'Bridgerton' Casts Australian Actor Yerin Ha as Season 4's Lead

The speculation over how Bridgerton plans to proceed in Season 4 is over, and those hoping for something a little less traditional will have to resign themselves to waiting for another story. In July 2024, Netflix confirmed that Season 4 would center Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) after skipping over him in Season 3 in favor of Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington's (Nicola Coughlan) love story. Season 3 instead had Benedict explore his bisexuality after being invited to join a throuple, part of a long-needed injection of LGBTQ+ and queer love stories into the franchise, which also included Francesca (Hannah Dodd) discovering her attraction to women right after marrying a man. 

However, when it comes to coupling Benedict up for life, apparently he'll be returning to the more traditional heteronormative style of love story that involves a woman stealing his heart before disappearing like she never existed. To that end, Variety reports the production has cast Australian actor Yerin Ha (who American viewers may recognize from Halo) as Benedict's future love interest, Sophie Beckett.

With the surprise twist at the end of Season 3 for Francesca, which saw her book love interest gender-flipped from Michael to Michaela (Masali Baduza), LGBTQ+ fans had hopes Sophie Beckett might also receive a twist. A popular theory suggested the series could take the Cinderella retelling and, instead of having Sophie be a high-born lady forced to live as a maid, having Sophie be a transgender woman forced to live as a man. However, this casting suggests that while Bridgerton is comfortable with portraying queer love stories as long as they are traditional and cis, transgender stories are still a bridge too far, at least at this juncture.

Instead, Bridgerton's next season will return to the series' original premise twist: creating a post-racial fantasy set in the Regency era. Yerin Ha (하예린) is a third-generation Korean actor; her grandmother is Son Sook, a household name in South Korea, having starred in many films before moving into politics and then back to the screen later in life. (American fans of K-Dramas may know her from 2018's Beauty Inside.) Ha's parents are also actors; Ha followed in the family tradition, training at the Kaywon High School of Arts in Seoul before attending Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). In 2021, Ha was named a rising star by the Casting Guild of Australia.

Netflix and Shonda Rhimes have not formally confirmed Yerin Ha's casting. They declined to speak to Variety, issuing "no comment" to anyone else who asked. However, the report of Ha's casting fits everything fans have uncovered, including that the production was looking to cast an East Asian actor in the role, one around the same age as Benedict's character, in her late 20s. (Ha is 29.) That is a welcome change from the novel, where Benedict and Sophie are a decade apart in age, one of the many problematic inequalities inherent in the original story. Make no mistake. Benedict's original tale, An Offer From A Gentleman, is quite troublesome. 

In it, Sophie is the illegitimate daughter of a Duke who had "an affair" with one of the housemaids. (The novel suggests the Duke loved Sophie's mother, but the inherent inequality of a Duke sleeping with the help feels a little like trying to tell people Thomas Jefferson "loved" Sally Hemmings.) Sophie is forced to live and work as a maid in her father's house after he passes away, despite his will stating she should inherit a portion of the family fortune and be treated as an equal to her stepmother and stepsisters. When Benedict meets Sophie in her real-life position, he does not recognize the "Lady in Silver" from his mother's masquerade ball, and the "offer" he makes is for her to be his mistress, as marrying a servant is unthinkable.

However, since Season 1, which stuck to the source material so faithfully that it staged Daphne Bridgerton (Pheobe Dynevor) raping her husband Simon (Rege-Jean Page) in a failed attempt to get pregnant, Bridgerton's writers have attempted to head off inherent issues. Season 2 was criticized for depicting Kate (Simone Ashley) and Edwina (Charithra Chandran) fighting over a man. However, that change was meant to solve the ugly subtext that Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) never looked at Kate for years because she was poor and unconventional. Season 3, on the other hand, skillfully corrected the original story's fatphobia and Colin's controlling behaviors and was the best installment of the show so far.

The good news is there are signs Bridgerton will lean into the extensive ensemble to help solve the issues in Benedict's story. Francesca, her new husband Jon (Victor Alli), and Michaela have Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie) with them in Scotland, allowing the show to continue telling both Bridgerton sisters' stories as Season 4 subplots. Bailey confirmed recently he and Ashley will be back to reprise their roles as Anthony and Kate in Season 4. Coughlan and Newton are also confirmed to return as the newly married Penelope and Colin. Most interestingly, rumors continue to swirl that the show is pushing to bring back Dynevor and Page for Season 4. Dynevor guest starred in Season 2 but sat out in Season 3; Page has not been back since leading Season 1.

Add in the show's ongoing subplot involving Lady Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell) finding love again with Lady Danbury's (Adjoa Andoh) brother, Lord Marcus Anderson (Daniel Francis), not to mention theories about Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen) directly connecting to Sophie's story, and Season 4 suddenly has multiple avenues to traverse that could solve An Offer From a Gentlemen's problems. Meanwhile, fans will look forward to getting to know Yerin Ha, whose casting just shot her to Netflix's A-list.

Bridgerton Season 4 is currently filming, with a planned release date in 2026.