Simone Ashley of ‘Bridgerton’ Cracks Open the Magic of ‘Kanthony’

Everyone who’s watched Bridgerton Season 2 knows that Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) isn’t a people pleaser. In fact, it’s one of the things Ashley loves most about her character. Kate relocates with her sister, Edwina (Charithra Chandran), and their mother, Lady Mary (Shelley Conn), to Regency England, just in time to participate in the season’s marriage market. Kate and Mary have high hopes of finding Edwina a suitable husband and securing their family’s future, but Kate refuses to be pinned in by the rules that define the Regency-era social season.

She embarks on unchaperoned early morning horseback rides and is ambivalent about being labeled a spinster at 26. She’s sharp, demanding and capable, acting as a buffer between her sister — whom Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) has crowned the season’s diamond — and the suitors who might court Edwina for the wrong reasons. “When I had the material of Kate put in front of me, I could definitely see that this was a complicated character that maybe some people wouldn’t fully understand until you get to know her,” Ashley tells Tudum. “I think that’s what I loved about Kate. You had to earn her trust to truly get to know her heart, the person she is and her story.”

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How ‘Pieces of Her’ and ‘The Lost Daughter’ Shatter the Illusion of Motherhood

Growing up on Chicago’s south side in the ’90s and early 2000s, Black women were always the mothers. Or at least that’s how it seemed. My mother, a gorgeous brown-skinned woman from the west side, with 12 siblings and an MBA, stood at the center. Other mothers were in her orbit as well — neighbors, aunts, cousins, even the mothers I saw on TV.

The Cosby Show’s Clair Huxtable, Moesha’s Dee Mitchell, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s Aunt Viv felt familiar because they resembled the real-life mothers in my life, who all made motherhood seem effortless. They dressed elegantly, easily juggled the demands of their careers with parenting and still seemed to have ample time for themselves. As a result, I assumed mothering was easy. But that’s the thing: So much of what we perceive about motherhood is an illusion. It wasn’t until I was well into my 20s, reflecting back on my childhood that I realized all of the challenges that these women faced.

Continue reading at Netflix’s Tudum.

Deconstructing the Sex Appeal of LaKeith Stanfield Across Four Roles

There are few actors as versatile and intensely arresting as LaKeith Stanfield. Since appearing in Destin Daniel Cretton's Short Term 12 upon graduating from high school, Stanfield has gone on to work with premier talents, including Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele and Donald Glover. Most recently, he joined his contemporaries Jonathan Majors, Regina King and Idris Elba in Netflix’s thunderous Western The Harder They Fall.

Continue reading at Netflix’s Tudum.