When Simone Ashley first learned that the second season of “Bridgerton” broke Netflix’s single-week record for most viewed English language series, she initially had a moment of happy disbelief that so many viewers were connecting to her character Kate Sharma.

“It means so much to me that people are responding to her. She isn’t the typical heroine. I think she’s a beautifully flawed, self-realized character,” Ashley told NBC Asian America. “And that’s the kind of a heroine that I wanted to project out into the world for other women to see.”

Since “Bridgerton” introduced viewers to the Indian half-sisters Kate and Edwina Sharma last month, fans have been buzzing about the strong lead performances by Ashley and Charithra Chandran (who plays Edwina) and the South Asian cultural touchstones scattered throughout the season’s eight episodes.

Loosely based on the 2000 Julia Quinn novel “The Viscount Who Loved Me,” the new season tells the story of Kate Sharma, a young, independent woman who is determined to launch her beautiful and charming half-sister Edwina into society. But when the sisters meet the Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey), Kate’s carefully orchestrated plan begins to unravel — and she and the Viscount find themselves getting closer and closer.

Kate “doesn’t have it easy. She’s not the debutante of the season — she’s not this diamond that can catch all of these suitors,” said Ashley. “She really puts herself behind and puts other people first. And she constantly has this battle between duty and heart. I’m just glad that people are rooting for her.”

Like the first season of “Bridgerton” in 2021, the new episodes center a multicultural cast and take a somewhat race-blind approach to the original source material, with the show changing Kate’s original last name of Sheffield to Sharma and noting that the Sharma’s late father worked for an Indian royal.

While both seasons have generated lots of discussions among viewers and online about the show’s casting decisions, both Hollywood and the British entertainment industry have slowly begun to cast actors of color in historical dramas in recent years, with Dev Patel’s star turn in 2020’s “The Personal History of David Copperfield” and the 2019 BBC adaptation of “Les Miserables,” featuring David Oyelowo and Adeel Akhtar, as two prominent examples. But despite those small gains, being asked to read for a historical drama can still be a rare event for actors of color.