Portraits From the 2022 Venice Film Festival

I C O N S ― Simone Ashley

@iconsfabric​ · ©

Fancast for a Heart and Souls remake

The original movie was made in 1993 with the ghosts being from 1965.

Meaning made today, the ghosts would come from the early-mid 90s 🤐 Early would be better, more of a vintage feel (re the 80s, 90s, and today! radio stations where 'today' seems to have become ageless 😂).

Ashley Simone by bartlomieu kurela

Amita and Freddy (with Ashley Simone!!!) 🤩🤩

cc: frconventions.com

Bridgerton Season 2 is a delightful surprise

If you recommended me Netflix’s Bridgerton (adapted from the book series by Julia Quinn into a streaming television period drama series produced by Shonda Rhimes) and called it Gossip Girl meets Downton Abbey...none of it would compel me to watch it. I’ve never seen Grey’s Anatomy or How to Get Away With Murder or Scandal, but I understood Shonda Rhimes to be a powerful creative force with a hearty career in producing and writing for American television. I’ve never seen Gossip Girl or Downton Abbey, so the appeal in marrying the two to describe Bridgerton also didn’t work for me. I don’t care for period dramas, and the Regency era of London did not strike me as an intriguing backdrop for anything. I don’t care about the romantic plight of wealthy white British people living in the 1800s.

So how did I become so enthralled by season 2 of Bridgerton, without having watched season 1 and largely ignoring the selling points of it being a great, colourful source of escapism. I wasn’t even pulled in by what I thought I would be: the introduction of two South Asian characters (Simone Ashley who plays Kate Sharma and Charithra Chandra who plays her younger sister Edwina) involved in a love triangle with the leading man, Anthony Bridgerton (played by Jonathan Bailey). 

Bridgerton follows a powerful London high society family in a vivid fictional universe that is true to the pressures of debutante balls and courting season designed to couple young adults from prestigious or noble families into marital unions that carry financial and/or social benefit for each other’s families. Racial differences are essentially ignored, with major characters being Black, such as the Queen of England (played by Guyanese-British actress Golda Rosheuvel) and Lady Danbury (played by Ghanaian-British actress Adjoa Andoh). Interracial couples existing in high society was completely unheard of at the time, yet last season’s central romance was between a Black duke, Simon Basset (played by Rege-Jean Page) and the eldest Bridgerton daughter, Daphne (played by Phoebe Dynover). This could’ve gone so wrong, but I found it to be a refreshing source of escapism to not have characters of colour have their stories center around discrimination or trauma, especially in diversifying Black characters’ narratives to not just be about the historical time period’s violence towards Black people in the form of kidnapping, enslavement, and displacement. Everyone gets to exist in this affluent bubble, and there’s something almost utopian about it, although the show does touch upon the financial wobbling of other families at risk for losing their social ranking and classist attitudes towards members of the working class. I don’t want to gas the show up too much because the main families are still entirely white with characters of colour revolving around this specific white family as satellites to the true main characters, which will always be eponymously, a Bridgerton. 

Season 2 spotlights Daphne’s older brother, the eldest Bridgerton sibling (played by Jonathan Bailey) who gets himself wrapped up in a love triangle between sisters Edwina and Kate Sharma. Edwina is primed by her older sister and Lady Danbury to become the “diamond of the season”, naturally catching the attention of practical family man Anthony, who repeatedly butts heads with Kate. Edwina is perfect on paper – she’s well read, she’s accommodating, she’s warm – whereas Kate is headstrong and challenges gender norms as well as Anthony’s patience. 

When I tell you that the incredible slow burn and sexual tension between Anthony and Kat is so satisfying and scratched such a specific itch that I didn’t even know I, as a queer woman, even had…I surprise even myself. I had seen plenty advertisements for the show, including promotional material featuring #kanthony, but it wasn’t until I saw a TikTok with Anthony giving his impassioned, frustrated monologue (“You are the bane of my existence, and the object of all my desires” - the way I screamed!) that I decided to give the show a proper go. 

The enticing build-up keeps you hooked and there are so many substantial sub-plots surrounding this love story that keep you occupied rather than just operate as filler storylines in between the next steamy scene you’re anticipating. It kept checking boxes I didn’t know I had by addressing so many topics so well:

 Grief and its many forms 

How trauma ages you and the expectation to be responsible leads to unfair perceptions that you are cold and unfeeling when the option was not afforded to you to be easy or enthralled by something as “impractical” or “selfish” as your own emotions or desires

Related, the eldest child’s tendency to operate and sacrifice things as a third parent in certain families, which often is the dynamic and role of eldest daughters in brown families 

The link (relative to both masculinity and eastern approaches to mental health) between one’s ego and the ability to accept help or display vulnerability.

Even aspects of Indian culture were embedded into the story seamlessly, particularly with the pre-wedding haldi scene. 

But an important aspect of the casting choice within the context of this time period piece and in western media in general is the fact that the two female leads and love interests are dark-skinned South Asian women. @bootlegmegz says it best in her TikTok video when she states, “There’s a specific reason every brown woman you know is losing their mind over the season and how Kate and Edwina are portrayed.” She goes on to say, “So I grew up in India, in Bangalore, for the first 18 years of my life, so I can’t really compare what the Indian experience growing up in the west is, but there are obviously aspects that overlap. But when I tell you the colourism in India is so much more deep rooted and accepted as normal thought, than it is in the west, I’m not joking.” And she’s really not. The skin fairness industry represents about 50% of India's entire skincare market, with estimates of its worth varying between $US 450–535 million, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Meg continues to point out, “It is very normal for family members to have conversations with you about the tone of your skin, if you’ve gotten darker or lighter, and ways to ‘remedy’ that. And as a result, it becomes very important, at least for young girls at the time, to look fair or seem fair, in whatever way they can, and develop a certain aversion to being dark or seeing darkness as attractive. Because you’re taught that darkness is the antithesis of beauty. And there are definitely still days where I can’t seem to unlearn that idea, you know. That’s a lot to process as a young person, but definitely more so as an adult because you look back on how much of your life you’ve spent thinking that thing. And it’s really hard to reconcile in India because we don’t have a big white diaspora that lives there, and they’re not like a regular part of society like it is [in the west]. And I only learned to decolonize my view toward myself or attraction or sex when I came here because it’s a far more multicultural society. But it is still hard to let go of this notion that European-approved attraction is very superior to dark skinned people. And so much so for Indian girls because even within our own country, even within our own film industry, we really dislike dark skinned actresses. Like even in the Tamil movie industry, I cannot tell you how many random British actresses they employ in place of Tamil actresses. And while yes, it has colonialist undertones, I cannot tell you how new and refreshing it is to see a fair-skinned character just find dark-skinned women attractive for themselves. It is very rare. We don’t even do it to ourselves. And it is hard for me to look at sometimes because I understand how far away from reality it is, and I feel like I’ll spend most of the rest of my life trying to figure out why I feel that way. And I think part of it comes from the fact that we’re not allowed to find ourselves attractive unless somebody [white] else does first.”

Fortunately for young impressionable South Asian viewers, Bridgerton season 2 seeks less to tell our girls to seek the love and affection of a white man and more to show the inherent beauty in existing unapologetically, as Kate Sharma does. 

okay, i’ve got so many thoschei fancasts, but the bridgerton fancast has got to be one of my favorites, because just … wow

Some Metgala looks! ❤

Which one was your favorite look from the Metgalas?

I knew i had to draw the Bridgerton girls as soon as i saw them!

I also sketched Billie Eilish, but haven't color it yet.

Don’t forget to watch The Bridgerton for the 6th time🥹❤️

Ashley Simone by bartlomiej kurela

BRIDGERTON (2020 - ) | s02 ep08 'THE VISCOUNT WHO LOVE ME' / s03 SNEAK PEEK (insp.)

KATE & ANTHONY | BRIDGERTON S3 PROMO

BRIDGERTON | SEASON 3

First look at Simone Ashley as Kathani Sharma and Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton

“…This Author refuses to believe that theirs is anything but a love match.” - LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 15 JUNE 1814

Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me (Bridgertons, #2)

SIMONE ASHLEY promo videos for Bridgerton S2 | S3