Simone Ashley Tapped As Female Lead In Season 2 Of Bridgerton

At the end of Season one of Netflix’s

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Regency-era juggernaut Bridgerton, Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) pledged to promptly declare his intentions to his new viscountess. We now know who that lucky lady may be. As first reported by Deadline, Simone Ashley (Because the Night, Sex Education) has been tapped to play the new female lead in Season two of the wildly popular Regency-era drama based on a series of novels by Julia Quinn.

When the Season two renewal was announced, appropriately via a Lady Whistledown-style gossip sheet, Anthony Bridgerton was identified as the one who “intends to dominate the social season.” It is expected that the source material for the upcoming season will be the second book in Quinn’s Bridgerton series, The Viscount Who Loved Me, in which Anthony encounters the headstrong Kate. 

But there is already one major difference. Unlike the book’s Kate Sheffield, this one will be known as Kate Sharma, a young woman of Indian descent. This is in keeping with Bridgerton’s commitment to colorblind casting which favors representation over historical accuracy. Ashley will be one of several new additions to the cast. 

“We have a bunch of new characters we are going to be introducing,” creator and showrunner Chris Van Dusen revealed on Today with Hoda & Jenna last month while announcing the new season. “Anthony is going to have a love interest next season, and I think it’s going to be as sweeping and moving and as beautiful as viewers of the first season have come to expect from the show.” Van Dusen shares executive producing duties with Shondaland’s Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Bailey was effusive in his praise for Van Dusen’s knack for weaving multiple subplots from other books in the series into the current season.

“I think Chris Van Dusen has got this amazing ability to take Julia Quinn’s extraordinary books and her amazing worlds that she delicately filled with excitement and sexiness. And he takes it to a whole other level. So the fact that we’re following Anthony’s pursuit for love shows that you know there’s definitely going to be some similarities.”

As for hints about his possible new viscountess, Bailey added, “Having read the second book, if Anthony gets to meet anyone half as brilliant as Kate Sheffield is, then he’s going to be a very lucky man.”

Bridgerton has been a hit with audiences worldwide since its debut last Christmas. With its modern spin on period drama romance, the show became the crown jewel of Netflix’s catalog as a record 82 million global households tuned in within the first four weeks of its release. It is now the biggest series on the streaming service, relegating previous title holder The Witcher to the number two spot (76 million). The show also reached number one in 76 countries. Bailey and Ashley will be succeeding Regé-Jean Page (Simon, Duke of Hastings) and Phoebe Dyvenor (Daphne, Duchess of Hastings) who captivated global audiences as the central characters. Page is scheduled to host Saturday Night Live this weekend. 

Production on Season two of Bridgerton is set to begin this Spring.