When Bridgerton returns with its fourth season, the most consequential change isn’t the romance, the gowns, or even the spectacle of another masked ball. It’s a name.
In Julia Quinn’s novel An Offer from a Gentleman, the Cinderella figure at the heart of the story is called Sophie Beckett. In the Netflix adaptation, she becomes Sophie Baek — a subtle shift that signals something far larger than a character tweak. For the first time in the franchise, Bridgerton is not just casting an East Asian lead. It is allowing her to exist without translation, apology, or narrative justification.
“For me, the reason why it means so much is that it’s just an acknowledgement and it’s just saying, ‘Yeah, she’s Korean, she would have a Korean surname.’ It’s nothing complicated,” says Yerin Ha, the Australian-Korean actor bringing Sophie to life.
Nothing complicated — and that’s precisely the point.
Ha is one of the first East Asian actors to front the Bridgerton franchise, a global cultural juggernaut produced by Netflix and shaped by the imagination of Shonda Rhimes. In an industry that often frames representation as spectacle, Bridgerton’s decision to rename its heroine does something quieter — and arguably more radical.
It lets Sophie simply be.
“She’s Korean, she would have a Korean surname,” Ha says, matter-of-factly. “It’s nothing complicated.”
Yet historically, it has been complicated. Period dramas have long treated whiteness as default and ethnicity as disruption — something to be explained, softened, or stripped away entirely. Sophie Baek disrupts that lineage not by announcing herself, but by existing in full view.
Sophie is still a Cinderella figure, but not the kind saved by magic.
“For me, the Cinderella bit was actually mainly the masquerade bit and him [Benedict] trying to find her [Sophie]. But then, after that, it veers off into a completely different story,” Ha explains.
There is no fairy godmother. No rescue that erases hardship. Sophie works. She endures. She navigates class, precarity, and power — themes that take on sharper meaning when the character is allowed cultural specificity.
“Sophie is an illegitimate child… I’m pretty sure in the book that [is] the first sentence.”
Her obstacles are material, not imagined. Unlike previous Bridgerton heroines, Sophie isn’t fighting social anxiety or romantic misunderstanding — she’s fighting class.
“She is not a rich girl on the marriage mart,” says Rhimes. “She is working class, and through her, we get a view into what it takes to build the life of ease our Bridgertons exist in.”
The name Baek grounds that struggle in reality. It makes Sophie legible not as fantasy, but as someone shaped by systems — social, economic, historical.
Ha resists framing the role as a milestone, but she doesn’t minimize its weight.
“There are certain similarities in the way that I live my life,” she says. “It’s like you’re constantly having to prove yourself, and you do have to sometimes work hard or voice yourself louder to be seen or heard.”
That feeling — of being visible yet uncentered — shaped her upbringing as a Korean-Australian growing up in Sydney. It also shaped her relationship to Sophie.
“I think it’s maybe those similarities that I tried to bring to Sophie, rather than just a cultural thing.”
In that sense, Sophie Baek isn’t symbolic. She’s specific. And that specificity allows the character to carry meaning without being reduced to it.
With visibility comes exposure — something Ha speaks about candidly.
“Being a woman in this industry, it’s a massive thing. People think that they have the right to talk about your body, how you look, and your external appearance.”
“I’ve dealt with body image and that shame for a very, very long time—and I’m still working through it,” she adds.
The choice to center Sophie’s worth beyond appearance becomes a quiet refusal of those pressures.
Read more: ‘Bridgerton’ Star Yerin Ha on Intimate Scenes: ‘Without Fear, You Won’t Grow’
“I wanted to prove to myself that I’m more than just how I look,” Ha says. “I want to express something people desire: human connection.”
In Bridgerton’s world of ornament and excess, Sophie Baek’s power lies in her interiority — and in the fact that she is not flattened into an idea of representation palatable to everyone.
The decision to rename Sophie wasn’t cosmetic. It was collaborative, intentional, and rooted in trust.
True to form, the Bridgerton team worked closely with Ha on shaping the character, allowing space for cultural acknowledgment without turning it into a storyline burden.
“It’s just an acknowledgement,” Ha repeats.
That acknowledgement matters precisely because it doesn’t demand explanation. Sophie’s Korean identity is not a plot device. It is not something she must overcome. It simply is.
“What I love about their stories so much is that there’s a lot more fight,” Ha says. “If Benedict is more in the fantasy realm, Sophie’s more in reality—and actually love lies somewhere in the middle.”
That reality is where Sophie Baek lives — between fantasy and labor, romance and survival, visibility and restraint.
In letting its Cinderella keep her name, Bridgerton makes a small but decisive shift. It suggests a future where representation doesn’t need to be loud to be meaningful — where belonging isn’t conditional, and where a Korean surname in Regency England doesn’t need justification to exist.
Sometimes, the most powerful change is the one that refuses to announce itself.
And sometimes, it begins with a name.
