Older women still have an appetite for love... just like Lady Danbury

FOR the young it's all too easy to think love lives and sex drives dwindle, if not disappear, past 40.

- SANJEETA BAINS

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.