Season three of “Bridgerton” introduces several new faces, but one stands out: Hannah Dodd, who takes over the role of Francesca Bridgerton (after Ruby Stokes, who played the role in seasons one and two, dropped out for scheduling reasons). Dodd jumps into the role of Francesca, a shy, piano-obsessed middle Bridgerton daughter who makes her debut into society in season three.
Dodd, 28, sent through a tape for a mystery project, and then didn’t hear anything for months, when she finally got a call saying they wanted to meet her.
“On the day of my meeting with the team, they told me it was ‘Bridgerton’ and that it was Francesca. So it was slightly different to what I would normally do: I couldn’t really prepare. I didn’t have time,” she says over Zoom. “But I just had to go in and listen to what they wanted and try things in different ways and work with the team. And then I was learning piano a week later.”
Given the character was established in the first two seasons but enters the plot as a main role this season, Dodd had flexibility in crafting her.
“I love so much about her. It’s so nice when you play a character that you genuinely adore. The thing that I’m most excited about is that she is just slightly different,” Dodd says. “It’s so nice that maybe people who are a bit more introverted and maybe don’t see themselves in the Bridgerton family might relate to her in a slightly different way. And her love story is slightly different to what we’ve seen before and what love can look like and what it feels like. It’s really dramatized and romanticized a lot of the time in TV and film and books, and it’s really nice to tell us slightly different versions of that as well.”
Dodd grew up between Essex and Suffolk in the U.K. and began her career as a dancer before starting with musical theater. When she was at dance college she did a short film for Burberry, which was her first experience being on a set.
“I just loved that feeling of working with a giant crew and everybody bringing something that they’d trained in, whether it’s hair, makeup, costume, the cameras, the lighting. I just loved being part of a team and being one cog in telling a story,” she says.
Her first proper acting job was playing a ballerina in a TV show, and her acting snowballed from there.
“It was never a conscious decision to move away from dancing, but I just fell in love with acting,” she says. “And it’s kind of the same thing to me, even though they’re completely different, but they really did kind of go parallel together.”
Now that the first half of season three has launched (with the second coming in June), Dodd faces her first time launching a project of this scale into the world.
“It’s my birthday on the Friday, so my friends are kind of forcing me to do something,” she says. “I don’t know yet whether I’ll be watching it or hiding.”
