For our February 2026 cover story, Kim Parker spoke to actress Isabella Wei about entering the world of Bridgerton as Posy Li, working alongside Ben Whishaw and Kiera Knightley in Black Doves, and growing up embracing the arts in Hong Kong.
As part of the interview, Wei described how the attention to detail of the Bridgerton set makes the beloved show even more special and how she feels a sense of “pride” being part of the newest family to enter the Ton.
“Stepping into an iconic Bridgerton ball for the first time was like a fairytale,” recounts Wei.
“It was the first time all the cast members were able to be together, and it was just fantastic. Dizzying. It’s hard to believe, but everything really is as lavish as it appears on screen. There’s no visual effects. Everything – right down to all the little cupcakes and candles – was real.”
Titled the ‘Season of Love’, the highly-anticipated fourth season is based on An Offer from a Gentleman, the third of US author Julia Quinn’s bestselling Bridgerton novels.
The storyline revolves around the Cinderella-esque romance between the titular family’s rakish second son, Benedict (played by Luke Thompson), and Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), a housemaid who attends a glittering masquerade ball in disguise.
Wei joins the cast as Posy Li, the amenable daughter of the formidable, twice-widowed Lady Araminta Gun (played by Harry Potter alumni, Katie Leung), an ambitious newcomer who wants to see her children married off.
“She’s quite villainous,” says Wei of her on-screen mother. “She’s probably the scariest person that has ever entered the Ton.”
In real life, the pair formed a close bond during filming. “We’d have these intense scenes where Katie would be snapping at me and telling me off, and then once the director called ‘cut’, we’d laugh and she’d apologise to me in the sweetest voice,” Wei claims.
“We spent a lot of time together. We even started ordering the same lunch.” Having also been catapulted into the public eye at 16, Leung, now 37, became a kind of mentor figure for her younger colleague.
“Katie is someone I really look up to. In my mind, she’s doing things exactly right – she’s impeccable at what she does but has also managed to build a good life for herself, and a beautiful family, outside of work. You can’t help but be in awe of her,” says Wei, adding that having three other East Asian actresses who were also new to the world of Bridgerton – Leung, Yerin Ha, and Michelle Mao, who plays Posy’s sister, Rosamund – made her early days on set seem far less daunting.
“I feel honoured to be able to participate in it,” states Wei, of the show’s famously diverse casting. “Perhaps, if I had seen more things like this growing up, I might not have felt so intimidated going into my first job. Being able to tell this fresh and more relatable kind of Regency story gives me a real sense of pride.”
Issue 15, which you can pre-order here, is out February 9th.
Subscribe to our newsletter here
