India Amarteifio on growing up on benefits and entering the glitzy Bridgerton world

India Amarteifio’s life changed this time last year when she starred as Queen Charlotte in a Bridgerton spin-off. She was dropped into a world of elegance, glitz and glamour. There were enormous costumes and palaces, red carpets and magazine cover shoots.

It felt bizarre. Amarteifio grew up with a single mum who claimed benefits and worked long hours as a beautician to take care of her girls. And almost overnight, Amarteifio shot to fame as a star of one of the biggest Netflix franchises ever made.

“I’m not from that world at all,” the 22-year-old says. “My family is very humble. We’re not materialistic. I feel very connected to people and my society, so to be sprung into a world like that felt very alien. It was scary because I didn’t know whether I would still be accepted back into my normal lifestyle or my family.”

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As she speaks to the Big Issue over a video call from her home in Surrey, her washing machine humming in the background, it is clear that the young star is keeping her roots close to her heart, and she wants to use her platform and experiences to help families like her own.

“The biggest lesson for me, whether I’m doing the cover of Vogue or going to Los Angeles and talking to amazing people and being in rooms I could have never dreamed about, it’s about remembering this is my job and not my reality,” she says.

“When I am at home waiting for my laundry to be done or I’ve just smashed glass on the floor and all my milk has spilt, things like that bring me joy. That sense of love and community and happiness does not come from fame or even an injection of cash, it’s been the people that have been here to support me.”

India Amarteifio has only recently moved out from her mum’s in Twickenham, which is on the outskirts of southwest London. Her mum had gone to art school and came to London to search for work, but art hadn’t paid the bills, so she became a beautician and opened up her own salon.

“We were trying to make ends meet in an area where there was a lot of money,” Amarteifio says. “It’s quite an affluent area, but we were always reaching to even be in the middle ground. I was going to school with friends whose school fees were probably their parents’ dividend.”

Amarteifio got a part-scholarship to the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School, having shown a talent for singing, dance and drama. “That world and the classes and uniform were so expensive and I definitely felt like it was a pressure on my mum to be able to keep supporting me in something that I really loved. When it was summer holidays, we didn’t see her because she was working,” she says.

“As I’m getting older, I’m realising how much she had to sacrifice in order for our happiness and our childhood. Although I look back sometimes and I felt upset that I didn’t get to see her as much when I was younger, or didn’t attend school trips and things, it was all out of love. I feel very grateful to her. She’s fantastic and a very strong woman.”

The actress was performing professionally from a young age – including as Nala in The Lion King on the West End when she was nine, as well as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She was a runner on the Jonathan Ross Show and did admin jobs for friends, and she had small parts in Line of Duty, Doctor Who and Sex Education.

“I was putting my wages towards school and any other things that needed paying for,” Amarteifio says. “I understood the value of money from a very, very early age.”

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story was her big break. The first series of Bridgerton launched on Christmas Day 2020 and 625 million hours were watched in its first month. The second season surpassed that and hit 627 million hours in the same time frame.

It launched global stars including Phoebe Dynevor, Regé-Jean Page and Simone Ashley. The third season, due in a matter of days, is likely to see similar success.

“It didn’t feel real until I put the outfits on,” India Amarteifio recalls. “I needed to do this justice. I needed to give it my all because I know how many people love the franchise and what it means to so many people. It’s been absolutely mad. And I never and probably will never do anything of the same greatness.”

Queen Charlotte, which has also had hundreds of millions of views, feels more political than Bridgerton. It’s about young Queen Charlotte’s marriage to King George of England and addresses racial injustices in a way that the previous series had purposely glossed over – this is the story about how the utopia of Bridgerton in which a mixed race couple can exist without questions was built.

“I think some of the questions that come up with Bridgerton are: Why do we not speak about race? Why do we not speak about sexuality? Why do we not speak about the wealth disparities and where this will come? It was something that was on my mind before joining and then I read the first episode and I was like: ‘OK, we’re gonna we’re actually gonna talk about it, which is great,'” Amarteifio recalls.

She was very conscious that she was playing a queen in a mainstream period drama, as a mixed-race woman from a low-income background.

“I was very much doing it from my own understanding of royalty but that not being Eurocentric and delving into kind of like African history in that sense,” she says. “It was helpful because the character herself was moving into a world that was unlike something she’d known. So when we were going to Hampton Court, Blenheim Palace or these massive castles, I was awestruck and I was taking it in. It was so useful and beneficial for the character because she was also doing the same. 

“That sense of wonderment was easy to draw from experience because I’ve not lived that way. I’ve not seen these things before. I’ve grown up in beautiful areas, but to be in such close proximity to things that are behind bars or behind velvet tapings was unreal. Again, it highlights the disparity in wealth. It was odd at times. But overall, it was incredible.”

India Amarteifio hopes that she has made a difference to young Black women who can now see themselves in a role like Queen Charlotte. “I think it would have changed how I had grown up, especially being in an area that was very white and Caucasian,” she says. “My vision of beauty was warped by that and not being looked at in the way that was the typical beauty standard. 

“The fact that we can do that now for young girls but also women in their 50s and 60s and 70s and so on to be able to see that and to to identify with that is so much more important than a TV show. It has real world consequences and effects.”

Amarteifio says she would probably get in big trouble for divulging what she is working on now – but she wants to be using her platform for good and to speak out to help other families like hers. She is an ambassador for the charity Turn2us, which has launched a new campaign calling for the benefits system to be made more accessible.

“We want to get rid of the stigma of benefits and them being a taboo,” she says. “There is £23bn worth of unclaimed benefits for people that are there for them to claim. For me, it feels like I’ve got the platform. I can speak from experience as to why and how important beneficial this would be to people. We need to get things moving and get people talking.”

Amarteifio believes her family would have benefited from more financial support, but claiming help was “even more of a taboo then than it is now”.

“There was a sense of pride. She was on universal credit and benefits the government gives to single parents. But I was talking to her about the charity before I officially joined and she was flabbergasted as to why she’d never heard of it and she said how useful it would have been for us. It would have been so important.

“There’s no question and there’s no judgement. For a lot of families like ours, when we were in a place of seeming privileged in the area and with school that I went to, it can feel a little bit awkward to ask for a handout. But it’s a lot more common than we all think.”

India Amarteifio has financial security for the first time following Queen Charlotte. She is being careful with her money and putting it towards her savings, and she is still living modestly. Mostly, she is grateful that she has been able to give her mum that sense of security.

“I think she is really proud,” the star says about her mum. “She was a little bit worried in the beginning. It’s not me at all to be in the public eye. I feel like I’m a very private person. I’m naturally quite introverted. But she knew that this is kind of the route I was wanting to go down. The show has been really successful. 

“No one is safe in their job, but now I’ve got a bigger platform to possibly be able to reach higher goals and that’s all she ever wanted. She’s always wanted me and my sister to have somewhere safe, somewhere comfortable, to be independent and to not necessarily have to be stressed about things. So the fact that for now, I can do that, even though it can change in a second, gives her comfort and that’s really important.”

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