Movies & TV
Before ‘Queen Charlotte,’ Who Was Arséma Adeoluwayemi Thomas?
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Arsema Thomas in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Cr. Amber Pinkerton/Netflix © 2022
Arséma Thomas plays the role of young Lady Agatha Danbury, a close confidante to the newly crowned Queen Charlotte, played by India Amarteifio, in the popular Netflix original series “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.” However, there is much more to this talented actress than just her on-screen persona.
Let’s take a closer look at who Arséma Adeoluwayemi Thomas is:
- She’s Nigerian-Ethiopian:
Arséma was born in Atlanta. Her parents were diplomats, a Nigerian father and an Ethiopian mother, who worked in economic development for Africa, and this exposed her to current affairs from a young age. She has strong philanthropic ties to the continent of Africa, inspired by her Ethiopian and Nigerian backgrounds and having lived in Uganda, Kenya, Togo, Comoros, Benin, and India.
“I grew up kind of everywhere. In moving from place to place as a child, my bedrooms were all kind of the same,” Arséma says in her interview with Teen Vogue. “I never got to put anything up. But in that, it made the imagination and engaging with something that isn’t physical so much more important.”
View this post on Instagram
“Dinner table conversations were about politics, about African governance. I realized that in a lot of the countries I lived in, the effects of colonialism and imperialism were so blatantly obvious. That became the driving force for what I thought I should be doing as an adult.”
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Arsema Thomas in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Cr. Amber Pinkerton/Netflix © 2022
- She speaks 5 languages
As the daughter of diplomats, she speaks multiple languages: English, French, Spanish, Yoruba, and Amharic.
- After graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in Bio-Physics and obtaining a Master’s degree from Yale, Thomas made a U-turn in her career path to pursue her childhood dream of becoming an actor:
Arséma received her B.A. in Biological Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016. After working in a maternal and child mobile health clinic in Northern Kenya and the Kakumah Refugee Camp on the Kenya-Sudan border, Arsema attended Yale University for her Master of Public Health in
Both schools happen to have strong drama programs, and before long, Thomas was going to New York every weekend for “any type of audition.”
“I was auditioning for student films, I was auditioning for community church theatre, just anything that would take me,” she says. “I realized those weekends would fuel me off to go back to class and get into the work for the week.”
View this post on Instagram
- She gave a TEDx talk and founded the health app Enki (stylised as enki):
enki is an SMS-based application that allows women to subscribe monthly for the discreet delivery of female condoms at a discounted rate, in a fight against HIV/AIDS.
- “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” is her first major acting role:
After receiving her degrees, she moved to South Africa, where she auditioned for an agent, which led to her first professional screen role. Arsema attended drama school in Paris, later moving to London for training at the prestigious institutes of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where she completed a Master of Fine Arts in Professional Acting.
She learned she had been cast while working as a butcher’s assistant in London’s Notting Hill neighbourhood. Despite not being allowed to have her phone in front of customers, she eagerly anticipated the call that would confirm her acting job.
View this post on Instagram
“I wasn’t allowed to have my phone in front of customers, but I knew that one day during the week, I was gonna get the news. I remember it was buzzing and I was dealing with a very, very frustrated customer. I’m having like three kilograms of Wagyu beef in my hands trying to get my phone.”
Thomas didn’t answer the first call, but when the phone rang again, she was able to find a moment to sneak away and answer it. “I had to wipe my hands and answer it and it was a FaceTime. I already knew by then I’d probably gotten it, so I was just there waiting for the words to come.”
The rest, they say, is history!
