Zawe Ashton and the Power of Upending Period Pieces
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The email Zawe Ashton sent her team was short and to the point. “I’ve just watched Bridgerton,” she wrote, “get me in a corset ASAP.”
It had been during a particularly bleak period of lockdown, when Ashton was in Toronto filming The Handmaid’s Tale, that she first tuned into the hit Netflix period drama and saw a familiar face. “I had met Regé-Jean Page 10 years ago when he had a non-speaking part on [the series] Fresh Meat, and we just got on really well,” she explains over coffee and croissants in the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room. “I could just tell he was hardworking and really wanted to pursue the path, so non-creepily I said, ‘phone me if you need guidance.’ I had been through a traumatic period at drama school when I felt like there was no one to call who understood the industry from my perspective, so I wanted to be that for this young man. Then I turned on Bridgerton and was like yes! I just thought, how brilliant to have seen a full circle moment happen for this young man of color who’s leading this unbelievable juggernaut in the period space.”
The series appealed to Ashton’s own love of period dramas and romantic comedies, and while she’d recently been focused on writing instead of acting, putting it out there that she’d be interested in a similar project someday didn’t seem like a bad idea. “They replied saying there was this thing brewing called Mr. Malcolm’s List,” she says, “and about 48 hours later, I got a phone call saying the actress attached was no longer involved, and that I needed to decide if I wanted to do it.”
Ashton didn’t have to go into the decision completely blind. In 2019, a short version of the film—which is based on the novel by Suzanne Allain, who also wrote the films—was released. It starred Gemma Chan in the role of Julia Thistlewaite as well as Freida Pinto, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Sopé Dìrísù, and, for those keeping track of Regency-era romantic releases, predated the first season of Bridgerton by almost a year. “I had to decide quite quickly and there were just loads of green flags,” Ashton explains. “It was a romantic comedy set in the Regency period, it would be amplifying a first-time female feature director’s voice, and I just thought Julia was great. At the beginning of the film, she presents like a Regency Bridget Jones. She’s been out for four seasons and society’s expectations are starting to close in on her, her mother is giving her the side eye every time marriage news hits the press. It’s Regency but it’s relatable and has a contemporary energy that I just understood. So, I said yes.”
It's a good thing she did. The film, in theaters now, is a charming and thoughtful take on love, class, and social mores. It follows Ashton’s Julia who, after failing to live up to the expectations of the season’s most eligible bachelor (Dìrísù's Jeremy Malcolm), enlists a country cousin (Pinto) to trick him into falling for her to teach him a lesson about his boorish ways of courting. That is, until fate (and perhaps the spirit of Jane Austen) intervenes. Variety notes its “scrumptious light charm,” which is certainly part of the appeal, but there’s more to the film that just that.
“Because of this contemporary edge, you can understand that a woman who’s starting to feel closed in on by society because of not living up to the expectations in place at that time would be driven to do desperate things,” Ashton explains. “That hasn’t changed, for sure. I also feel like the representational casting in this really added layers to that journey. Thinking about the fear of being othered and what that means, the fear of not assimilating accordingly, is something I could really plug into. They’re all striving to present this façade to the world so that they can fit in, which is really what we all want, isn’t it?”
Ashton knows a thing or two about presenting different faces to the world. The London native has been working in film and television since she was a child, and after attending the Manchester School of Theatre, she’s worked on stage and screen in projects including Dreams of a Life, Nocturnal Animals, Velvet Buzzsaw, and a 2019 production of Betrayal that won rave reviews on both the West End and Broadway. (Her co-star in both productions was Tom Hiddleston; the two are now engaged and expecting their first child.) She’s also a playwright and author whose first book, Character Breakdown, was published in 2019. But before Mr. Malcolm’s List came along, she was taking an intentional break from work in front of the camera.
“Like lots of my peers, there was an awareness for me that the pendulum wasn’t swinging enough when it came to representation and leveling the playing field of the work that we do,” Ashton explains. “I thought, I’m getting a bit bored of trying to get into a party I’m not invited to. It’s time to give back, reach out, and help validate in ways that didn’t happen for me. I feel like actors who are just starting out need to know that you’re allowed to be of service in other ways. It was a reshuffling of the deck of cards for myself, and with that has come the most fruitful years of my career. That feels really good.”
For director Emma Holly Jones, luring Ashton back on screen was essential to getting her film made. “It’s a long story, but it has a wonderful ending,” Jones says. “The amazing Gemma Chan was in the short film, but she was never going to be part of the feature. She was busy doing a little movie called The Eternals. There was another actress cast after the short film, and she dropped out two weeks before we started filming, which sent us all into panic mode. We were genuinely petrified we wouldn’t be able to make the movie until one of my producers said to me, ‘there’s this really amazing actress who we think might be available, would you meet her?’ I was like, of course. And it was Zawe.”
Jones had been a fan of Fresh Meat and knew Ashton’s work on stage, and the two quickly arranged a call. “We got on Zoom and she pitched a very different version of the character than what was on the page; she pitched the Bridget Jones of 1818 and I fell in love with her in that moment,” Jones says. “What she saw in this character and the material was something even I hadn’t seen yet, and she took what could be seen as a bitchy villain and gave her heart and soul and made her a character you root for. It was phenomenal to see. I tell you that story because it’s not only a huge testament to Zawe’s talent and professionalism, but also because I think she literally saved this movie.”
Speaking to Ashton, it’s clear that she wasn’t just looking to save the day, but also to make a project that meant something. “For me, it’s about finding work that somehow aligns the past, present, and future,” she explains. “Even though this is light fare, there’s a course correcting of history that I’m able to be part of, there’s a very present needle moving, and there’s a legacy element to it. It’s an opening of doors that will hopefully change things for the next generation of creative people, and that makes me feel very at peace.”
It's work that is never quite done, however. Ashton’s next project, child aside, will be director Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, due next year—“she’s the youngest director of a Marvel movie and the first Black woman to direct a Marvel movie,” Ashton explains, I wanted to be part of that”—and then she’s hoping to indulge her other pursuits.
“There’s a good play in me and there’s probably a really good film in me, and I also want to get back to directing,” she says. “There are so many doors that are open, there are parties that I can get into now. Or, better yet, I’ll throw my own.”
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