SUNDAY, APRIL 3 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E13
IN THE GALLERIESBY BETHONIE BUTLER“Bridgerton” returned last
week with a new Regency-era love
story for us to follow, as Viscount
Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan
Bailey) decides to settle down in
the name of fulfilling his family
duty. The season sets up a love
triangle between Anthony and
two newcomers to the ton: Edwi-
na Sharma (Charithra Chandran),
the practical marriage choice, and
her tradition-eschewing sister
Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley),
with whom the Viscount shares a
dizzyingly passionate connection.
Season 2 doesn’t have as much
bodice-ripping as the show’s first
season, but it does feature more of
the fan favorite Queen Charlotte,
played to scene-stealing delight
by Golda Rosheuvel. The royal
tastemaker is intent on finding
out the identity of Lady Whistle-
down, the anonymous gossip-
monger exposing the secrets (and
hypocrisy) of London’s elite. It was
while filming the eight-episode
second season that Rosheuvel
learned her role would expand
even further — into a forthcoming
prequel about the younger ver-
sions of Queen Charlotte; the
Bridgerton family matriarch, Vio-
let (Ruth Gemmell); and Lady
Danbury (Adjoa Andoh). “It’s
written by Shonda Rhimes, which
is like a dream come true,”
Rosheuvel said.
As it turns out, Rhimes has
been inspiring Rosheuvel since
long before she donned the
queen’s heavy crown. The Lon-
don-based actress talked to The
Washington Post earlier this
month about the latest season of
the Netflix series, the “Bridger-
ton” fan base and finding the “vul-
nerability” of her beloved charac-
ter.
(This conversation has been ed-
ited and condensed for clarity.)
Q: Queen Charlotte has a much
bigger role this season. Do you
have any sense of whether that is
because you were such a fan
favorite in Season 1?
A: Oh gosh, you hope so, don’t
you? The fans have been
absolutely fantastic. As far as I’m
concerned, they’re the best fans
in the world. We have a really
strong fan base in Brazil. They
were fans of the books right from
the get-go — before “Bridgerton”
[the series] was even kind of
thought about. So it’s wonderful
that they’ve taken us into their
family and into their arms and
really celebrate us. That’s always
nice, isn’t it? When fans kind of
go, “Yes, we approve.”
Q: Other actors from popular
Netflix series have said the level
of fandom and recognition can be
kind of explosive. Did you feel
like your life changed after you
were on this show because it was
so popular?
A: To a certain extent, yes. My
social media went from 10 people
to now 54,000. [Editor’s note:
Since this interview and Season
2’s subsequent debut, that
number has grown to more than
68,000 followers.] So in that
respect, yeah, there’s a lot more
eyes upon you, which is great
because it means that people are
really investing in what you do
and that’s what you want as an
actress. You put things out there
— I never think that anybody is
going to like what I do. It’s really
amazing when they do like it and
it kind of makes it all worthwhile.
All those 4 a.m. pickups to go and
shoot a day’s filming is definitely
worth it when you have that
support behind you.Q: What was the first signal for
you that the show had really
taken off?
A: The first indication was when
it went out on Christmas Day [in
2020]. I mean, you know, Boxing
Day, the next day, it was like,
“Okay. Wow. All right, this is
something special.” And in sad
circumstances with covid and
shutdowns and lockdowns all
across the world, it just felt really
special that everybody had
connected to this amazing
fantasy world that reflected the
world that we’re living in today,
and was inclusive and had a
really diverse cast, but yet had
glitz and glamour and fabulouscostumes and wigs and gorgeous
stately homes to look at. I think
the universe was aligned on that
day and it was magic.Q: How familiar with Shonda
Rhimes were you?
A: Very. I watched “Grey’s
Anatomy” when it first came out.
“How to Get Away with Murder.”
“Scandal” was something that
helped me through another job: I
was playing Othello as a woman,
and Olivia Pope was a real kind of
inspiration for me and a real kind
of lean post for me while I was
doing that role. Olivia Pope — and
Kerry Washington’s performance
— just really kind of lended itself
to Othello and what she was
going through and the world that
Othello has to navigate. I watched
all of that box set through
rehearsals and playing the role.Q: You played Othello as a
woman and you also played
Mercutio (from “Romeo and
Juliet”) as a woman. There’s been
so much conversation about
Queen Charlotte being a Black
woman in “Bridgerton,” and of
course there’s a historical basis
for that. But it still subverts
people’s expectations. Do you feel
like that’s a throughline in your
work that you look to challenge
the audience and viewers?
A: I never seek roles. I haven’t yet
done that. It was never
something that was in my brain
to do — roles always kind of cameto me. And I think for the first
part of my career, or up until now,
I think that was a really healthy
and good way to go. It just so
happened that the roles that
came to me were ones that I could
say something. I don’t cast myself
as a political person at all. But
through my work, political ideas
— ideas of humanity — come out.
So, I feel very blessed in that way
that that’s been the trajectory.
And now [that] my agency has
risen because of “Bridgerton,” I
think that I’m looking for roles
more now that I want to delve
into. I think for me, that’s about
challenging myself,
understanding who I am as an
actress and what I want to say
through my work.Q: What do you like about
playing Queen Charlotte?
A: Queen Charlotte, she’s
comfortable to me. I know her as
a character so well, and it’s such
an honor to — you know, I’m a
biracial actress, biracial person —
and to be able to kind of channel
my mom and to really celebrate
my White side and the way I was
brought up and where I’ve been
brought up in my childhood and
stuff is really important. I think
there’s not enough talked about
biracial people and artists and
how they balance their two
heritages or their worlds or their
paths or their journeys. And I
think there’s space for that
dialogue to happen.Q: I wanted to ask you about the
fashion and the wigs, which were
as fabulous as ever. How
collaborative is that process?
A: You have to stick to the
Georgian outline of it. But then
within that, you can play around
and do lots of things. It’s a very
collaborative experience. And
also what I found really helpful
this time around is how we’ve
been able to make the wigs
lighter with finding different
structures and different
materials to actually create the
structure so that it’s not so heavy
on my head. Because although
the first season was amazing and
they were works of art, the weight
of them was quite intense. This
time around, the kind of
mechanics of it has been looked
at and we’ve discussed different
material and how we were going
to create these works of art with
lighter material.Q: There was a really tender
scene in Season 2 where the king
[King George III, who suffered
from mental illness] comes in
and is very confused and Edwina
talks to him kindly and escorts
him out. I just wanted to ask you
about that scene because I loved
it and it stood out to me.
A: Yeah, I love that scene — those
scenes are my favorite. I think it
would have been really easy to
make Queen Charlotte a one-
dimensional character. She’s
great in the balls. She’s great at
her one-liners. She’s great at the
gossip, all of that stuff, and that’s
fabulous to play. But to be able to
connect with her vulnerability
and her private moments, for me
as the actress, is really thrilling
because it creates a three-
dimensional character to play. It
means that all the personal stuff,
all the vulnerability can layer the
kind of grandiose. When you see
me at these lavish balls, I’m
carrying all of that stuff with me
— you don’t see it — but it’s good
for me to hold that, to be able to
create a rounded character.Q: Generally speaking, how much
does the cast know going in? Do
you see all the scripts for all of the
episodes? Did you know ahead of
last season who Lady
Whistledown was?
A: We didn’t know who Lady
Whistledown was. There was a
couple of endings that they shot. I
think Nicola [Coughlan, whose
character was revealed to be to be
the gossip writer] knew. And then
by the end, everybody kind of
started finding out. We don’t get
all of the scripts straight away.
Some people don’t like that —
they like to kind of have the
whole rounded character and the
rounded journey. I don’t mind. I
work very much on my instincts. I
find it quite thrilling to find it out
as it comes.Golda Rosheuvel peels back Queen Charlotte’s layers
LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX“To be able to
connect with her
vulnerability and
her private
moments... is
really thrilling
because it creates
a three-
dimensional
character to play.”
Golda Rosheuvel,
on playing Queen CharlotteGolda Rosheuvel as
Queen Charlotte in the
second season of
“Bridgerton.”BY MARK JENKINSNikki Brugnoli and Anne C.
Smith are very comfortable
working in the dark. Black
dominates the mixed-media
work in “Forces Fleeting,” the
first joint exhibition by the two
local artists and longtime
friends. The show, one of the
few at the Athenaeum to
overflow from the venue’s main
gallery into the basement, was
inspired by nighttime trips and
other sorts of passages.
Both artists’ pictures are
mostly, but not entirely,
monochromatic. Smith’s are
white-on-black drawings of
simple shapes on stained linen
whose undercoats occasionally
reveal brighter colors. Brugnoli’s
are drawn and painted atop
black-and-white screen prints
on Mylar, and all are in shades
of gray and black, save for one
streaked with gold pigment.
The central images in
Brugnoli’s works appear to be
derived from photographs and
are thus more detailed, even
when partially submerged
beneath sumi ink, white
charcoal or other materials. The
motifs include power lines, tree
groves and train tracks, all
spindly but conveying a sense of
motion or connection. Smith
offers flatly abstracted
renditions of what look to be
such commonplace objects as
cups and boxes, although her
statement likens each form to
an “internalized landscape.”
Smith pulls closest to Brugnoli’s
territory with “Track,” a
rendering of a few rough lines
that parallel or overlap.
Where Smith’s pieces resulted
from family trips to Syracuse
and back, Brugnoli’s have a
more somber impetus: the 2021
death of her father. Of the
artworks’ recurring shapes, the
artist’s statement explains, “I
repeat to remember. I destroy to
reimagine. I bury to unearth.”
The cables, tracks and trunks in
Brugnoli’s pictures symbolically
link past and present, warm
memory and cold reality.Nikki Brugnoli and Anne C.
Smith: Forces Fleeting Through
April 17 at the Athenaeum, 201
Prince St., Alexandria.Small Scale Site
Specific Sculpture
Show (SSSSSS)
Most gallery proprietors offer
artists a white room in which to
display their work. Artist-
entrepreneurs Nancy Daly] and
Rex Delafkaran went further at
the new location of their pop-
up, But, Also. They outfitted the
space with white secondhand
furniture and other fixtures,
including a partial shower
enclosure. Then they invited
nine artists to add their own
touches to complete the “Small
Scale Site Specific Sculpture
Show (SSSSSS).”
Some of the artworks are
conspicuous. Brian Michael
Dunn littered the table with
screen-printed facsimiles of
dollar bills, their images too
degraded to prompt charges of
counterfeiting. Kevin Kao
covered the walls around the
shower with mini-shelves whose
bulbous shapes suggest the body
but whose reflective surfaces
serve as mirrors. J. Alex
Schechter suspended from one
wall a ramshackle array of
terrariums whose components
include artificial plants, metal
vises and fuchsia LEDs.
Other pieces are at least
somewhat hidden. HannahSpector placed an etching and a
video-playing electronic tablet
inside a drawer. Yan Jin tore six
pages from a Jorge Luis Borges
book and stuffed them inside
balloons, which hang beneath
the nailed-down tome. Emily
Francisco outfitted a medicine
cabinet with small metal boxes
filled with healing animal
sounds. In this idiosyncratic
home goods store, some of the
most attractive merchandise is
ephemeral.Small Scale Site Specific
Sculpture Show (SSSSSS) T hrough
April 9 at But, Also, 1418 N. Capitol
St. NW.Taplin & Sakai
In their influential 1972 book
about postmodern architecture,
“Learning From Las Vegas,”
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott
Brown and Steven Izenourdistinguish between two
building types: “ducks,” which
assume distinctive shapes, and
“decorated sheds.” D.C.
photographer Philip Taplin is a
duck hunter. The pictures in
“AmerIcons,” his Photoworks
show, memorialize structures
such as Lucy, the six-story wood-
and-tin elephant in Margate,
N.J. Also pictured are El Gran
Toro, a cow-shaped carryout
with glowing red eyes and, yes, a
building — the Big Duck — in
the form of a big white duck.
Yet some of the buildings
Taplin photographs are just
elaborately decorated sheds. The
entrance to Orlando’s Gatorland
is a set of monumental green
jaws, but they lead into an
everyday rectangular structure.
That the pictures of such places
don’t look ordinary owes much
to Taplin’s careful timing. The
photographer often shoots at
twilight, when pink and purpleskies add a fantastical element
to the compositions.
“AmerIcons” documents a
vanishing era in American
highway architecture, but its
images appear to exist eerily out
of time.
The pictures in Jennifer
Sakai’s “Hillover Road,” also at
Photoworks, are a different
variety of vacation snapshots.
Inspired by a Long Island house
that has served four generations
of a family, the project includes
sunny photos of the beach, the
sky and small commercial
structures. Some of the images
are interior close-ups,
emphasizing the dramatic play
of light on household objects.
Two series shot between 2008
and 2021 — one of the facade of
a local motel and the other of
driftwood pylons erected
temporarily in the sand — mark
passing time. That things
change just underscores“Hillover Road’s” sense of
continuity.Philip Taplin: AmerIcons and
Jennifer Sakai: Hillover Road,
Through April 10 at Photoworks,
Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur
Blvd, Glen Echo.Dave Eassa
Wooden walkways traverse
miniature sand dunes heaped
on the floor of Cody Gallery,
beneath a flower-festooned
archway and a sculpture of a
palm tree. The apparent goal of
Dave Eassa’s “People and Places
You Don’t Know How to Know”
is to take visitors on some kind
of journey.
The path meanders into the
Baltimore artist’s family history.
Descended from immigrants
from Syria, Palestinian
territories and Lebanon, Eassa
has reimagined his past,
inspired in part by a five-week
residency in Jordan in 2021. He
led art workshops for young
skateboarders while acquainting
himself with local culture.
The show centers on four
large paintings that depict
Eassa’s grandparents and other
relatives. Each has a band of
flowers — jasmine, poppies,
tulips and red roses — across
the bottom to represent the
Arab world. The pictures
combine sketchy outlines and
bold colors to suggest a mix of
traditional crafts with American
graffiti and Pop art. As
recounted here, Eassa’s life story
includes more than a bit of
urban Baltimore.Dave Eassa: People and Places
You Don’t Know How to Know
Through April 14 at Cody Gallery,
Marymount University Ballston
Center, 1000 N. Glebe Rd., Arlington.Artists’works harness the power of darkness in recalled and imaginary spaces
NIKKI BRUGNOLI/ATHENAEUM GALLERY
“Copper and Gold” by Nikki Brugnoli in the “Forces Fleeting” show at the Athenaeum. It’s the first
joint exhibition between local artists and longtime friends B rugnoli and Ann C. Smith.