EW: ‘Mr. Malcolm's List’ offers the diverse, Regency rom-com of your dreams

Before Bridgerton, we hadn't really seen adaptations in this era cast people of color. Did that series inspire any casting choices? Why was that important to you?

The short film was shot in 2018 and came out in February 2019. They all pre-dated Bridgerton. None of us had heard the word Bridgerton when we started developing the film this way. Obviously, the success of Bridgerton has not hurt Malcolm's trajectory in finding an audience.

For me, it came down to two really simple things. The week that I heard the screenplay for the first time, I was in New York and I went to see Hamilton. I've watched every British period drama countless times. I love them. But I realized that the way things have been made, and the way things have been done from an artistic perspective, didn't have to be that way. History does not suggest that England was just made up of white people. I spent a lot of time visiting museums, looking at art, talking to historians, to really root the world of Malcolm in truth.

On one level, you can very simply say, "It's England now telling a story about England then." But for all of us who got involved, it became about something so much bigger than that. I don't think we need to see another period drama the way they've always been made. There's going to be people who bump up against it, but those aren't the people that I made this movie for. I made this movie for women, specifically women of color, who have never had their own Keira Knightley or their own Sense and Sensibility, all the films that I grew up loving.