A Twitter user said it first: Young Black actresses are having their moment on television. But I’m gonna say it correctly: Right now, young Black actresses are television’s moment. And it’s time we talked about it!
Welcome to Black Girl to Watch, a little corner of Beyoncé’s internet where I have an intimate conversation with one of these soon-to-be-household-names after they’ve nailed their first (but def not their last) Big-Deal Role.
Queen Charlotte dropped on Netflix almost two months ago, and today the show’s viewership numbers officially arrived via Nielsen: people around the globe spent 5.4 billion (!) minutes watching the Shonda Rhimes story, catapulting the project to certified international hit status. This achievement is welcome news considering how much was riding on Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Fans have been eagerly awaiting the prequel since a quick snippet was released in early February, and their expectations were high after falling in love with the Bridgerton series in 2020. You’d think newcomer (and show lead) Arsema Thomas would feel stressed about enamoring fans as a young Lady Danbury, but the 29-year-old wasn’t anxious—she was ready.
And the world was ready for her. In the 50 days since Arsema’s rise as Lady Danbury, she has attended 32 press events, trended as a highly-searched celebrity on Google, and even graced the covers of Cosmopolitan U.K. and Glamour South Africa. Fans (hi, hello!) are eager to see more of her, whether that’s in another season of Queen Charlotte or a new leading role. (Folks have specifically suggested Tiana in a live-action Princess and the Frog or Princess Kida in Atlantis and personally, I’d be pleased with either.)
It’s rare to find a young Black woman who gives herself her own flowers. Many of us (including myself) have dimmed our light in fear of being “too much” or “too aggressive,” but Arsema isn’t here to appease fans or cater to racial social niceties. In fact, “nervous” isn’t a word in her vocabulary. Why? Because being a dark-skinned Black woman means criticism will always follow you, she says.
She’s not wrong. Black women suffer from unbearably high expectations in their personal and professional lives, yet have to remain both graceful and humble. Can’t show weakness. Can’t rely on others. Can’t exist as we please. It’s no wonder Arsema’s performance as Lady Danbury touched so many Black female viewers: She carved the role through her own truth.
Lady Danbury may be a young dark-skinned Black woman in the 17th century who defied unspeakable odds and stood up on her own two feet, plotting her way to self-fulfillment, but she’s also a reminder of how Black women to this day continue to survive through self-determination and sheer grit. Her role resonates with Black female viewers because of how closely it mirrors our modern-day lives. Strip back the Georgian set design and there’s another story of a hyper-independent Black woman who has to give everything to others while only receiving a fraction (if that) in return. Here’s what Arsema has to say about all that, and much more.
How does someone go from graduating from college to starring in one of the biggest series of the year in just a matter of months?
When I look at it, in hindsight, I’m like, how did I get here? It’s so strange ‘cause I always knew that I wanted to act. It was definitely something that was running under the current of a lot of the decisions I made, but I just wasn’t talking about it. Towards the end of my first year at Yale, I was actively avoiding the Yale School of Drama and anything to do with it. But then I thought, let me just see if I can set up a meeting. I just need to try. This whole thing of me not doing it because I’m afraid was getting old. So I had a meeting with the Dean of the Yale School of Drama, and I remember I gave her my resume. It was plays from high school. Romeo and Juliet from middle school. It wasn’t a resume, really. And I remember she said, “Go and try and study. Because if you can study, you can pursue acting without being paid as the driving force—if you love it enough—then the path will unfold for you.” So I auditioned for Yale’s summer program, got in, and fell in love with it.
I was commuting back and forth from Connecticut to New York, auditioning for student films where people were shooting on their iPhones for their own director’s portfolios. I thought, let me just try and see what I can do without the foundation of a technique or an education. And I realized I loved it. There’s something about acting that is so audience-focused that it just clicked with me. So I packed up all my stuff. Canceled my lease. I applied for a program in acting in French and English in Paris. I moved over there. I didn’t tell anyone I was pursuing acting. I was in Paris, and then I realized that I wanted to move to a more Anglophone setting, so that I could have more work opportunities. I moved to London and realized I loved the theater scene.
While I was there, I was bugging my agent to see if there was anything in the Bridgerton universe I could audition for. I love Shonda Rhimes as a storyteller and as an activist in this art space, so I wanted to be a part of it in any capacity.
In another recent interview, you said that ever since you saw That’s So Raven, you knew you wanted to become an actress. What was it about the Disney show that made you have that realization?
I was literally just watching that show two days ago, and it became so clear to me. That show is about a Black girl who is boisterous and gregarious, who supernaturally holds her family together. There’s something about her energy that I understood. She’s a very complex character, which is strange because it’s on Disney Channel. But because there was so little being offered for Black girls at that time, Raven, the show, and all of the episodes have this clear unapologetic Blackness. She’s not trying to be white. She’s not putting on the voice that we all know and hate so much. She is being herself, and it made me recognize that I could occupy that space if I wanted to. Like, there’s nothing wrong with taking up space as myself. I was conditioned so much to be quiet, to be less than because it would be considered aggressive or “attitude” or scary. And to see this character being applauded for it, gave me the nonverbal validation that I could be that and so much more if I wanted.
Almost every Black girl has felt or been told something like that. “Put yourself in a box to make other people comfortable.” Let’s talk a little bit about your role in Queen Charlotte and how it relates to that idea that all women, but especially Black women, need to be smaller.
There is something so independent about Lady Danbury that I like. I don’t want to become someone’s love interest, some girl that’s pining for a man. I want to be somebody who has their own story, who has their own fight that’s rooted in something that I believe is worth fighting for. There’s something beautiful about the fact that she’s discussing things that are more societal rather than interpersonal. I love that.
And then reading the scripts and recognizing that she starts off in a very different place than when you see her towards the end of the season was even more freeing. There are so many archetypes of strong Black women, and you don’t recognize that while there are strong Black women, it’s not something that you’re genetically predisposed to become. It is something that you’re molded into based on the environment around you. And showing that she had to adapt herself, that she recognized her own strengths and was strategic about it, it exposes her intelligence. She’s very different than a lot of the other women in this Georgian era.
You had pretty large shoes to fill since Lady Danbury is a fan favorite. Were you nervous about how critics and fans would react to your performance?
I felt more nervous if people were ready for this story. Because that will ultimately be the thing that people will sadly fixate on. Are fans ready for this level of intimacy with two Black women leads? This was originally not a part of Julia Quinn’s universe, so I was a bit nervous. But I think that’s a good thing, as I like to be part of projects that make people uncomfortable or make me nervous. Like, are we going too far? Then yes, we’ve definitely gone far and maybe we can push it further.
Other Black women are also seeing positive reviews for their TV performances. Jasmin Savoy Brown from Yellowjackets and Dominique Fishback from Swarm are a few names that come to mind. How does it feel to see other young Black women receive their flowers?
It’s amazing to see the space opening up more and more, but personally I don’t think that they got the flowers they truly deserved. Because really, if we’re gonna be 100 percent honest, Dominique and Jasmin deserve even more attention for the way they bodied their roles and the talent we were able to see.
I’m a pessimist, so I prepare for the worst and then nothing will disappoint me. And so I’ve been trying to kind of remove myself from using critics or attention as barometers for success. Like, Sheryl Lee Ralph has been doing it for so long and only now is getting attention, or Angela Bassett who was snubbed at the Oscars. I think that the lack of ideological change is why this keeps happening. Because we haven’t discussed how we have to change our behavior as humans, it’ll always just come down to this aesthetic change. Something deeper has to change for me to really feel comfortable—for me to believe that Black women will receive what they actually put out.
That’s a fair assessment and speaks to how we—and Hollywood in general—talk about representation and inclusion. What do these terms mean to you?
Representation cannot exist without inclusion, but inclusion can exist without representation. I’ve been included in things and still have not felt represented. Just because I’m there doesn’t mean that I am represented. In order for representation to happen, you have to have the infrastructure for that representation. Representation is not the end goal—it’s the thing that we need, so we can get to something further.
The goal is anybody can turn on the TV, and see themselves in the person on that screen, regardless of their walk of life or where they come from because, in principle, it shouldn’t matter. Like your skin color, your physical ability, your orientation, all of those things should not be defining factors. And because of the world that we are in and how history has laid itself out, people are treated differently based on these characteristics. So therefore those people, because they are being treated differently, must see themselves on that screen. That means more than just having actors on the screen—it means who’s doing their hair? Is the crew representative of the cast? Is the cast representative of society? Like, because we made the decision (or whoever made the decision) of making race and class and gender and all of these things a big thing, now people have to have the space for their identities. It’s going to take work. Representation is going to be work. It has to be effort. It has to be conscientious. It has to be direct.
I imagine that sometimes it can hard when your first role is one so many people loved. Are you worried that you won’t be able to diversify your portfolio?
Oh gosh, I am worried that I won’t even have a portfolio. There’s a lot of pressure for the next thing to be just as big or better and because of that, there is this paralysis of like, okay, well, I need to make sure that the next decision is going to be the one that everybody looks at, now that they already know me. And then it’s like, I don’t do anything for years. So I’m more worried about that because I love storytelling. It strangely makes me feel the most myself because I get to leave and then come back and appreciate the parts of someone that maybe I took for granted.
It’s not about if I get stuck doing period pieces forever. I wouldn’t be so mad as long as I love the character. What I’m worried about is if I play the same type of woman all the time. I don’t want to be somebody’s interpretation of a freedom fighter or an activist and play that role all the time. If I keep playing these roles, people will think that we don’t have to do that much in reality, and that’s not the case. I want to be able to play every type of woman under the sun and show the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of all of these different versions. I just hope that Black women get more versatility in their narratives.
Mel Curry (she/her) is the current assistant editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers everything from lifestyle to politics. You can often find her watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta or discovering local coffee roasters. Before joining Cosmo, she was an editorial assistant at Hearst Magazines, writing for Women’s Health, Elle, and more. Follow her on Instagram and the bird app aka Twitter.