‘Bridgerton’ Star Charithra Chandran Calls Out Entertainment Industry Mentality That Pits People Of Color Against Each Other

EXCLUSIVE: Charithra Chandran, who broke out playing Edwina Sharma in Netflix’s smash regal series Bridgerton, has spoken out against an entertainment industry mentality that she feels pits people of color against each other.

Chandran, who was speaking to Deadline in the days before her debut West End play wraps, said she has “never pictured myself as a role model” but “a lot of young girls follow me on social media, so I do feel a sense of responsibility.”

Actors including Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Melissa Fumero and Aubrey Plaza have spoken out in the past about their being limited spaces for people of color in TV and movies.

To Chandran, this mentality is intentionally propagated by industry gatekeepers to pit people of color against each other. “It’s not a zero-sum game,” she said. “You’re so focused on fighting your own that you become distracted from the people doing the oppressing. The oppressors have imposed the idea that there’s only one seat at the table, when what other people of color are doing is just pulling up more chairs.”

Since achieving stardom, Chandran has chosen to speak out numerous times about colorism and the importance of diversity. “I think that is the burden of representation, right?,” she added. “It’s so scarce that you’re expected to represent everybody in your community as opposed to just being an individual. The goal is that representation is so nuanced and so consistent that no one individual portrayal has that burden, but while I have it, it’s a really important responsibility that I take seriously.”

Chandran first appeared on screens in Prime Video spy series Alex Rider and truly established herself in Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton, playing the younger sister of Simone Ashley’s Kate Sharma. This year is shaping up to be quite the year for the 27-year-old actress, who was born in Scotland to Tamil Indian parents. As she catches up with Deadline, she is heading to shoot an undisclosed movie the following day, is in pre-production for her associate producing debut, Song of the Sun God, a TV series she will also star in, and is wrapping Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon in the West End.

She said theater acting has been “the most fun I’ve had,” a “rewarding and challenging experience” that took her back to her days performing at Oxford University.

“Introducing a new generation”

Contrary to the Polaroids and doodles on the promotional poster and a pastel pink bedroom set, the one-woman Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon is a frank story of grief centering around Chandran’s witty teen character, whose sister was killed in a darkly comic accident involving a Yorkshire pudding. The play is based on author Rosie Day’s one-woman show of the same name, and has partnered with teen mental health charity stem4, for which Day is an ambassador. 

Tickets for the play – which ends Sunday – started at £15 ($18.80), an unusually cheap price tag for the West End, and Chandran reveals this was an intentional decision from the producers to attract more diverse audiences. “The average theater viewer in this country is probably old, white and upper middle class, and we wanted to divert that to introduce a new generation to the value of the theater.”

This month also saw the premiere of Chandran’s first ever movie role, Prime Video’s How to Date Billy Walsh, in which she stars opposite Tanner Buchanan and Heartstopper star Sebastian Croft. For Chandran, her first time in a lead role was a crucial moment in her career. “I learned so much from that film about the leadership aspect of being on the top of the call sheet, and it will always be so dear to me because it was my first ever film,” she said excitedly. “I think as I get older there are fewer and fewer opportunities where I get to play and do a film like that [in which she plays a teenager].” During promotions, Chandran posted on Instagram that she and Croft had unknowingly shared the stage as children in a production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a moment she described as “mad, mad synchronicity”. 

Chandran seems partial to the word “synchronicity,” using it again when describing how she boarded the TV adaptation of Shankari Chandran’s Song of the Sun God, a TV series made by who else but Synchronicity Films, which will be her first project as associate producer. Her association with the show – which is set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war –  began with a Teen Vogue interview where she mentioned her dream project would be “something about the crisis in Sri Lanka with the Tamil population”. The interview was read by the daughter of Olivia Hetreed, who was writing the series at the time, and the two quickly got in touch.

“We realized that we were so aligned on what we wanted this project to be,” said Chandran, who is Tamilian herself. “Even the fact that Shankari and I share the same surname, it was meant to be.”