Maybe you, like me, inhaled all eight episodes of Bridgerton in one weekend and then proceeded to google every cast member. And maybe you, like me, saw that the actress who plays Queen Charlotte is named Golda Rosheuvel.
Golda Rosheuvel, you may have thought to yourself… Is she Jewish!?
Sadly for us, a Jewish culture site who loves to talk about Jewish celebrities, Golda Rosheuvel is not Jewish, her representatives confirmed over e-mail, despite sharing a first name with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and having a last name that doesn’t sound not Jewish.
Rosheuvel, 49, was born in Guyana to a Guyanese father and a British mother. She moved to England when she was 5 years old, and started acting when she was 29.
“For a long time, people of privilege have been in charge of the storylines and storytelling. I don’t know whether they have intentionally written out Black people, because we know that there were Black people and people of color,” Rosheuvel said of period dramas. Adding more diversity, she continued, is “long overdue.”
“When Golda read for the role, we knew we had found our queen,” Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen told ET. “She truly inhabited the character. She was commanding, imperious and intimidating in the best possible way.”
And hey, even if she herself isn’t Jewish, she makes for some perfect Jewish memes (we couldn’t help ourselves):
Me and my younger cousins thinking we'd be asked to snowball at our older cousin’s bat mitzvah pic.twitter.com/iD4CqImvyi
— Alma (@hey_alma) January 13, 2021
grandma watching the grandkids descend into chaos searching for the afikomen to win 1 whole dollar pic.twitter.com/UKN3DDrqVc
— Alma (@hey_alma) January 13, 2021
Me, age 11 acting as the liaison between the boys and my friends at Hebrew School pic.twitter.com/7ecNsCpOxm
— Alma (@hey_alma) January 13, 2021
So there you have it: Golda Rosheuvel is not Jewish, but still very cool. Carry on.
