Rege-Jean Page is looking for more "sexy" roles.
Rege-Jean Page
The 31-year-old actor has quit 'Bridgerton' after just one season as the suave Duke of Hastings and while he's ready to embrace the "unexpected" with his future career plan, he teased he's looking for roles with something in common with the period drama.
He told Variety: "The thing that has always appealed to me most about this career is getting to encounter and interact with the unexpected.
"I want everything I do to be as sexy as 'Bridgerton', just in different ways."
Rege-Jean compared leaving the Netflix series to graduating from high school.
He explained: “You’re afraid of the unknown, thinking, ‘Oh, my god, I’m never going to make friends as good as the ones I have,’ and then you do."
But the British actor insisted he was "not at all" nervous about leaving because he felt it was the right thing to do.
He explained: "Because that’s what was meant. Simon was this bomb of a one-season antagonist, to be reformed and to find his true self through Daphne. I think one of the bravest things about the romance genre is allowing people a happy ending."
And the actor is proud to have shown people of colour the "possibility of being royalty" thanks to his portrayal of the duke.
He said: "Me and my friends used to joke about the fact that you don’t see a Black man on a horse… It’s so simple. I can get on a horse and I can put it on the screen; that’s step one.
"I can be royalty, and [other people of color] can see the possibility of being royalty. Standing there, wearing the boots and the jacket, doing the dances, inhabiting a space that is perfectly possible for me to inhabit, changes how you see the world."
Meanwhile, the 'Dungeons and Dragons' actor recalled how he was starstruck when he met his friend and mentor Sterling K. Brown for the first time at a party in 2016.
He said of meeting the 'This Is Us' star: “My brain just turned off."
Rege-Jean was lost for words before he blurted out: “I just want to be you.”
He added: “And Sterling just smiled patiently and let me do that and then talked me through how not to be overwhelmed by this room.
“He reassured me and said, ‘You’ve got stuff ahead of you. You can breathe.’”
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