Arsema Thomas: Here’s Why Nigerians Are Paying Attention To The Young ‘Lady Danbury’

When the teaser for Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story was released, fans of the epic series, Bridegerton, were excited as to what love story they get to experience and gush about pending the release of the third season of the show. On May 4, 2023, when it was released, the reactions were off the hook, with fans naming it one of the best Bridgerton series and applauding Arsema Thomas for her role as young Lady Danbury.

Unknown to most fans of the franchise, the 28-year-old actress is half Nigerian, with her diplomat parents being from Nigeria and Ethiopia, respectively. More surprising was how rooted she is in her indigenous culture. It might be a stretch to celebrate such, but we’ve had a lot of Instagram Nigerians that have made most people somewhat lose faith in celebrity Nigerians in the diaspora ever being invested in our culture or its problems.

In one video, which has since gone viral, Arsema, whose Yoruba name is Adeoluwayemi, divulged from the regular and named Moin Moin her favourite food, giving accolades to Nigerian writers like Abiola Bello and Eloghosa Osunde for their works while in the same vein mentioning how she was proud of how Nigerian youths are standing up to authority for a better life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxFQNWm_c44]

This might be astonishing for people who came to know Arsema Thomas through her breakout role in Queen Charlotte, but for those who watched her Ted Talk on ‘Charity To Africa,’ you would know that for years she has been in tune with her culture. While you might say her parents’ diplomatic relocations from places like Atlanta to Uganda have exposed her to several cultures and their dynamics, she has also proven to be quite an intelligent student of history.

Arsema, who has a Bachelor’s degree in Biophysics, a Health Policy Masters from Yale, and has worked as an associate at the United Nations Population Fund after nursing her passion for acting for years, upped days after her Master’s programme ended, cancelled her lease and went to Cours Florent in Paris to study acting in French and English.

In 2022, after two years of featuring in a few films and studying acting in places like the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), she went on to get a role in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.

“Something physical happened in my body when I was next to it or even heard anything about it. So, I started auditioning for random student films, eventually joining a community theatre. That’s when I realised, ‘Okay, this is for me. I like it’.”

Where she played the role of Agatha Danbury – a strong black woman who pushed for the emancipation of black people to be integrated into the British Regency era with the help of her friendship and bond with Queen Charlotte – she embodied the essence of the role

For her role on the show, she told Cosmopolitan that during filming, she read the famous biography of Black liberation revolutionary Assata Shakur, and two of Black feminist bell hooks’ most famous books, ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ and ‘All About Love’.

“It was a way of getting me into this character,” they say. “For Agatha Danbury, hooks’ thoughts are similar to a lot of what is going through her mind personally. There is a beauty in reading a Black woman’s optimism about the world,’ she told them.

Her awareness and strong character are definitely evident in how she plays the role of Lady Danbury, and we are ready to see more of her in the future.