte” a shot.
In her seminal essay on representation titled “Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” bell hooks explains that “for black female spectators who have ‘looked too deep,’ the encounter with the screen hurt.” Having been burned by misrepresentation before, I buoyed myself with the frothiness of the fantastical backdrop before wading in to a fantasy from which Black women have historically been erased and overlooked.
For the first 20 minutes, the undeniable storytelling of creator, showrunner and co-writer Shonda Rhimes sucked me into this glittering world of royalty and romance during the early Georgian period of 1761 and the Regency-era of “Bridgerton” in the early 1800s. I watched the lead character, Queen Charlotte (India Amarteifio), an independent young Black woman (who’s light skin and biracial, like most Black historical romance leads), fall for her bethrothed, a young, handsome and charming King George III. (A 2021 study revealed that nearly 80% of Black female characters have light or medium skin tones, claiming that “colorism is persistent” across TV). I drank in the sparkling dialogue and the stunning castles, I cackled at the biting banter and courteous shade, and I marveled at the gorgeous, gorgeous gowns.
This jarring polarity perpetuates a long line of imagery portraying dark skin girls and women as invisible, undesirable, and unworthy of love and respect.
Then, within a few minutes, that demoralizing scene with Lady and Lord Danbury — the only two dark skin characters with speaking lines in the show — whiplashes me back to reality, not just once but several times. An unsettling incident bordering on marital rape becomes a running gag of sorts throughout three episodes.
Between becoming England’s first Black royal and caring for her husband who must hide a debilitating undiagnosed mental illness, Charlotte certainly goes through it, too. Some viewers have argued that Rhimes and her co-writer, Nick Nardini, gave the first two Black women leads in the “Bridgerton” universe the most turbulent and distressing relationship dynamics of all, though anyone familiar with Shondaland’s filmography might argue that Rhimes doesn’t discriminate when it comes to struggle love stories. However, the passionate love, deep respect, and tender care shared by Queen Charlotte and the white King George stand in stark opposition to the Danbury’s loveless marriage and the abuse and denigration Lady Danbury endures. This jarring polarity perpetuates a long line of imagery portraying dark-skin girls and women as invisible, undesirable and unworthy of love and respect.
Entertainment scientist and consultant Vaness Cox recently conducted a study analyzing how images of Black women characters with natural hair affected Black adolescent girls and their acceptance of Eurocentric beauty ideals, such as a thin body size, fair skin, narrow facial features and long hair. Contrary to her hypothesis, Cox discovered that Black girls were more likely to report stronger acceptance of Eurocentric beauty ideals if they consumed more episodes of shows featuring Black women with natural hairstyles. “I think it is likely that these and other TV programs may feature Black women with natural hair, like Queen Charlotte, but may not embrace other aspects of Afrocentric beauty, like darker skin tones and fuller facial features,” said Cox. “Ultimately, what I’m saying is that negative, or unbecoming, portrayals of dark-skinned Black women are harmful to Black girls’ psychological well-being in that they learn to devalue Afrocentric features and thus themselves.”
As for dark skin men, Lord Danbury’s portrayal became a major source of contention on Black Twitter: His exaggerated hair and makeup underscores the repulsive age gap between the couple, (admittedly common at the time) while also contrasting his role as the egotistical buffoon to Lady Danbury’s brilliant trailblazer (another dynamic I’m sure was common at the time and remains so today). But in contrast to how other characters and couples in the show are depicted, these historically accurate issues of gender roles and double standards risk portraying Lord Danbury as a minstrel show caricature and Lady Danbury as an inanimate Jezebel.
And herein lies the major problem in “Queen Charlotte,” and possibly the entire “Bridgerton” universe: The creators, show-runners, and writers clearly pay an immense amount of thought, attention and care to illustrating gender inequality and problematic gender roles in a nuanced, multifaceted way. But when it comes to anti-Black racism, they cherrypick certain elements — like segregation, racial discrimination and bias — and completely sidestep slavery, colorism and even the language for racial categorization (in “Queen Charlotte,” there is no Black or white, only “our kind” and “their kind”). On the one hand, creatives ought to have the freedom to tell whatever story they’d like, especially individuals like Rhimes whose identities and communities have been repeatedly erased and overlooked in television and film.
Rhimes has said time and time again that she writes what she wants to watch, namely stories about women in power. With “Queen Charlotte,” she wanted to imagine the origin story of the first Black British royal (the real-life Queen Charlotte is said to have African ancestry, depending on whom you ask). Not only is that her right, but her revising and reimagining a genre and time period to center Black women subverts Hollywood’s oppressive systems and continues a radical legacy of Black women redefining television and film and reclaiming our images. At the same time, centering two young Black women in a historical romance story that prioritizes their gender over their Black identity (as if the two can even be unbound) weakens the story and its massive real-world potential.
Mind you, the emphasis on gender roles did result in scenes rarely seen in television and film, and almost never in period pieces. A young dark-skin woman excavating agency from the unexplored depths of her discarded desires and dreams and the margins and crevices of the systems threatening to bury her alive. The queen and Lady Agatha, recognizing their common struggles and support, nurture, and empower one another to combat them.
Did I appreciate these moments of representation? Absolutely. A lifelong search for reflections of your Black human self has taught me to toss my head back and savor every single drop that quenches my thirst. But even in those instances of Lady Agatha gently explaining sexual intercourse to Queen Charlotte, or Queen Charlotte supporting Lady Agatha by attending the ball with the king — replace the characters with white women, and they’d hold similar meanings. When the material is right there — two Black women strong and resilient enough to endure struggle, to pursue their desires and pleasure, and to rise in power and prominence in 19th-century England — the refusal to explore their strength and resilience against the actual racism, colorism and misogynoir of the time seems like a major misstep.
In a 2018 speech at Elle’s Women in Hollywood event, Rhimes insisted that “demanding what you deserve can feel like a radical act.”
My plea for varied representation isn’t so much to Rhimes, who should have the freedom to create her shows as she sees fit. She doesn’t owe us anything. This is more so a plea to any aspiring or current Black film and television creative who might be writing for Black women who are demanding more. More nuance. More complexity. More humanity. Because in television, in film and in life, Black women deserve so much more.
