Adjoa Andoh

Adjoa Andoh Hon. FRSL (born 14 January 1963) is a British actress. On stage, she has played lead roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre and the Almeida Theatre. On television, she appeared in two series of Doctor Who as Francine Jones, 90 episodes of the BBC's long-running medical drama Casualty, and BBC's EastEnders. Andoh made her Hollywood debut in autumn 2009, starring as Nelson Mandela's Chief of Staff Brenda Mazibuko alongside Morgan Freeman as Mandela in Clint Eastwood's drama film Invictus. Since 2020, she portrays Lady Danbury in the Netflix Regency romance series Bridgerton. In July 2022, Andoh became an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Andoh was born in Clifton, Bristol. Her mother, a teacher, was English, and her father was a journalist and musician from Ghana. She has a brother. Andoh grew up in Wickwar in Gloucestershire, where her family moved after her father got a job with British Aerospace. She attended Katharine Lady Berkeley's School and then started studying law at Bristol Polytechnic, but left after two years to pursue an acting career. Andoh was a member of the BBC's Radio Drama Company. Her television credits include Casualty (she played Colette Griffiths (née Kierney) from 2000 until 2003), Jonathan Creek, EastEnders (where she played jazz singer Karen, the lodger of Rachel Kominski in 1991), and The Tomorrow People (where she played Amanda James in the story The Rameses Connection in 1995).