Rege-Jean Page has described his experience of global stardom following his breakout role in Netflix's Bridgerton as 'strange' and 'very intense'. The 38-year-old actor, who played the Duke of Hastings in the raunchy period drama, left the series after its hugely successful first season.
Speaking to Esquire UK, Page reflected on adapting to life in the spotlight. 'How I navigate it is very much about what is useful, what serves me in my job, in being able to deliver what I need to deliver to an audience, and a lot of that is just grounding,' he said. 'It does get quite loud on the inside, like it was very, very intense, that combination of conversation, and I think I worked quite consciously to be able to navigate that environment with some normalcy for myself.'
Since Bridgerton, Page has focused on his film career, starring in Netflix's big-budget spy film The Gray Man (2022) alongside Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. He has also launched a production company, A Mighty Stranger, and spoke about taking creative control. 'I think there's an illusion of how passive an actor's role needs to be,' he said. 'It's a fairly natural thing for most people to have authorship, some degree of authorship, over the stories they're telling.'
Page also discussed his upcoming romance film You, Me And Tuscany, starring alongside Halle Bailey. The actor, who is of Zimbabwean descent, said: 'I think it's important to normalise your own existence. To normalise seeing two black leads in a film that is about a universal experience of escaping to find true love in Italy.' He described the film, directed by Kat Coiro, as a 'very fun and frivolous ride with some integrity'.
