Adjoa Andoh’s character Lady Danbury may well have her very own hunk on the cards, with more to come when part two of Bridgerton’s season three is released next month

For the young it’s all too easy to think love lives and sex drives dwindle, if not disappear, past 40. And at over 50, gosh forbid…

But Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh is having none of it. “Just because we’ve passed baby age doesn’t mean we don’t still have a good healthy appetite.”

Adjoa’s character Lady Danbury may have her own hunk in season three of Bridgerton, which was back yesterday. Part two is out next month.

Adjoa, 61, says: “I can’t say too much, but I hope there will be. Any romance she has will need to enrich her place as a safe, secure, powerful, independent woman, not detract from it.

“I’d say to any woman, have a relationship that lets you be all of who you are. A relationship should be the icing on the cake and not the whole cake.”

Her portrayal of the acerbic dowager who runs ‘Ton is now legendary. Unconcerned with the rules of polite society, Lady Danbury is a straight shooter, just like the actor playing her.

Bridgerton was praised for its diverse casting and highlighting roles for strong older women, which Adjoa applauds. The Royal Shakespeare Company star, and now associate artist, had starred in Casualty, Doctor Who, Death in Paradise and a string of acclaimed plays before Bridgerton in 2020, when it became Netflix’s most-watched show.

Love is certainly on the cards elsewhere this season, which focuses on the big romance between Nicola Coughlan’s character Penelope Featherington (otherwise known as the show’s gossip columnist Lady Whistledown) and Colin Bridgerton, played by Luke Newton.

This plot mirrors Adjoa’s own friends-to-lovers story. Her first meeting with husband of 22 years Howard Cunnell in 1994 has romcom written all over it. She had a theatre company at London’s Battersea Arts Centre and he took over the bookshop below it.

Adjoa says: “Somebody told me he was very tasty. Then we met properly.” Howard, now a novelist, has said he first saw Adjoa as he was moving in, and she took his breath away. “Well that’s what he says,” she laughs.

But the relationship was a slow burn. Adjoa was a single mum at the time to eight-year-old daughter Jessie and, after building a strong friendship, the couple went on their first date to an Arsenal game.

She says: “We sort of bonded over football and books. A lasting relationship needs a really solid friendship of shared interest and mutual support because you know they will be there through the highs and lows of everything.” Friendship is also key in Bridgerton, with Lady Danbury being Queen Charlotte’s trusted confidante.

Adjoa has found herself in hot water with our Royals when she said how “terribly white” the balcony was after King Charles III’s Coronation.

Adjoa is actually an admirer of both the late Queen Elizabeth and Charles. She also approves of Prince Harry and wife Meghan’s carving a new path for themselves. One that most recently took them to Nigeria, where the Duchess said she was 43% Nigerian.

She says: “How lovely she has found that out, and she is in her position that she actually had the opportunity to visit the country.”

Adjoa is optimistic that Harry and Meghan will one day return to the royal fold.

“Families are complicated. All of us have complicated families, but they will find their way through it,” she says, supporting an end to the rift.

In January, Adjoa, daughter of a Ghanaian accountant father and white teacher mother, visted Lakaldo community in Northern Ghana for the Tree Aid charity project.

Adjoa is optimistic the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will one day return to the Royal Family. She says: “All of us have complicated families, but they will find their way through it.”

Born in Bristol, Adjoa is the daughter of a Ghanaian accountant father and white teacher mother. She and her younger brother grew up in rural Gloucestershire. She often felt singled out and was bullied at school but she enjoyed history and English, which made slipping into the Regency world far from alienating.

She says: “Bridgerton is a drama, not a documentary, but Queen Charlotte was of African heritage, and there were interracial relationships going back to the 1400s – so that’s how she ended up being a woman of African heritage in the royal families of Europe.”

Adjoa, who is in UKTV crime drama The Red King, admits due to work she has missed moments with her own family. She and Howard also have two children together, Daisy and Liam. She says: “When kids were younger I missed school sports day but on the other side they have also met Morgan Freeman.” She starred with Morgan and Matt Damon in 2009’s Mandela biopic Invictus.

She says: “I’m proud of my children, but I don’t get involved in their lives as Lady Danbury would. You stand by your kid and support them. Sometimes they make choices that wouldn’t be your choices. But that’s actually their business.” Lady Danbury took Simon Basset, played by Rege-Jean Page, under her wing in season one. Adjoa also starred with Henry Cavill in The Witcher. Both are said to be in the frame to play James Bond. Adjoa thinks Rege is out of running as he has other irons in the fire.

Adjoa also starred in spin-off series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, where a young Agatha Danbury marries a man she doesn’t love, is widowed and falls in love with Lord Ledger, Violet Bridgerton’s father.

Adjoa’s favourite scenes in the new series have been with Violet (Ruth Gemmell) when they have to deal with the fallout of not acknowledging what they both know, that her father was the love of Lady Danbury’s life.

Those times are not necessarily over it seems. Lady Danbury couldn’t possibly comment… “But it’s definitely an interesting season!”