Rege-Jean Page

“This constant need for dominance and strength, having walls up, this kind of silent broker cowboy who needs to have something that can be redeemed before he is actually worthy of love, there is a missing piece to that strength.”

“I spent two years trying to get into drama school.”

“The thing that has appealed to me most about this career is getting to encounter and interact with the unexpected.”

“Because when you are something people don't know quite how to define, it means you get more of an opportunity to define yourself to bring something new to the table, to bring a new view on things.”

“I used to be in music, in a punk band in my teens. It was very teenage of me, I wanted to find a way to be loud and angry and righteous and that seemed the most productive way to do so.”

“I'm very wary of heroes. I try not to make them in the first place, but there was a phrase Idris Elba spoke a few years back, where he said 'It's not about being the next Denzel, it's about being the first you,' and I really took that to heart.”

“We're still trying to figure out how to let men be vulnerable, to realize there's strength in vulnerability, and that it's how you fill out the circle of masculinity.”

“If we're not careful, this archetype of the dark, brooding, broken antihero gets held up on a pedestal for the wrong reasons.”

“If that executive at the top of the studio had seen more stories with all the people they don't relate to, they may be able to relate to them better, particularly if those stories are of a higher quality.”

“I have a theory that I'm always hungry when I do interviews, as I always talk about food.”

“Me and my friends used to joke about the fact that you don't see a Black man on a horse.”

“And that's where I think vulnerability comes in - the fact that we're figuring out that there is strength in actually being vulnerable to one another, there is strength to letting go of grief, or at least processing grief more helpfully than we've necessary seen, particularly in these corseted upper class dramas before.”

“Eighty-two million households is what Netflix put out watched 'Bridgerton.' And I cannot hold 82 million in my head, because that doesn't fit. It's too big.”

“'Roots' was a massive responsibility because it is this foundational text in the States and it also resonates fairly strongly with pretty much any black community globally.”

“'Bridgerton' is something a bit like if Jane Austen met Gossip Girl' and maybe like 45 Shades of Grey.'”

“I have always found it curious that Americans consider Roots' an American story. I first watched it growing up in Zimbabwe, and I naturally saw it as an African story.”

“It's a brilliant job. I'm literally paying my mortgage by fighting imaginary dragons.”

“I don't think that it's ever irrelevant to know where you came from, to know your history, and to improve upon your history.”

“I think people were grateful for the intensity of the romantic aspects of Bridgerton;' I'm not sure how grateful I was to watch it for myself.”

“We've all known how to smile since the beginning of time. We've all gotten married since the beginning of time. We've all had romance, glamour, and splendor. Representing that is incredibly important, because period drama for people who aren't white shouldn't mean only spotlighting trauma.”