Adriana Herrera: 0:01

Welcome to Unbound, the podcast where we take you on a wild ride through the world of pop culture and romance, sometimes with our rose-colored glasses off. I am Adriana Herrera and I write romance full of people who look and sound like my people getting unapologetic happy endings.

Nikki Payne: 0:22

And I'm your co-host, nikki Payne. Black Jane Austen fangirl, author of Pride and Protest, cultural anthropologist by day and belligerent Y-Mom by night.

Adriana Herrera: 0:31

Yours is so much better than mine.

Nikki Payne: 0:37

The truth.

Adriana Herrera: 0:37

All right. So we are so excited. We have been thinking, talking about doing this together for months now and we have I don't know like, how did we come together? I feel like we had seen each other online, seen that there was an affinity there, that there were things, thoughts, feelings views.

Nikki Payne: 1:01

Yes, we were circling each other.

Adriana Herrera: 1:03

We had mutual friends, friends that we loved, loved each other, and so we're like it's something, it's something about that and I knew for a fact that this could be amazing, because I think at some point a mutual friend of ours, allie Hazelwood, told me that you had done your dissertation in the Dominican Republic, where I am from. I did, I did, and I was like this is meant to be. This is the person who I should reach out to join me for an unhinged Completely unhinged.

Nikki Payne: 1:36

We are apologizing in advance.

Adriana Herrera: 1:38

An unhinged journey through romance and pop culture and how those things intersect, seen from the lens of two Black women.

Nikki Payne: 1:51

Yes, yes, so we know each other, but let's make sure the audience knows who we are and let's get to know us by pop culture. I have a question for you, Adriana. Are you ready, hit me. You can tell a lot about a person by the first thing they ever purchased with their own funds, with their own monies, their little, the money that their parents give them, their allowance, and then you go out and purchase something that is completely you. Can you tell me the first album, cd, single that you purchased with your own money?

Adriana Herrera: 2:25

I can, and it was two of them together, and I grew up in the Dominican Republic so we didn't have a lot of record stores that had like the like. It took a little time for the things to come back in the 80s when I was growing up, but my dad was traveling for work and I gave him my money that I had saved up and placed an order for him to buy me the cassettes for Thriller and the True Blue Madonna album. Those were the first two. The taste, the taste, yes, and those were my first. I don't have them anymore, but I remember when I was leaving the DR, when I was in my 20s, I still had those two cassettes in my pile of cassettes Quality. And so I have a question for you. Yes, also pop culture adjacent. What was the first live concert that you went to?

Nikki Payne: 3:27

First live concert. It is a story, okay. Imagine a 10-year-old just grooving very hard to Anita Baker. I was at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and I went with all of my aunties because Anita Baker is chief auntie music and I'm 10 years old and I'm like, caught up in the rapture of love. I did not know what the rapture of love was, but she was my first live experience and I have loved her ever since.

Adriana Herrera: 3:57

I absolutely adore that. It is so I mean, and it's also so formative. It's such an amazing artist to imprint, to Like. This is now my standard for like what I want from like a live performance, like a live music performance.

Nikki Payne: 4:13

Like we can start with.

Adriana Herrera: 4:14

Anita Baker, like I unfortunately started with Chicago who were kind of like washed up and somehow ended up in in like a hotel ballroom in the Dominican Republic in 1992. And I went to see them. I love this with my mom. That was my first one. But just so that we can like close the circle, what was your first album that you bought with your own money?

Nikki Payne: 4:40

Oh, this is a. This is a story. I don't know if they had these in the Dominican Republic, but we had a little something called Columbia House Music oh yes, where you could purchase 12 CDs for just one penny and all you had to do was like promise to pay them back, like eventually, the problem with Columbia like I actually think they may be defunct because of that business model was really problematic. It was a Ponzi scheme. I got my it was absolutely a Ponzi scheme and so I brought my, bought my first album. It was Brandy. It was like the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, which was a fantastic soundtrack, but I got it specifically for Brandy sitting up in my room, which I played forever and ever. I just thought Brandy was the coolest person. She was so snatched all the time with her little freestyle braids and I just loved everything about her.

Adriana Herrera: 5:37

She was great. I mean, that was honestly like the golden age for like sultry, the golden age for like, like sultry, like luscious black women and like r&b. The television in the 90s was immaculate, like so many, and I was in the dr, like I was living in the Dominican Republic, and I remember like like we had cable, obviously, and which is why I speak English, and so like part of like like living single like I don't know so many of like I feel like the very like kind of like seminal pop culture things that like really shaped how I like my entertainment. The way I think about television came from that time and I think like Brandy is like one of those like really iconic women from that time.

Nikki Payne: 6:30

Absolutely, absolutely. And when you talk about someone like imprinting on you like Anita Baker walked so that like Toni Braxton could run Yep Right, like there was room for someone that sultry and low because of an in-banker.

Adriana Herrera: 6:44

Absolutely yes. No, I mean I think that, listen, we're giving like a little bit of like a rundown of like some of the good stuff of the 90s, like Chicago notwithstanding.

Nikki Payne: 6:55

Oh yeah. Please. I'm here for Chicago. I love dad bands Between our dads and aunties, like we can have us a cookout.

Adriana Herrera: 7:05

For real. I mean, I do feel like I was thinking about albums and I think for me growing up, I feel like the album that I always think about as the central album of my youth was Lauryn Hill, the Miseducation of Lauren Hill.

Nikki Payne: 7:25

Oh, miseducation of Lauren Hill was banger beginning to end, did not pause, just went straight through. I mean, I even know the speaking. Yes, same, I know the words.

Adriana Herrera: 7:37

Spiritual soul, like pierce something in me that never like, like it really was, like it was like a watershed type of piece of art for me and so much of it is the emotion and like the love and the heart wrenching and the heartbreak and that's, and like the way that, uh, I think, like a woman of color, like a black woman, love expresses, love, talks about love, thinks about love, beautiful.

Nikki Payne: 8:14

And I'm like this teenage girl, like a virgin, never been kissed, and I'm like, unsure what the balance held.

Adriana Herrera: 8:20

I touched my belly over, well, and I'm like, I feel you the decisions I feel you the well and I'm like, I feel you the decision, I feel you the choice. I was 20, so I was in the midst of making a lot of bad life choices with romantic partners at that time and I felt every single word of that album like deeply. So, yeah, I mean, I think, like I think this is a perfect segue for us to begin to talk, because I think for me, like I love, like there's so much music that's like heartbreak music that I love. But there's a certain thing about some of those like R&B songs from that time like tony braxton, as you mentioned that like really spoke to specifically like my experience of, like how I thought about love and the way love and heartbreak felt to me in particular I think the reason why, like lauren hillyn Hill and Toni Braxton and Anita Baker, like we mentioned, imprinted on us, is because the perspective matters.

Nikki Payne: 9:31

It's the reason why we felt like this was going to be a really, really compelling podcast the perspective of Black women on pop culture. It adds an extra element of understanding and it moved us, and I think that this, what we're doing here, is we bring our perspective on to romance novels and pop culture events like movies, tv shows and TV series. I think that the the perspective, yes.

Adriana Herrera: 9:59

The point of view is, I think, essential to how something affects you. And we we're both romance readers have been romance readers for most of our lives. I I think at some point we should probably do a podcast about how we became romance readers. But, um, I started reading romance when I was like in middle school, like 12, 13 years old, and so I'm in my forties now. That's a lot of romance and a lot of that romance has been about white women, written by white women, and I've loved it. It's been like it's. It's such an important romance, has always been such an important part of my life. But one of the things you and I have talked about is now that we can't know that we have that there is so much more to read how, so how that lens and how, the point of view and the positionality, the, the world view of the author and the characters they write does make a difference it does.

Nikki Payne: 11:03

It changes extensively, extensively what is understood when the reader reads something. Sometimes I'm watching a show or reading something and I look around and I say, is everyone reading this or watching this in the same way that I'm watching this? And as a cultural anthropologist I will say probably 100 percent know that everyone is having an experience with media that is completely kind of wrapped up in the way that they see the world.

Adriana Herrera: 11:30

Yes, Like their position, their identities, where they're coming from. Like I mean thinking about again, like some of the I mean some of the books that are out now, and just being able to pick out things that are like so singularly culture is something that to I mean for both of us obviously, like we have like picked up on this, that it has been transformative for us to be able to like consume these things that are so singularly about us, and it's a great time to dive into it deeply, do deep dives into.

Nikki Payne: 12:14

Yeah and ask. So imagine, no, go ahead. I was just going to say so. Imagine all of our kind of quivering hearts when Shonda Rhimes, a Black woman, right, with this particular perspective, picks up an OG romance, right, like if anyone has cut their teeth in romance the way that we have. We know that Julia Quinn has been writing romance for years and I was a fan of that Bridgerton series. It was a fantastic series by itself. And then when Shonda Rhimes says, oh, I'm going to pick this up, you're automatically like what is she? What is she doing? What's happening? Because you're automatically attuned to know that the perspective in here, the perspective here, matters.

Adriana Herrera: 13:01

And there was a big payoff for I mean for me in terms of like the blind, casting the diverse, just being able to visually take in people of color, black women in particular like existing in that world was phenomenal. It was just like wonderful to see. And then this year, who we got, what we're gonna talk about today tell us, tell us, tell us, what we got, which, which is the like, the spinoff of the bridgerton series, queen charlotte.

Adriana Herrera: 13:40

so it's the backstory of Queen Charlotte, who we know from the first two seasons, who is the Black Queen of Bridgerton, and we both saw that series and were blown away shook, shooketh reborn, re healed I was.

Adriana Herrera: 14:08

I felt like I was healing and I was like being reborn at the same time. With that, with that series, it was just phenomenal and we thought it was the perfect way to kind of launch these conversations that we want to have about the importance, the value, the impact of of gaze and lens when it comes to pop culture and romance and how they intersect, how they work together. Something that we were talking about when we were kind of like planning is that, like there is no romance without pop, without pop culture, like romance is, is very enmeshed. It's like, if you want to know what is happening in a moment, read a romance novel. If you want to know, what's in the?

Adriana Herrera: 14:58

ether, what's in the atmosphere, what the zeitgeist is zeitgeist I love that word in a particular time, pick up a romance novel, and they and you will get like. They always have the like, the pulse of the culture, right. And so with queen charlotte, as with shonda rhimes, who knows exactly what she's doing and is also always so on point when it comes to what's timely, what's relevant, yep, it's just the perfect place for us to start having these conversations about point of view and love stories.

Nikki Payne: 15:45

Can I admit something to you, adriana, please do. I was afraid to watch this same. I was like I want to like this, but I don't want to. I do. I was like a romance heroine, like I'll never love again. I I was afraid to watch this. I had read a lot of think pieces. I was online, you know, watching Twitter and like watching people watch this, and I was about to stay away.

Adriana Herrera: 16:16

Me too. I was ready to stay away, like I was okay, it's Shonda, like I'm curious. I really love the character of Queen Charlotte from the first two seasons. That actress, um, is phenomenal. So I was like I want to. But then the think pieces started coming out and and I am in a text chat group with a few other romance authors who are also Black women, and we were all just like ooh, like I don't want to watch something that's going to be like traumatic or that's gonna like give me like. There were a lot of think pieces that were really like not like giving kind of snippets out of context and it was really making me scared that it would not be the experience that I was hoping it was.

Nikki Payne: 17:13

And this just like speaks to this the way that Black women consume media. There's this way that we almost have to like, protect our, our space when we're watching something and it's like, is this going to be okay to engage with? And you almost come into situations tentatively. I don't want to bring up a painful time in my past, but I was obsessed with this show called Sleepy Hollow and if you've ever watched Sleepy Hollow then you know that Black women are struggling. I mean, even New Amsterdam is a great example of what they do to Black women and their joy and their story and their arcs.

Adriana Herrera: 17:55

We were scammed, we were hoodwinked, we were bamboozled. Yes, yes, yes, we were scammed, hoodwinked. Sc were scammed, scammed and bamboozled.

Nikki Payne: 18:07

They hurt us. They truly did. They hurt us. We should do another episode. If I say the word Sleepy Hollow, in a certain group of people they're just like oh you know, everything just explodes. But yeah, and it's because of that that I was treading very lightly on this, of that, um, that I was treading very lightly on this, I'm like I don't want to see myself, like fall in love with a story, with a character, for them to decide that she's expendable to be hurt or to have and like and this is something going off of the experiences that we have in the past.

Adriana Herrera: 18:38

Like we have a large body of evidence of the kinds of stories that we have been served, specifically like when it's like period pieces of how black women are portrayed in those stories and a lot of it is a lot of trauma. And so I did not want like I just didn't want to be disappointed because I was thinking if this ends up being where, like, the two first stories were able to be okay, and then the story that is like centering Black women is going to be like a lot of trauma and a lot of strife and a lot of struggle, then that's going to be like really hurtful to me. Like really hurtful to me. And so, thankfully, one of my friends bravely was like I'm gonna watch the first episode and I'll report back.

Adriana Herrera: 19:33

I'm just gonna sit and watch it brave soul and I was like, okay, just let us know. And she was like y'all, I loved it, I'm gonna watch the second one like I have. She was like I love and she watched like the first. I mean, if you have watched the first of Bridgerton seasons, you know that it is very easy to sit down and watch the first episode and just watch all the episodes and like one sitting.

Adriana Herrera: 19:54

So she ended up watching like the first three and by the third, she like by the third episode, she was like all in. She was like this is phenomenal, I love everything about it so far and the romance is like hitting. So I was like, okay, I'll do it. And then, thankfully, um like I, I watched it and I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved it, and we are going to talk about all the reasons why at length oh yes, same thing happened to me.

Nikki Payne: 20:24

There was a scout who went out ahead of us and said I'm going to watch this, and then she came back to report it is good and then, like everyone in our group, watched it.

Adriana Herrera: 20:33

Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's a kind of a testament to just how much we have been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray by like other shows that are promise us like a black female lead with like a love story, and then we end up like on the floor that, knowing that it was Shonda Rimes, we still had our doubts, we did, and Shonda Rimes, like can deliver.

Nikki Payne: 21:04

She has before she she does, Like has before she does. She gave us that one scene of Annalise Keaton taking off that wig on primetime TV. I mean, that was the wig pull-off heard around the world.

Adriana Herrera: 21:16

Yeah, I mean Shonda, and that is again what like? Just like having that experience of having been disappointed, like we really are in that place where, like we don't want to be disappointed again with television or a romance that ends up not doing what we needed to do, and with this one, honestly, like I I mean I have like one note for that entire show.

Nikki Payne: 21:47

Ooh Ooh, let's start at the beginning. How did you like the way we were introduced to this character?

Adriana Herrera: 21:56

I loved it and I think that it set the set, the tone for what that show was going to be, which is why I mean I love the romance in the show. I truly thought it was perfect. But what I love the most about this show was that it was centering women's lives, specifically Black women and their agency, how they negotiated it, how they got it, how they protected it, how they negotiated it.

Adriana Herrera: 22:32

And so, to me, how they introduced us to Charlotte in that moment, where she literally is like about to be sold into a marriage, and how she reacts and how she like, how she takes off from there, to me was just like perfect.

Nikki Payne: 22:55

Okay, tell me why. This is a scene that stood out to me as well, because there was something so impotent about her anger that she overhears her brother signing her off in marriage and she overhears it just kind of by happenstance, by serendipity, and she can't say I will not marry. She can't say I cannot do this. She can't say like this won't happen. She can't say like this won't happen. She just pushes over an expensive piece of art to show that she is there, to show that she is enraged and to show that she is like alive and an actual person. And to me that was it's honestly the cry of like so many women of color is like. I am here, I see this happening and sometimes my rage is impotent and that's like I feel like that's. That was something that stuck with me for that very reason.

Adriana Herrera: 23:51

Yeah, same. And I mean even like that monologue that she gives when they're in the carriage, and like in the first episode, um, they are like going to where she's basically going to go get married off to the you know King of England. Sight unseen just gets there to be married and just talking about what she's wearing, and like she's wearing a corset that if she moves the wrong way like it'll puncture her lung, and like just she has a line, that's great, that just like oh, the joys of being a woman Like she's. Like I am dressed up, I'm getting sold off to this guy.

Adriana Herrera: 24:30

I've never seen him Like I'm suspicious that something's up with this guy, because like we're this like tiny little place in the middle of nowhere in Germany and how did I end up being the one that he wants to marry Like something out of nowhere in Germany, and how did I end up being the one that he wants to marry Like something is clearly wrong here and again to me, just her like her, giving us that sense that, like she's no dummy, she could stand up for herself if she's allowed to do so and she is aware of like her situation, like her self-awareness. I think that to me, is something that is so invaluable and I get so much out of a heroine that is self-aware.

Nikki Payne: 25:14

Oh, here's why I fell in love with her in episode one, and one of the things that they do with her in like clothing is like she's sitting there like in the carriage, trying not to move, and it's. She gives this fantastic monologue, like you mentioned, but this it's about constriction. It's about her being unable to move out of the position that she's in and that she is angry about it, right? So she's doing two things she's talking about clothes and she's talking about herself, right. And finally, at the end, when she's like going to make this choice, trying to decide about whether she's going to go over the fence or stay, when she decides to stay and not go over the fence, she changes outfits, she changes clothes, and I think that says something about what she wants her life to be either full of constriction or full of choices that she's making and having her own agency.

Adriana Herrera: 26:09

Yes, and that's also something that I loved, I mean again to me, shonda Rhimes was giving us a lot of layers. I think, if you almost like, if you watch it like, I feel like this is the kind of show that you need to watch more than once because you could miss some of the things that she's trying to do. Because, like, I feel like one of the things that she talks a lot about and specifically for women of color is, like black women and brown women, is that we learn very early on that you have to be pragmatic and you have the choice. You have to make the choices that you can when you can and you cannot hesitate. Have to make the choices that you can when you can and you cannot hesitate. Yep, and I think that like that's part of like she's like again, like the moment she makes the decision that she's going to go through that marriage, she like draws the line in the sand, like, okay, I'm gonna do this, but I'm going to wear the dress that I want to wear yeah, yeah.

Nikki Payne: 27:06

and there's this one scene that was like the kind of beginning of a girl friendship, where Lady Danbury looks up at her from the rafters. You can almost see that character make a decision to be about that other woman. Woman, right, like you could almost see it wash over her. And I think sometimes it can take that like for a Black woman to look up and say like, okay, I see this one person in this situation that we could never hope to be in and I'm going to do whatever I can and root for this person to make sure that they kind of stay where they are. So there was this moment of like I see you and I'm going to see about this. I mean, and I think I mean that's a kind of stay where they are. So there was this moment of like I see you and I'm gonna, I'm gonna see about this.

Adriana Herrera: 27:49

I mean, and I and I think I mean that's a kind of great segue to go on into the piece of like we talked about the first couple of Bridgerton series or having seen the first two seasons, and one of the things that Shonda did with the series that is not part of like the original text is that she created this world where, like, black people and people of color were like part of the aristocracy.

Adriana Herrera: 28:13

And so in queen charlotte she kind of gives us the context or how that happened. And it happened because king george married queen King George married Queen Charlotte, who in the series is a Black woman, and so part of like how Shonda kind of gave us, like rendered that for us, was putting Lady Danbury in the scene who was like basically there to look out for these people of color who were all of a sudden made aristocrats and made nobility. And to me that like that piece of the story is to me, I think, the key of like how stories with Black women at the center are, I feel like singular or not singular, but like very like it's a theme that I feel like is a common one in stories about Black communities or Brown communities is the piece of you can't just think of yourself and your own. Survival, like survival for a marginalized group, isn't an individual thing. It's gotta be survival of the like, of the community, of the collective, and so lady.

Nikki Payne: 29:39

oh my gosh, this is, this is fantastic. I just want to bring in like a literary example of this One of my favorite books, canon at this point, is the Color Purple. And one of the first mistakes that Sophia, who was this really spirited, lively woman, the first mistakes that she makes in friendship to Celie, is that when Harpo is asking her for advice, you know about what to do, not Harpo. But like she's asking for advice and Sophia says, well, you should beat her. And she's just she's essentially saying, like this is my experience, this is what I know.

Nikki Payne: 30:30

And then when she comes back to her friend, her friend asks her you know this, this wounded question, you know to say, like why would you do this to me? Like why would you say this? And Sophia did not even know, right, that it was not an okay thing to suggest. And the reason why I bring this up is that, like the extent to which having a character in who understands, right, that you cannot live and think about yourself as the only person having this experience, and it was one of the last times that Sophia kind of thought about only herself and her own experiences she ends up kind of growing as a character, but that was her biggest flaw. Right Is that she was about Sophia, you know.

Adriana Herrera: 31:21

Yeah, and the piece of like, and I mean like I talk about this a lot in terms of like what, how I write feminism in my books like I think one of the things that has been the most detrimental about the feminist movement is this idea of like gender equality without like equity in like other like systems of oppression, like this idea that if women are able to get in the room with the men and like play their games, that somehow we're going to gain ground and like what we do is we're just like pawns of, like a system that's not meant for us to thrive in. I think, yes, like that's something that like it's very clear to me that like shonda rhimes is functioning from a place, at least in this story of and I mean if she does that also in like scandal, or like you know, olivia pope just like takes down like sexual predators or whatever. But it's the piece of like, lady Danbury, like being there to remind Queen Charlotte, like you are the first of your kind. We are all depending on you. This is all very tenuous. They gave us these titles, this land, this security, this generational wealth because of you, and if you don't play your card right, we will lose it, and then we will lose this. This like one thing that could make everything different for generations to come, and she doesn't let her lose sight of that.

Adriana Herrera: 33:09

And Lady Danbury, like. I feel like that's one of the things I love about this show, specifically that Lady Danbury, like, is faced with difficult choices where she has to choose between what she wants for herself or the things that will allow her to have power that she can use, and she always makes the choice that benefits more than just her. So stay with us, because we're just getting started. The myths are unraveling y'all, and what we find beneath might just change everything.

Nikki Payne: 33:46

Y'all. I am so excited to sit down with Amanda Rae Prescott today. Amanda is a freelance entertainment journalist on the Bridgerton Beat and she's here to give us the inside scoop on all things Bridgerton. Her specialty is tracking UK TV with an eye to racial diversity discourse. She's a regular contributor to Den of Geek and her work can also be found at GBH Drama Club, history Today and Doctor who magazine. Her scholarly articles yes, she's a scholar have appeared in ABO Journal and the Journal of Popular Television. Amanda Ray has also been a guest on NPR and podcasts like Reality Bomb, wibbly, wobbly and the Thing About Austin. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, new York. Amanda, thank you for joining us.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 34:32

I'm excited to be here. I have kind of listened to y'all off and on, so I'm like glad to finally be here, yay.

Nikki Payne: 34:41

Okay, amanda, we have to start off with the hard-hitting questions, as you know, know, okay, the first thing that we want to know is what was the first piece of music? It can be a concert, it can be an lp, it can be a cassette what was the first piece of music that you spent amanda ray's hard-earned dollars on? Your, not your parents, your money okay, so this is gonna sound.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 35:05

I'm going to date myself a lot here. I'll buy a lot, buy like a whole lot. So in whatever year Smash Mouth's All Star came out, I bought that album, which is money Wow. Yeah, so that was like 19,. What? Eight, seven, something like that. The one was um brian satcher orchestra is a dirty boogie.

Nikki Payne: 35:34

So that was the second album I was gonna say tell us about that, like a little bit about that journey. Did british music get you into british tv?

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 35:41

or so. Here's a funny thing I was always into brit British TV because I grew up without cable in the 90s.

Nikki Payne: 35:50

Yeah, PBS right.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 35:52

Yeah, so PBS. Like I saw Alex Kingston's boobs at a probably tender age when I was able to really start like going all the way into, like being attached to. It was oddly enough around when House came out, so yeah. I went.

Nikki Payne: 36:09

Can I also like clock this, but it's interesting that House, which is actually an adaptation of Sherlock, right it is.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 36:19

Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's the thing. Like a lot of people I don't think clocked that at first that it was a Sherlock adaptation. I did not see the full version of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock until like, which was what they were kind of basing it on until like way after, like the Cumberbatch era one and the country happened Netflix and Amazon in their early days kind of just had a lot of BBC stuff on there and it kind of slowly went away, licensing and all that. So like not during COVID, like we have all these billion streamers. There was a lot of time to like for me to go back and like look at the quote-unquote classics and touch notes. I went back and re-watched a whole bunch of the uh mid, a whole bunch of all the jane austen's I went through as one does as one does, as one, all the dickens ones I went through.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 37:01

I went through um, several other, um, like you know, and then so I ended up finding new things to like in that list of of new things to like yes, it is virginia.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 37:14

It's. Virginia was on my list in terms of like, I'm going to cover this as a journalist list. It started with it start. I talked about blogging about down abbey um, the big one. The next big one after that was poldark um, I kind of had a bunch of yeah, tumblr, twitter blogs getting kicked out of random groups for stirring trouble and uncomfortable references. That's honestly where I really started. The diversity kind of work on was amanda, isn't that how I met you?

Nikki Payne: 37:43

we were getting kicked out of that jane austen group well, that's the story.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 37:47

So this is where this where the journalism part of me story comes in. So around 2015 or so, I decided to go to grad school for journalism. So I went to Columbia Journalism School, as one does when you're like I need to pad my resume and get a new skill, so that's what I did. So I literally used my Downton Abbey blog in my application to Columbia and it worked somehow, I know right.

Nikki Payne: 38:11

So, yes, there you go, kids.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 38:15

I watched Phil Dark a lot. Then I went online and started talking to other fans about it. Had a problem, because this was the word of like. Okay, there was a lot of older white women on this group and then a lot of older women of color who are probably from more conservative backgrounds oh yeah and it's the story has some misogyny, old time misogyny mixed with like world war 2, post world war 2 era misogyny.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 38:48

But of course I'mny mixed with like world war ii, post-war war ii era misogyny. But of course I'm trying to start talking so many issues with fans. It was very obvious that, a they had very little understanding of like anything related to feminism at all. It was a lot b uh, oddly enough, um, a whole, like whole dark, like gray area consent rape scene. A lot of the older women did not understand why that was a problem, because they're like, well, it was in the books, that's how it would have been back then. I'm like sure about that, yeah, and I'm like, well, obviously they have to go with the flow of the books because, I mean, they have authors of state to follow and all that. But I'm like, yeah, this is a problem.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 39:24

And I got constantly on to fight some people in these groups because they were like not, and another thing too, on top of that is they hated the female lead of the show because it's like oh wait, how dare you say the wife has a point? I'm like, how like, how dare you defend Imelda? I'm like what do you mean? And then I got called a lesbian a couple times for defending her. I'm like what. I'm like what is happening here not that that's even an insult, I'm like what. I also think that all of those learning that like how people hide what they really want to say and like how people frame arguments has actually prepared me for more recent things. If you look at outlander and how Outlander develops and how Outlander the fandom reacts and changes the books it made to the TV show, there's a lot of similarities with Bridgerton. So between Outlander and Poldark it has actually both of those prepared me for Bridgerton. But of course there's one step in between Hamilton fandom Older white people react to Hamilton.

Nikki Payne: 40:33

My current children. When they looked in the history books, they were shocked and I'm being so serious. They were shocked that the founding fathers were white. They were like what is this? They had no idea.

Adriana Herrera: 40:47

That's how I was, mommy J, the reason why I mentioned what is this? Like? They had no idea.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 40:48

That's all, mommy jay so the reason why I mentioned hamilton because hamilton actually is important for another factor in terms of like the way people talk about bridgerton the costume issues.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 40:57

Like I went on facebook one day trying to figure out how, like, what patterns are she used for the hamilton costumes and people were feeling a kind of a way about you shouldn't make costumes from hamilton, they're wrong. But I'm like but wait a second, you work at a museum, I'm just gonna go to comic-con and I've seen other people asking these questions and they get thrown out of these groups. So I was like, look the bridget, and people are doing the same thing. When people want to ask, like, I want to look like kate, I want to like, y'all are doing the same thing right now when people want to ask about penelope's outfits. So that's where writing about the pitfalls of outlander in season one of bridgerton is what really prepared me for this current discourse. Also seeing people immediately being nasty about the race bending and harassing actors of color online and all that. I was ready because of all the previous experience and, of course, a little thing in between season three, there's the Sanditon fandom.

Adriana Herrera: 41:59

Sanditon fandom. I was going to bring up Sanditon too, because that was also an interesting one as well. I don't have earrings, but I'm like taking them off I mean it's interesting we were talking bridgerton, sanditon and miss garland and the duke for me are kind of like all in the same package they all came around the same time yeah, and it's interesting to note too that two of those shows are masterpiece tvs shows.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 42:27

I have a sneaky feeling masterpiece was not ready for the fandom aspect of it. They were ready to tell people to watch the show. They were ready to, like you know, fundraise and stuff, but they I mean I've met a bunch of the masterpiece folks um now through freelancing and they really don't know the wild west. All three of them have attracted an audience that is not used to romance narratives and in a case of escargot, I would argue that the romance was probably a second or tertiary thought to the script.

Adriana Herrera: 43:07

I agree that I think the show creators the romance aspect was a second or tertiary thought. The problem was the chemistry between Stuart Martin and Kate was explosive. From the first episode I mean that man growled all the time Right and so From the first episode, yeah, I mean that man growled all the time, yeah, right, yeah and so, like I imprinted on that show and he's left the show now, like they announced in the end of the last season that he was not coming back, which is, you know, like I think the fandom that it gained through the romance I think is now gone, which is sad. But like to me those three, like Theo James in the Sanditon first season, also just that.

Adriana Herrera: 43:53

man was like climbing on top of carriages. I mean. On the run to Rent the.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 43:59

Green it was giving us everything. Yeah, so the people who are now realizing that Virginia Phantom is a problem like y'all. This has been a conversation for a while on multiple levels.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 44:09

I mean so like when I was harassing Regé for being ungrateful, I was like, no, this conversation's been done. Been there, done that. It's now extra nasty because of race. But like I call it the period drama male actor. When they have to, like, leave the period dramas, I call it um witness protection. Yeah, they have to just be. And now there's a new one for bridget and witness protection, because clearly people have been awful and horrible to very to all, to pretty much all the actors of color. I mean there's reports um last year, I think, of Rue Barger playing Marina said that they drove her to suicidal ideation because they were harassing her on Instagram and TikTok.

Adriana Herrera: 44:54

So did you find I mean, I have a question given. Like one of the episodes we've talked about is Queen Charlotte, the woman was the person of color. Like have you found that? Like the discourse, let's say, with Queen Charlotte, and perhaps even season two, where it was Simone Ashley and Jonathan Bailey? Like did you find it different than season one, where the person of the lead was like a man, that was a person of color, did you?

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 45:24

find it different. So here's the. There's a couple of through lines through all the seasons. Here's the. There's a couple of through lines through all the seasons and then there's a couple of differences.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 45:32

For season one, I think a lot of the anti-Bridgerton discourse came from the fact that people were expecting a white man to play Duke Correct, people were not really. People were not really expecting that. And then people were sad when he decided you know what? I have other opportunities, I'm gonna pursue them. You know what? I'm gone. And women I feel like there was a certain type of fan who found wish fulfillment through Simon and then they could not let that go. And, of course, I think, a lot of the other, the people who were not happy season one, obviously because they did not get. They did not. The whole simon daphne rape dynamic was not fixed in the show, although it looks like people might have wanted that fixed and maybe it's likely that quinn and other people pushed back on that. So there was mostly that commentary around season one. But a lot of people were like well, I like season one, let's see what happens next.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 46:26

Season two to me was more divisive for two reasons. Number one you had a lot of people, the love triangle factor, which was extended through the books. Number two the fact that simone ashley and taritha chandran were getting like pitted against each other in terms of promotion and people not realizing on taritha's side that she's not the lead, she's the antagonist, because people really thought she was elite. I think mixed into that discourse with all the usual racism was a lot of when I would look at stuff like other people of color. There was a lot of interesting like cast stuff in there because they're you're South Asian. I'm like this is looking a little weird to me as an American. I'm like that's not my area, but this looks y'all hate each other. I'm quite it wasn't so wild. But later somebody explained to me that apparently Simone Ashley comes from like was like a self-starter, and then Teresa's like family's, more well connected in England. So it was a lot like not just the like cast system and the cast of them and in class stuff in england as well. So like it was. And then I think some of so much with this french way.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 47:35

I think we're more worried in the industry, where I felt like the fans were hating on her, but it's not that they didn't realize they didn't read the books. They're like simone's the lead, kate's the lead, and then then a lot of discourse around season two turned into they ruined our characters because we don't get enough kate and anthony screen time. And that has continued into season three in terms of critiques on the show, along with your usual racist nonsense. And then, of course, you have the folks who where. What I found interesting about queen charlotte was that there was less fandom discourse in terms of like, in terms of everything except lady danbury's backstory. Like I noticed, the bridger named fandom was pretty okay with it. Only unless for because you know it is most that material is not in the books it was all shonda and it was all shonda created it was all, shonda, it was all because lady danbury was just the like, stern, older mother figure in the con.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 48:32

In most of the books she really didn't have a lot of plot other than getting angry at people and like banging her cane. Because by the time the older the later books the series queen charlotte is deceased historically right yeah but like. So that's the other thing too. Bergeron has a kind of a timeline problem in that regard as well, because at some point she she's gotta go she's gotta go well, we'll see and so is her husband.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 48:55

So like I think queen charlotte was less drama because people are I mean, yes, you have your usual bad gaggle racist being annoyed, but I'm like there was not much of the ber burgerton canon plot line to really be angry about, because most that was all history or shonda just adding stuff in the whole explaining why how racism works in burgerton society.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 49:19

People like, okay, fine, this is not we, this is not really. I think queen shaw was kind of a calm period of animosity enough, except for the interesting. I had not thought about that, except for the Lady Danbury storyline, which I could see why people had problems with it, because people felt like it was a lot of trauma on a darker-skinned actor. Of course, my POV, I kind of agree with that. But I also feel like, historically speaking, setting up the fact that women would have been in these awful range of marriages is kind of important because it yeah people's motivations on a marriage market and I think, yeah, I mean I couldn't, I could see why people would have wanted a change on that or like just thinking that like she, you know, should have had like an epic romance as well but, it's such.

Adriana Herrera: 50:04

It's such. I mean I'm sorry just to say like to me Lady Danbury is like such a Shonda Rhimes, olivia Pope type of character, like an operator, you know what I mean, like she gets in the room. That are kind of based on Julia Quinn's work. To me Lady Danbury is like a Shondaland plant. You know, what I mean. But because it was her own season, to me it made complete sense that Lady Danbury's story was what it was, because it was straight out of Shonda Rhimes' head.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 50:52

Where people are not fine. Now is this season, because here's something to keep in mind Bridgerton and Shritch Troll Runners.

Nikki Payne: 51:01

That's right. What does that mean? Okay, you're about to say that. Probably, chris.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 51:06

Bousin made the first two seasons and he moved on to the projects and now jess bronnell, who um has also worked on previous sean land material, has not stepped in and she clearly has a different vision for the books than I think people intended. But I also believe to me in some regards this was the direction that people who did not read the books were already kind of anticipating. So like, for example, to now, we're gonna be in spoiler land spoiler. Okay, just saying just everyone.

Nikki Payne: 51:37

We're about to get into spoilers.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 51:39

Turn it up so there are some arguments about I'm gonna leave pennell being called on the aside for a hot second. So where people are mad about honestly is the fact that none of the Bridgerton books, in terms of main characters, nobody's queer Right, no one.

Adriana Herrera: 51:59

Let's keep that one and the Bridgerton the show fandom.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 52:04

And the Bridgerton the show fandom there is a large section of people who read the books before, so they're expecting the books to play out on screen exactly as they were written yeah and this is a huge problem for shawn nolan, knowing that we are in 2024, are going to want to see themselves on screen. Um, I also believe that, um, jess ronald self-identifies as queer. Um, so like this is a thing. They are the people running the show, are not the purists book canon fans let go of.

Adriana Herrera: 52:42

She assigned the like creative control over the characters, like she advises, but she's not in charge of the production and she's been very open about like she has no control and is, like, happy to see some of the storylines brought to a more modern audience, even if that means you know some characters being yeah, like to an extent there is some book canon storylines.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 53:10

I wish they'd feature because I feel like some like, for example, um the Smythe Smiths, like they, their parties, are always where, like the couple, drama happens. And I actually thought in this.

Nikki Payne: 53:21

In that episode, when they're at the party and there's a violin quartet, I was like, are these the Smythe Smiths?

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 53:26

yeah, these two. They kind of make a reference to musicality. Drop that immediately. I was like y'all. All the couple drama later on happens there now, but of course that's never what people complain about. Yes, no, what they do complain about is oh no, the guy I was picturing in my head is now a woman. Um knows, that breaks fantasy. So benedict. People were already annoyed at seasons one and two about him possibly being hinged at as queer. There were some fans who did not read books who thought at one point that benedict and eloise were a couple.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 53:59

I'm like no oh sis I mean, you can game of thrones, the thing you can. I don't think that's what's happening here.

Nikki Payne: 54:09

Sorry, I think that's AO3. It's fine, we're fine.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 54:12

AO3, okay, keep that to AO3. We're good. People were already kind of annoyed about that because they're like well, what happens to his future spouse? Yeah, so this season it is very obvious that the homophobia is also mixed with misogyny, because now we know that Benedict, according to there was a Luke Thompson movie where he calls him pansexual. So clearly Benedict is now pansexual. Bridgerton doesn't always like to completely follow real history, so I'm like in terms of like plausible or not at all yeah.

Nikki Payne: 54:47

Yeah, is it actually still happening in Bridgerton's world?

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 54:52

kind of. Kind of not, because, like, for example, they still don't really have fleshed out Napoleon and the wars. Yeah, right, I think it's like a liminal space. How is Colin traveling in the middle of the wars or just after the wars? Okay, I mean boyfriend died in the middle of the wars. Or just after the wars, okay, melmolina's husband, I mean boyfriend died in the wars. It's not consistent at all. And also they have.

Adriana Herrera: 55:18

They've decided for now not to deal with personally, Queen Charlotte is the season I've enjoyed the most.

Nikki Payne: 55:24

Me too, it's headbound.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 55:28

It's also one of my favorites because of the way they like the way Shawna constructed the whole Great Experiment as well.

Adriana Herrera: 55:34

I specifically loved their. I mean I love their love story, but I also love the female friendships. I thought she just gave so much time to really having like really nuanced moments of women being there for women, even, like with his, his mom, the queen mother and lady danbury like that relationship. I found so great um and I wonder what other spinoffs could there be? That are like Shonda spinoffs.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 56:08

I would well, it looks like she's considered she hasn't completely taken off another Queen Charlotte follow-up yet off the table, and she said that to one of the trade magazines when I think a possible spinoff could happen in terms of like maybe I could also see a Violet, possibly, although violet, possibly, although they need violet in the main show because she still has to manage all the unmarried children, not a k-nation like young violet.

Nikki Payne: 56:39

So let me ask you just uh, um, I mean just to say the the subtext out loud. We're talking about what the spinoffs would look like and how we could race bend or gender bend or change some aspect or dynamic to make it palatable to folks in the 21st century. Historical accuracy and costuming and those types of things Like just lay it all on the line, like what are people actually saying in your experience and like what does that mean?

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 57:15

Right, what does it mean? So I've been working on what does that mean for the past couple of years now. Actually, before I go, I'll talk about historical accuracy. There's an important piece here before I talk about that In terms of spoilers for Virginian season three. It's very obvious the meltdown people have had that Michael is now Michaela.

Nikki Payne: 57:36

Yeah, goodness, why didn't we talk about that?

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 57:38

So the meltdown that has caused, first of all, number one, people who have read the books are now spoiling future season storylines for evil. And now, and it is so obvious that that reactions are clearly driven not just by homophobia but misogyny, because thing is that there's clear straight white women in particular are mad that they have lost another male figure they could project their fantasies on. They're mad that they, obviously, but the fact, people have jumped immediately so they have ruined the books by trying to be quote unquote woke, right. I'm like that's a red flag to me, because the a lot of people have not complained about being the same way. The thing is. The thing is they can. They can fantasize about two men being in a relationship, right, because that's what women are.

Adriana Herrera: 58:29

It's the internalized misogyny too.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 58:31

And also, too, keep in mind, so far, all Benedict's partners so far have been white, so that's why they don't really care. It would have been more of a problem if he. Yeah, I mean there was also a small section of fandom who are also women of color who are angry because they thought that misali bedusa was going to be sophie. Um, that rumor was kind of now 50 true. I think they were picturing her for sophie for, like, I think, like character read reasons. But I'm like okay right now that recover, that cover.

Adriana Herrera: 59:01

Repackage is gonna be interesting yeah, it's gonna be interesting.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 59:06

And also, too, I would argue, some of those lines about like feeling wicked and stuff like that would when he was wicked, when he was wicked, that those lines about sin and all that would hit harder on a queer context than a straight context.

Nikki Payne: 59:21

Sorry, yeah, she would. The yearning when he was wicked is one of her most like steamy yearning. It was wicked is is one of her most like steamy yearning. This is bad to do. Feeling books in the bridgerton series yeah, we are now.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 59:34

It's possibility they may have to redo a bit. About the um infertility plot I know some people were very attached to, I guess because they identified with francesca's struggle in their own journey. Um, I would argue, though this is actually the more problematic bit is like parts that sound like baby tramping, which is kind of weird and not like. I mean it's written like some of it. If you look at it now, some aspects of that whole scenario has kind of aged badly and those things are old. They're old, that's the thing. People are not there, and they were not just because the covers are new and they're like got the netflix label slapped on them. Those are very old books.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:00:11

Some of these, the way like these male heroines are written, are kind of problematic and we have to remove some of that.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:00:17

More like problematic. Um, it's actually a good thing for series also. It's a good thing to bring in new viewers with bridget and, and Bridgerton is a chance to have a half half happy queer couples, because so far, in a lot of period dramas that have been repeatedly criticized by the queer community for just centering only historical trauma, like there's a chance for them, for these folks to see themselves on screen in a happy scenario, because I don't even think people realize, even like Downton Abbey was heavily criticized for this, like all of that, that that dialogue has gone all the way back down at least, if not earlier yeah that is only trauma narratives in terms of queer period dramas and and, of course, when there are a lot of this, um, a lot of the queer and sapphic focused period dramas, a lot of them are based on historical events or closeted narratives or people being punished for that, and it's overdue to have people for queer people have a happy ending.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:01:16

A show like even even some things I like, like you know, like Fingersmith and the Sarah Waters adaptations and the Confessions of Franny Langton, still has some kind of trauma in there also many of those previous queer dramas also heavily white as well.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:01:28

So it's like finally you get the switch up there, long overdue. I feel like people don't realize. I'm like just because it's okay if something's not for you we talk about this so often, about like what happens and that that idea that something is not for you is actually built into the quote historical accuracy narrative.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:01:51

So the historical accuracy narratives are really because people have learned history 20, 34 years ago. They're watching older period dramas, you know. So their assumptions of what actually happened in history are wrong, completely wrong. They've learned white history through their own historical education through. When you're not precise, that's when the dog whistle step in, you know, that's when you're not like, specific about like. Sometimes another dog whistle in these conversations is low quality. Who is determining quality? It's not the Emmy Awards board, it's some middle-aged white person in Kansas. Another one is poor acting, again usually thrown out exclusively on queer and poc um people so, or at characters. I'm like, yeah, that's another example like poor acting. I'm like, hmm, yeah, that's another. That's another red flag, another one off. Sometimes, depending on who it is, it's too young. Sometimes, depending on the cast situation, is it's too young. I'm like, yeah, yeah, so there's never historical accuracy. Even when we talk about a novelization doesn't make sense because the author was make, was kind of make too.

Adriana Herrera: 1:03:10

Yeah, historical accuracy in historical romance specifically. It is a funny thing and something that has been talked about ad nauseum in romance spaces that like most like how many governesses have married dukes really in history?

Nikki Payne: 1:03:28

Not a one. How many dukes are there? How?

Adriana Herrera: 1:03:32

many hot ones with all their teeth in their mouth.

Nikki Payne: 1:03:35

Come on.

Adriana Herrera: 1:03:36

Not many.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:03:38

A lot of these historian type people who make these comments about Bridget and other things have not read historical romance.

Adriana Herrera: 1:03:44

Right and I mean even within the historical romance reading space of, like you know, the fans that are now demanding things be historically accurate we'll read wildly historically inaccurate work if the two main characters are white correct like as long as it serves their personal fantasy of, like, white aspirational, you know, moments of like. Of course the nanny can marry the the prince, as long as she's white, right. As long as it's within their own personal fantasy, it's fine.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:04:20

But if a Black queer woman is now taking, as you said, amanda, their own personal, their ability to fantasize about that white hero, then there's a problem yeah, and the thing is, what people what these people don't are failing to realize is that the historians that you listen to and review have been telling you wrong information and like tell them and I think I especially hear these someplace, especially from the uk and europe, because again, it's for soul.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:04:53

I think part of anger is that how dare these Americans tell me what I think about my own history?

Adriana Herrera: 1:04:57

I think volunteer is actually adapting source material written by a person of color my god although I have good news on that front.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:05:08

Hopefully, fingers crossed. Beverly Jenkins did get one of her stories option. I did see that. Yes, yes, I did see that. Hopefully that means cameras start rolling because it's NBC and John Legend's production company.

Adriana Herrera: 1:05:21

Yes, yes. I did see that it is her contemporary series. It is contemporary.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:05:27

That's the only thing I think right now, although somebody should adopt one of her storys, especially given that Bass Reeves and Yellowstone were so popular. There's a lot of, I think, on the Hollywood side. Folks are being short-sighted in terms of where her stuff could be, and Yellowstone really is white nostalgia.

Adriana Herrera: 1:05:51

It is definitely, and I think there's a very specific market, given the climate this country's in right now, where white American pioneer nostalgia is very marketable. And I don't know, and Beverly Jenkins' books are not that.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:06:10

They're African American history. We had the backstory spin off. I feel like her books would be perfect in terms of a counter If people want to compete with an audience. You could go right there, adapt one of her books and just compete with the other people right there.

Nikki Payne: 1:06:26

We have somehow been all over history. We have been to Regency Georgian, We've even actually touched on the West, which is, you know, we've come full circle.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:06:37

We've come full circle. Yeah, and what I would say, for all Bridget's imperfections, there's a chance for both authors and screenwriters to do things in a different way, to do things in a different way or work on. You know, there are things people do and there's not a space to have both the alternate universe settings and the you know, quote, quote. I don't like using the word accuracy, but I like to say historical recreation. Yeah, I've been kind of going away from that term and like for a while now, because I'm like it's so obvious it's becoming a dog whistle for like I hate whatever is happening here and not really analyzing what exactly don't you hate besides? Oh no, there's a poor person. Oh no, there's a black person.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:07:23

Yeah, yeah, I'm like, and of course, there's gonna be a mini war for this and, uh, literally tomorrow, um, pbs is a a little um, british murder, crime drama, village drama. Granch, we are now getting a third hot vicar who is now South Asian, and I'm waiting for everybody to be like well, he sucks because he's. We can't say he sucks because he's South Asian. We're just going to say he's poorly acting. I'm like, well, you guys ran the guy that hid the last white guy that was there because he was a millennial, so like I have receipts, I mean that I feel like renchester's, like another, like one of those that I fell off um, and probably since the beginning.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:08:07

I can have a whole ted talk about how wonderful the show is and that like, how secretly, like people don't realize, like the british murder drama is hiding a lot of like secret, like progressive things.

Adriana Herrera: 1:08:19

So I'm like y'all, you are in for a lot we probably have to have a season just of uh, mr cozy, mysteries, and we'll have you back on for real.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:08:31

Yeah, we'll have you back on. I love because I because love because there's anything about crime dramas, I don't always cover them.

Adriana Herrera: 1:08:35

It's a date for a full-on murder mystery book.

Nikki Payne: 1:08:42

Tell us where we can find you for it, so we can actually see those receipts you talk of. We want to see them live, baby. Tell us where we can find them.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:08:49

Obviously, I'm still on the Hell's site Notice Twitter because I've had it since 2009. It's very hard to like so on twitter. My uh is amanda r prescott. I'm a former blue check and I'm kind of just there still talking about working and whatever else I'm working on. So, um, yeah, um. I also have a website, amandarayprescottcom.

Amanda-Rea Prescott: 1:09:15

Okay, my entire name Um, um, and also I am on Instagram as amandarprescott, but I'm not always checking Instagram and same with threads. I am not on the clock app yet, uh, basically because I'd rather people send me the cat and dog videos. All right, yeah, all right, yeah. So I'm also on blue sky as well as amanda r prescott, because I couldn't fit the whole name, um, although I kind of forget to check blue sky. But, yeah, that's where you can find me on the web. Um. For more um. British tv period drama fun times. I do have some Bridgerton articles coming out. I interviewed the showrunner that's up on Dada Geek right now. I have one more Bridgerton interview coming on Monday, from Dada Geek as well, that people are really going to want to look at. I'm just going to let y'all be surprised.

Adriana Herrera: 1:10:09

Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge with us and discussing all of the different pitfalls of the British drama fandom. Thank you so much. We appreciate it so much and we'll definitely have you back to talk about British history, all the murders, murders, murders.

Nikki Payne: 1:10:33

Only murders in the past, only murders in the podcast. Only murders in the podcast.

Adriana Herrera: 1:10:36

Oh, that's a good name.

Nikki Payne: 1:10:38

All right, bye. Now let's talk about Lady Danbury, because she was a point of controversy, like a lot of the think pieces and a lot of the reasons why people were just like this is detrimental to Black women were expressly about Lady Danbury's storyline. So one of the things that people mentioned was that her young marriage to her husband and that what she was experiencing was essentially like non-consensual sex. What she was experiencing was essentially like non-consensual sex, pretty consistently over time, and that it was played for a laugh and that this was like at the expense of this, of this black body, right, and so people had problems with that and they had problems with her, um, love interest and essentially saying that that she would choose this to have this affair Right Instead of like going with this other Queen Charlotte's brother, right, and like going that route. And there are a couple of ways I want to think about that critique, but I wanted to throw it to you first to see what you thought and then we could just kind of volley back. Hit me. It to you first to see what you thought and then we could just kind of volley back, hit me. The first thing that I thought of when they were describing her experience was. I think what they were doing in Bridgerton was giving a really full-bodied experience of relationships and marriage. Right, I agree, I think in the other two Bridgertons we saw mostly happy marriages, except for maybe, like the the, the Duke's dad, mother and father. But even the Duke, you know, loved his wife. He just maybe didn't love his son as much as he should have, right, and so marriage is seen as this kind of unequivocal good for all and the goal for all of these young people is to get married because marriage is good.

Nikki Payne: 1:12:37

And I think Lady Danbury is in this situation to show us that there is an ambiguity about her feelings about motherhood. These are things that everyone kind of universally has to agree or universally for the good of women, right, marriage and motherhood. And these are the two very things that Lady Danbury is just like, maybe cool, cool, cool, but I'm a, not so like. She feels ambiguous as a mother. It feels distanced from the women who express joy in their marriage. She was just like you gotta be kidding me, the women who express joy in their marriage. She was just like you gotta be kidding me.

Nikki Payne: 1:13:21

And she represents this person who can be calculating but is also inherently realistic about what it means to live a life at that point. So when you talk about her saying you have to make these choices, you have everyone else's on your shoulder. It's very much because she doesn't live in a world that has idealized these kind of relationships that one has with their spouse and their mother and their child. Like she doesn't idealize any of those things that we're supposed to, and that's why I think those scenes with her and her husband really focused on the de-idealization of marital relations, right To take literally the rose colored glasses off of marital relations. I mean, there are people now who are, you know, having relations with spouses not always out of glee, not always out of desire, right, not always out of the joy to do so, desire right, not always out of the joy to do so, and so like the idea that her relationship was stripped of the rose colored glasses is a testament to her character and why she was able to have so much agency, I would argue the most agency in the entire show.

Nikki Payne: 1:14:28

Yeah, I mean Lady.

Adriana Herrera: 1:14:30

Danbury was a young woman but was grown. This is a woman who has grown and she is not trying to play games. She knows that, that she has, like her life has been compromised from the get go. She was born to be married off to this man who was wealthy, to be married off to this man who was wealthy, and she is very good at leveraging her choices and the agency that she gets to secure more agency for herself and like. That's what she does throughout that entire show. That's what she does and I think I I I mean absolutely there were a lot of cringy moments with lady Danbury in the beginning in those first three episodes of the show, a lot like the.

Adriana Herrera: 1:15:25

There need to be five of those scenes. I can't tell you if that was necessary or not. I could have been. I was good with one, maybe two. But I think the point of it is and it's like what you said like beyond just the fact that like true, it was the reality for some women. It still is the reality for some women and I think, like I'm not even like we could get into like for at that time, like women of color, how they even had a proximity to wealth, how they could become like you know, the lady or the house, like the choices that they had. All of that isn't even like relevant because this is like a fictional world, but I think like it's important to also like show that there's different kinds of relationships, there's different kinds of marriages.

Adriana Herrera: 1:16:14

There are marriages that people make because of practical reasons and lady danbury was a practical woman and because of that she was able to shape her destiny and honestly like influence the destiny of a country, because she was there with the good word for Charlotte when she needed it she did the actual work, oh yeah, and told her like there's a moment in the show when, like Charlotte is like she's had can we curse in this show she's had that good dick already at least once and she and we just decided, we just decided, and she is, like you know, sprung and he is like out there farming on something, he's kind of like checked out, she, she is, she is like like struggling and lady danbury is like she's like literally has her hair like face pressed to the window watching him walk around with no shirt on. And lady danbury is like you golden scene it's gold.

Adriana Herrera: 1:17:21

She's literally like climbing on a on a on like a bench, like mozart is playing in the literal mozart is playing in her in her freaking like piano room and she's like left the kid and gone to look at the window because he's like out there farming or whatever. And Lady Danbury's like you have to get it together. Like you have got to stop looking at this man. You are the queen, you are the first of your kind, like he's cute and everything, but you have got to get your shit together. You are just wasting time and like our titles are in jeopardy here, but you have got to get your shit together. You are just wasting time and like our titles are in jeopardy here, yeah, and so she is like the one that keeps her in check. Because this woman is like and it's interesting because in to lady Danbury like the idea that a woman could be so into her husband that she's like not able to focus on the task at hand isn't even a possibility.

Nikki Payne: 1:18:20

She doesn't buy it. She's like what the hell?

Adriana Herrera: 1:18:23

She's like what is going on with you, like you did your duty, you having you know you're having the marital relations and like what is going on that you're so like in your head and and Charlotte is, of course, like gone for this man. But it's just like I feel like it was honestly like I feel like a beautiful way to kind of like parallel how two young women can have such different experiences, and also like the fact that, like charlotte is obviously the queen was also like lighter skinned lady danvers, like a darker skinned woman, like, yeah, like there was a like shonda was doing like double time, triple time, with the characterization in that in that series, to be honest, I, I absolutely agree.

Nikki Payne: 1:19:14

Another woman that I wanted to think a little bit about is Princess Augusta Another great character. Another great character, really, the kind of architect of the great experiment in a way. Essentially, her and Lady Danbury. What did you think that Shonda was doing with this Princess Augusta character? I found her abrasive and compelling at the same time. You knew precisely what she was trying to do, which was placate all of these men while making sure that her son was protected with the kind of science that she knew at the time. Right, she wasn't necessarily a fan of Charlotte, but she was doing what she had to do. Right, she wasn't necessarily a fan of Charlotte, but she was doing what she had to do, what she felt to like protect her son yes, I mean and again it's a testament to the kind of writer that Shonda Rhimes is is that?

Adriana Herrera: 1:20:04

and? And for me, especially, like I, when I'm watching a show where there's so many women of color, so many black women specifically, and there's like one white woman that's coming in with like a karen energy, like, it's very easy for me to immediately like villainize her you know what I mean like this lady's out here to call 9-1-1 on the people barbecuing.

Nikki Payne: 1:20:30

She wants to speak to the manager.

Adriana Herrera: 1:20:31

She wants to speak to the manager, she wants to you to turn off your music, so he's gonna write an angry.

Adriana Herrera: 1:20:39

And so to me, what was very compelling about her is a that she was very clear in her intentions all she wanted was her son to stay king, and, and shonda rhymes unpacked that for us as we went, like she gave us.

Adriana Herrera: 1:20:58

Like this woman has been carrying the burden of her son being mentally ill and like being vulnerable to losing his crown, like pretty much since it was born. Her husband died. She was at the mercy of her husband's father, who was terrible, terrible, and so she's been carrying this burden for George's entire life and seeing that things are getting worse with him. And so, like you can, you could feel her stress, you could feel her, the urgency for her and her desperation, really that you could sense her. And like I mean, that actress is great, like the, the woman who actually played the role, because she was so contained, and yet you could sense her like desperation and the stress she was under, absolutely like I don't know I have a favorite moment with her, but I wanted to ask you what, if there's a scene with Augusta that like stuck out, stuck out for you oh, absolutely, it was absolutely.

Nikki Payne: 1:22:04

When Lady Danbury starts to cry. And she was just like bitch, are you kidding? Like you can do all the things, but don't do not, not you and me, you know. I mean, she was she essentially like pulled down all the curtains to say this is like you are my only real peer, you know. And if you pull this, you know soft belly bullshit, like what are we doing right? So it was she. She was like make your ask and see. Like be strong enough to see if I take it or not.

Adriana Herrera: 1:22:34

Like we're doing this, I love it that to me is honestly probably like my top three favorite scenes in the whole show, because it really boiled down to me what shonda was doing in that show in terms of offering to us like a view into the lives of women. Like it was like because Princess Augusta's like I don't like you, but I respect you and I see what you're doing and like you are better than to fall apart, crying Like do not do this, not here. You are not here to fall apart. You are here to get your goals. Like if you yep, you can't, this is not the moment and this is not the time for you to be crying. She takes out a flask from somewhere.

Adriana Herrera: 1:23:23

Pour some brandy in, lady danvers cup and like here have this brandy and get your shit get your shit together, because you like, and it was like it was a moment of like we can disagree but we can be adversaries, but we are after the same goal and it's like you get what you want and you get the power to do what you want, and I get what I want. Like and and I love, like, I feel like so much of television that centers women's, or like women going after things, or women with ambition, like, so it like really does this lazy thing of making the women who are powerful and ambitious and focus, like like they pit them against each other.

Adriana Herrera: 1:24:11

And this is one of the few times when, like the two, like bad bitches, like even when they're like kind of at each other's throats, like there's respect there and there's like you can get what you want and I can get what I want. Yes, and that to me again, like honestly, like those two artists of Lady Danbury and Princess Elgasa, I think it's just honestly like such brilliant writing and such brilliant characterization. Like, honestly, hats off to Chandra Rimes, because she truly is the best.

Nikki Payne: 1:24:44

Yeah, yeah. One of the last things I want to ask is essentially about the hero. Right, finally, we're? Let's go to the romance. Finally, let's talk about the hero. Right, finally we're let's go to the romance. Finally, let's talk about the hero.

Nikki Payne: 1:24:58

I found this hero extremely empathetic. I felt for him, I wanted his. He was also a person who was incredibly powerful, but was without agency in a real way, also a person who was incredibly powerful but was without agency in a real way. And it was almost like Queen Charlotte had like draped over her agents, like once she found who she was, like she almost like draped him. You know the, the scene where he is he runs out in the moonlight, you know, and she gets his blanket and like she puts it over him.

Nikki Payne: 1:25:30

And it was like this moment of deciding, like I am going to be like for this person and she she found her agency, if only to be his actual agent. I think she was in real life, his guardian up until he died. You know like and or she died. But yes, that that moment of saying like I'm going to use my agency and you have actually very little agency despite your position and I'm going to use my agency to fight for you as well. That's another. It's another case of that very thing. And then like for the hero to be the person who needs saving by this woman of agency is something that I felt like it was so. It was so soft, it was so vulnerable.

Adriana Herrera: 1:26:15

And it was like the kind of like the reciprocity of them, because all she wanted was to be okay, right, like to be safe, like and I think, like I think a lot about, especially in this moment.

Adriana Herrera: 1:26:29

Like it, like I think that's why historical romance, specifically, is like a really great vessel right now to explore like what we're feeling as women right now, like so much of the world feels unsafe again. I mean, it's never felt super safe, but it's feeling particularly precarious right now for us, for our rights, our the things that we like have fought for and won, and like starting to like lose them. And and like Charlotte from the beginning, like all she wanted was to be safe, to find someone that wasn't going to hurt her, that to be okay. Like she wanted to be in a marriage where she was safe and she found that george. And then george found in her a person to be safe with, with his mental illness, like the secret that he had been holding for his whole life and really thought was something that no one could love him through. Like he really was so afraid. Like I mean it is the wound.

Adriana Herrera: 1:27:35

Yeah, Like he, like the, the wound he felt like, like truly like no one can love me if they know this about me, and the way that she from the first was like I'm not sure what's happening with him, but he's my husband and I am going to have his back, Like she was his ride or die.

Nikki Payne: 1:27:59

Yeah.

Adriana Herrera: 1:27:59

From the get-go. Yeah, she was Something that like moved me was if he needs to be mad, let him be mad. Right, I mean, I was like honey, you can have all of me, ok, I understand. Like if, because the the other option was to see him in Agnes to torture him, and like even when, at one point also, that he's like sometimes I don't even know where I am, like my mind is not right, and she's like, well, if you don't know where you are, I will tell you where you are.

Nikki Payne: 1:28:35

I will tether you to the earth.

Adriana Herrera: 1:28:38

I will tell you where you are. Like it's that, honestly, that romance was flawless.

Nikki Payne: 1:28:46

That declaration of love. That was probably one of the best declarations of love I've seen this year. It shook me. I was boohooing. I would say it's one of the best declarations of love I've seen this year.

Adriana Herrera: 1:28:55

It shook me. I was boo-hooing. I would say it's one of the best declarations of love I have seen in television. I don't know. I mean there's obviously the 2005 Pride and Prejudice Like. That's probably like.

Nikki Payne: 1:29:11

That stammering I love you it still. It still gets me. I've seen it so many times, adriana, but I'm toxic. It is.

Adriana Herrera: 1:29:20

Like unmatched let's just leave that in another place but of like a historical period piece, romance, that, that declaration from George to like, like my heart calls your heart calls out your name.

Nikki Payne: 1:29:37

My heart, my heart calls your name and it's just like he's in tears and he's just like pressing him, like do you love me?

Adriana Herrera: 1:29:45

Oh my gosh, I'm getting chills, I've watched it so many times and it is just so emotional. I mean and again I mean for for people out there, if, if you listen to this and you're trying to write a romance, please watch that series because it is a giving the tip, it is a master class in like building the emotion to a love declaration, like honestly, like, like honestly, like few I've seen in in television and even like I mean there's a lot of great love declarations in romance novels obviously, but this is one of the best ones I've seen in television and it's because she really like we were really with them and like both of them as they fell in love and like seeing all the things. I mean there were so many genius things that she did in that show. One of them was having us see them get married and then kind of her like him ghost her, he like he ghosts her and like that during the honeymoon and then comes back but he's like pissy about it and then she hears him say something that hurts her feelings and then we see him kind of like being really evasive and like we know that something's wrong.

Adriana Herrera: 1:31:00

Like we know the history Queen George had mental illness but then, like the fourth episode of the of the series. It's from his point of view and what was happening with him in those moments that he was kind of like MIA, and then we see what he's been doing and then we're like it's heartbreaking, and then we again go back to kind of like her point of view. So again, a masterclass in POV, a masterclass like truly centering women I there's like women's friendships, like I love. Like the present times, because, like the show is in a dual timeline, it's like the past oh yes, that's right.

Nikki Payne: 1:31:44

It's also dual timeline.

Adriana Herrera: 1:31:45

It's doing, it's the past and it's like the present and it's like lady danbury, older um violet, who's the mom of the bridgerton kids. She, like her friendship with lady danbury, is interested in complicated, especially because we learned some things about lady danbury's past that kind of complicates the relationship that she has with violet in some ways like even queen charlotte and kind of like one of the really brilliant things that Chanda does is that Queen Charlotte still dresses like she dressed when she married King George, because she's basically like frozen in time.

Nikki Payne: 1:32:29

He wants her Tethering him constantly to a woman.

Adriana Herrera: 1:32:33

Yes, she wants him to know that it's her and like that's why she doesn't change how she dresses. It's, it's just honestly like it's just a great romance and and one of those romances where we get the epilogue, because if, if it would would have been a regular romance novel, the book would have like it would have ended when they had that last ball, where they have the second ball and like everything's great and she's pregnant again and like everything's beautiful, like he seems, like he's okay. But then we get like the present and we see how their love story kind of like you know, unfolded through the years and even though things are not perfect at all, they still love each other. Yeah, and it's still beautiful and it's still like the last 10 minutes of that show the way I cried.

Nikki Payne: 1:33:29

Like something was hurting me, stop. My kids came in. Mom, are you okay, dry heaves? I'm more than okay.

Adriana Herrera: 1:33:36

Yes, dry heaving Like dry heaving. It was truly, truly, truly, like it was just beautiful. It was beautiful and I really do believe that it was. It made such an impact on me because, it was told, I think really really trying to center A the lives of women, but specifically Black women. I really do believe that that's what made the big difference for me.

Nikki Payne: 1:34:04

Absolutely agree. I mean, if we're summing up our experience with Queen Charlotte and making that bridge between what we know about romance or romance culture, I would say the triumph of Queen Charlotte was its ability to fixate on, like a marginalized person, marginalized community, and like turn her experience into a universal experience. So often it's the opposite, right, where, like the white experience is seen as a universal experience and then, like people of color, kind of getting where they fit in, like we're just we're reading Jane Austen and like kind of imagining that you know that this could be the other way. But what she did was reverse that, turn that inside out and say that this, this person of color's experience, is a universal experience as well. And that, to me, is the genius of Queen Charlotte. There probably wasn't a woman who watched that. That didn't say she is like me.

Adriana Herrera: 1:35:02

Yes, yes, and I mean again, like, yes, yes, exactly. I don't have nothing more to add other than I agree, agree, it's, it really truly is, and the universal experience that still focuses on the collective, like like a unit, like a, a one person's experience can still be grounded in your own safety and your own well-being, and you can still be able to think about the greater good.

Nikki Payne: 1:35:36

Come on, come on.

Adriana Herrera: 1:35:39

Come on See how she did that. You see what Shonda did there?

Nikki Payne: 1:35:43

Yeah, I see what she did. I see what she did. Do you have any recommendations for people who still want to vibe this hard and this well? Any books that come to mind for you?

Adriana Herrera: 1:35:54

yes, um, I actually just reread forbidden by beverly jenkins, which is one of my favorite romances ever and I hadn't read in a couple of years.

Adriana Herrera: 1:36:08

I listened to it, oh, like in a day, like this week, and I would recommend that one because that like just to give like a little. I mean, you know, like if you read the, the, the back copy, you'll know like it's. It's a man, ryan fontaine, and he is like his father was a slave owner, he, his mom was a slave, and he is light-skinned, so he decides to, he's passing, he has like crossed the collar line and he is, and this is like 18, like it's like in the middle of reconstruction, like when reconstruction is starting to like fragment, yeah, and so there's like a real conversation going on. I mean, first of all, beverly Jenkins is a freaking genius. Like nobody renders real history in a romance novel the way that this woman does it. Like every time I read one of her books, I am in awe of her skill.

Adriana Herrera: 1:37:11

Forbidden is top tier it is one of my favorite all-time romances of any subgenre. I've read it so many times and every time I'm like she is literally a freaking genius. But anyway, there's so much context here, I think connected to also what Shonda did with Queen Charlotte in terms of this is a critical moment in the race. This is a critical moment in the race, like there's a critical moment in the race and you have to pick your sides and you got to do your job, yep, and in Forbidden it's the same thing.

Adriana Herrera: 1:37:45

Like Ryan has been kind of been I'm living as a white guy but I'm helping out the black community. Like I'm a good guy but I'm like white. So like I'm here and I have, and he and he has a lot of privileges. He is able to like maneuver a lot of things, but he has to like he comes to the realization that he has to like he like, he's like he can't continue to live in both, in both worlds. So it's, it's anyway. I think it's a book that is a good. It's a good like.

Adriana Herrera: 1:38:19

it's a similar vibe in terms of everything that it's negotiating and the community piece and the piece of the collective, especially because, like there was a time where, like the Republican Party was really compromising so that they could, you know, bring in the white people that were disgruntled, and all of this stuff. That is happening right now and so it's anyway Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins is one of my recommendations, it is a freaking brilliant book, genius.

Nikki Payne: 1:38:50

I'm also going to do a historical that I absolutely loved the Diana Quincy series. Her historicals are incredibly steamy, but they also deal particularly well with race, and what I love about her regency is that all of her heroes or heroines are from different classes. So some of them are dukes, but some of them are like merchants or even lower, like one of them was like a bone setter.

Adriana Herrera: 1:39:17

Yes, I love that bone setter romance.

Nikki Payne: 1:39:20

Yeah, oh yeah, that was good. And so she deals very kind of explicitly with race and the issue of being kind of Arab in that time right. So I think it's analogous to the story of, like, how one becomes accepted in this and it's like you have to somehow erase who you are to be accepted, and that was the thing that her heroines are always pushing up against, like I can't actually be Arab Right and be accepted in this space, and they're moving outside of the ton and the aristocracy to kind of find their happiness and then making changes on the aristocracy and forcing them to kind of change the way they think. And I think that's really similar and it's so steamy, it's so spicy.

Adriana Herrera: 1:40:04

Her books are super spicy, super smart. They always have these like super interesting professions. She has one that's like a map maker too. She has really great. Diane a map maker too, she has really great. Diane Quincy is great to read. She is a phenomenal historical romance author and it's all. All her heroines are Arab, and some of her heroes too, so it's Also top tier romance, fantastic, good choices. Good talk. I know it was a great talk. I love that we're doing this.

Nikki Payne: 1:40:40

We hope you can join us biweekly on Unbound and join our conversation. Thanks for riding with us.

Adriana Herrera: 1:40:46

Your thoughts and stories are the lifeblood of this exploration, so we invite you to engage with us. Share your insights, your favorite moments and the romance narratives that have touched your life. Find us all on all major podcast platforms and follow us on TikTok, youtube and Instagram for updates and behind the scenes content. Until next time, keep your hearts unbound.