Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh details the vile racist bullying she endured at school before suffering

Publish date: 2024-07-03

Adjoa Andoh has revealed how racism has blighted her life – from having her head smashed against walls at infant school to being barred from friends' houses and potential boyfriends, then seeing her parents' divorce contribute to a nervous breakdown.

The actress, 60, born to an English mother and an upper class Ghanaian father, told how she would not even have been born if her mum's 'racist' sister had her way and prevented her parents' marriage.

The couple eventually did go on to tie the knot in a wedding boycotted by her mum's side of the family, including her mother's parents.

The Bridgerton star told how the suffering started as early as infant school, where any school friends she did make forced her to leave their homes before their parents saw her. 

At secondary school she even became a punk because boys were scared to go out with her for fear of getting in trouble with their parents.

Adjoa Andoh has revealed how she was blighted by racist bullying while at infant school, before detailing how she suffered a nervous breakdown after her parents' divorce

Adjoa Andoh has revealed how she was blighted by racist bullying while at infant school, before detailing how she suffered a nervous breakdown after her parents' divorce

Asked what her first memory of pain was, Andoh - who played Lady Danbury in Bridgerton - said: 'Having my head smashed against the wall in the infants, and it's a traditional Cotswold stone county primary school, so Cotswold stone it's bumpy.

'You know like in the Beano you had 'Gnnhhh!' - all those exclamations of pain. As my head would hit I would see stars, but I would also see the cartoon bubble of 'Gnnhhh!!' '

She said the violence only stopped when she learned to headbutt people, adding: 'It stopped when I realised there was this thing I could do to make it stop.

'I was aware of being walloped a lot, and then I was aware of having to fight back, but I sort of thought that was what happened at school until I was a bit older and friends would say 'Oh, we're going to go back to mine, we'll have to get out before my mum comes because you're not allowed in our house'.

'It would be that sort of thing and then you start to investigate that, but I think I must have been the end of infants before I twigged what that was.

'I had a red knitted dressing gown with a penguin patch pocket. I used to steal thrupenny bits from my mother's purse and go across the road to the chocolate machine, and buy bars of chocolate to give to two boys at school.

'I was in the infants and I was being beaten up, and I didn't make the connection between why I was buying this chocolate and why was I giving it to particular children.

'But when a neighbour apprised my mother of the fact that I was nipping across the road early of a morning and coming back with chocolate I was convinced she'd identified me by my penguin patch dressing gown.

The actress, born to an English mother and an upper class Ghanaian father, told how she would not even have been born if her mum's 'racist' sister had prevented her parents' marriage

The actress, born to an English mother and an upper class Ghanaian father, told how she would not even have been born if her mum's 'racist' sister had prevented her parents' marriage

'I was like 'why did I wear that dressing gown?' '

Andoah said she was the only black girl at her school and possibly the only one in the Cotswolds at the time.

She said: 'I just thought that fighting was the thing. We were the (only) black people in the 40, 50 miles radius. We were in the rural Cotswolds.'

Her parents had decided to move out to the countryside because her dad had experienced racism in Bristol and knew a disproportionate number of African Caribbean children were put in educationally subnormal schools in the city.

At the age of 13, the racism was causing her mental anguish as well as physical, driving her to become a punk.

She said: 'I would say I was a punk from late '76 onwards. I would say it saved my life in many ways in this weird sort of rural existence where I was in my teens now, and wanting to go places and do things and aware of my difference.

'I was starting to want boyfriends and people wouldn't want to be my boyfriend and they couldn't because they'd get in trouble.'

When she reached sixth form she had a nervous breakdown, but in an interview with Gyles Brandreth for his Rosebud podcast, she revealed for the first time how racism had contributed towards that.

The prejudice her accountant father experienced at work culminated in stresses in her parents' marriage leading eventually to them splitting, which in turn was to contribute to Adjoah's nervous breakdown.

Asked what caused it, she said: 'My parents were getting divorced because life was very pressurised for them. I think my dad was very unhappy. He never got promoted. He was training people who were then promoted over him.

'I think he was an upper class Ghanian man suddenly thrust into the role of A.N. Other black man and treated in that way. Promoting people who then became his boss and I think it was a bitter pill to swallow.

'My mum was raging on his behalf but couldn't fix it, and eventually it did for them.'

The irony of the sad break-up was that the couple had only married in the first place because of her mother's defiance in the face of objections from within her own family to marrying a black man.

At secondary school Adjoa even became a punk because boys were scared to go out with her for fear of getting in trouble with their parents

At secondary school Adjoa even became a punk because boys were scared to go out with her for fear of getting in trouble with their parents

Andoh, 60, whose father is now in his nineties, said: 'She was the maverick, hence her marrying an African in the face of all not good wishes from her family (correct).

'My (maternal) grandmother was very, very happy to live next door to a Nigerian vicar, and be friends and all of that stuff, but marrying? There's a whole other conversation.

'So my mother's sister, my auntie Leah, in today's terms we would call somebody who was a racist. And she whispered in her older sister's ear, and she said 'Jessie, you can't have this (wedding)'.

'Nanna absolutely put her foot down about the wedding. She got my grandfather down. She'd left him but she got him involved. He was absolutely implacably opposed.

'Of course if you say that to my mother, of course she's going to marry him, and she did, and none of the family came to the wedding.

'They all went to Cornwall to Padstow on holiday.'

But for all the trauma, Andoh insists she regrets nothing and it taught her to work harder to become liked and may well have broadened her horizons and aspirations.

Asked if growing up as the only black girl had enhanced or damaged her life, she said: 'I don't regret anything.

'It's given me an absolute everlasting love of nature, it taught me very early on to be self-conscious, that I had to make people like me, because they might not like me because of the look of me. And I think that's a terrible burden for a child.

'If I'd stayed in the Cotswolds, there's a life I could have had that would have been working for Lloyds bank, getting married, settling down and just being there forever. That could have been a very nice life but I don't think it's a life I'm gifted for.'

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3IpbCmmZmhe6S7ja6iaKymqLWww8GisWiZoqm2pLjEZmhrcGNsfnh%2Fjnqbo6eRnXqCusOon2aqkZi2tMCMm6ylpKmeu6h50pyfqKecYrumvtWorKxlkqeyorfDqK6nZpipuq0%3D