When the clock struck midnight last Saturday, Yerin Ha was leaving the 19th-century Palais Brongniart in Paris, dressed in a blue satin Prada gown lined with crystals. Some might say she looked straight out of Cinderella, and that would be the point—the Australian actress, 28, had just attended the premiere of Season Four of Bridgerton, the Shonda Rhimes–produced Regency-era series based on Julia Quinn’s romance novels, returning to Netflix next week. Ha plays the new lead, Sophie Baek, a maid and the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, who becomes the mysterious love interest of Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), the seemingly eternal bachelor and second-oldest Bridgerton son.
Mostly unknown to the world before now, Ha’s identity as an actress began taking shape long ago. “I think in my blood I always wanted to be an entertainer,” she says. It’s no wonder, given her grandparents Son Sook and Kim Seong-Ok were linchpins of the Seoul theater community in the late 20th century, with Sook also winning six Baeksang Arts Awards—think Korean Oscars—in her film-and-TV career. In fact, it was seeing her grandmother in a one-woman show that led Ha to think seriously about acting professionally.
