Adjoa Andoh

Adjoa Aiboom Helen Andoh is a British actress and theatre director of Ghanaian heritage. She is best known as Lady Danbury in the Netflix period drama Bridgerton, and earlier for roles in EastEnders, Casualty and Doctor Who. She was appointed MBE in June 2025.

Early life

She was born on 14 January 1963 in Clifton, Bristol, to an English mother, a teacher, and a Ghanaian father, a journalist and musician. She grew up in Wickwar in Gloucestershire after her father took a job with British Aerospace. She attended Katharine Lady Berkeley's School and studied law at Bristol Polytechnic for two years before leaving to act.

Television and film

She played the jazz singer Karen in EastEnders in 1991 and Colette Griffiths in Casualty from 2000 to 2003. In Doctor Who she played Francine Jones, the mother of Martha Jones, in 2007 and 2008. Since 2020 she has played Lady Danbury in Bridgerton. She also appeared as Mother Nenneke in The Witcher.

On film she played Brenda Mazibuko, chief of staff to Morgan Freeman's Nelson Mandela, in Clint Eastwood's Invictus (2009), and appeared in Noel Clarke's Adulthood (2008) and Brotherhood (2016).

Theatre

She signed her first Equity contract in 1985 and has worked at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court, the Donmar Warehouse and the Young Vic. In 2019 she co-directed Richard II at Shakespeare's Globe with Lynette Linton, the first UK production of the play with a cast made up entirely of women of colour. In 2023 she directed and starred in Richard III at Liverpool Playhouse and the Rose Theatre Kingston.

Audio

She has narrated more than 150 audiobooks, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and Naomi Alderman's The Power, and was a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company. She voiced the war chief Sona in the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.

Honours

She is an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and teaches at RADA. She became an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022, sat on the Booker Prize jury in 2023, and was appointed MBE in 2025.