‘I did all the things an actor shouldn’t’: Bridgerton’s Claudia Jessie on class, big breaks – and houseboats

Being cast as a scheming toff in the global phenomenon Bridgerton was a surprise for Claudia Jessie. Fiercely proud of her roots, the Brummie talks about etiquette lessons, getting too many tattoos and why working-class actors so often get a rough deal

The actor Claudia Jessie greets everyone – including journalists, I discover – with an almighty hug. “Hello bab,” she says as we embrace, before returning to the barista, still grinning. We’re meeting in a central Birmingham café, not far from where she lives, and Jessie is displaying the terrier enthusiasm of a kid on holiday. For two straight hours, through tough topics and all, she’s a flurry of sunshine and smiles. “Really,” she declares, “I’m just the happiest I’ve ever been, I couldn’t be happier. My life has, unequivocally, been a lot better than I thought it would be.”

It’s not hard to see why she’s flying high. Jessie is best known as Eloise Bridgerton, the fifth child of a wealthy family finding its place in high society, in Netflix’s boundary-breaking Regency-era drama. We’re here to discuss Bridgerton’s third season, which is just about to air, and in which she remains the show’s much-loved protofeminist cynic. Now 34, she has been working on-screen steadily for a decade. From 2013, leading BBC One’s police drama, WPC 56. Then her turn in ITV’s Vanity Fair miniseries, before her infamous run in season four of Line of Duty as hoity-toity PC Jodie Taylor. There have been bit-parts in The Detectorists, Call the Midwife and Doctor Who.

But Bridgerton is a cultural phenomenon on the biggest streaming service in the world. Getting her head around being in a global smash hit has taken some adjustment. “I do love it,” she says. “Playing Eloise means I get to support my family and friends, which I never thought I’d be able to do. But I was surprised I was cast. And I was absolutely petrified to step on set – I still get nervous. Even going back for season three, I thought I was going to be shit, that they were going to fire me. It’s something that never goes away.”

It suits Jessie to revel in rejecting the trappings of aristo high-society. To a far greater degree than Eloise, she is also an outlier on Bridgerton: a working-class actor playing upper class – a rarity, she reckons, in her industry. “Sometimes, upper-class people play below as well,” she says. “They have their cake and eat it. I think Bridgerton is brilliant, because there are loads of people who wouldn’t usually be seen in those roles as a lady or a duke. When I get interviewed, I am often asked if I’d like to live in the Bridgerton world and I have to remind them that if I did I’d be staff.”

Jessie credits getting her role on the show to the fact that Bridgerton had a working-class casting editor, Cole Edwards. He later became Jessie’s partner. “And I can do a really good posh accent,” she says, “because you’re so used to hearing them growing up – imitating them is easy.” Hers was a winning audition. “I got a job and a fella on the same day,” she says, “it was a great day for me, wasn’t it?” Jessie remains slightly bemused at a remarkable, fortuitous turn of events. A future in the arts seemed unthinkable to her as a child; a future on television even more distant.