Rege-Jean Page finds attending the Met Gala a lonely experience.

The 36-year-old actor met his You, Me and Tuscany co-star Halle Bailey at the 2025 fashion extravaganza, which had the theme of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, and he was grateful to make a friend there because "almost everyone" is on their own inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Speaking to Esquire magazine, Rege - who also attended the 2022 Met Gala - said: "What no one tells you about the Met Gala is that everyone, almost everyone, is on their own.

"There's the most glamorous room, the most exclusive echelon of society, all utterly lost and alone and searching for connection.

"You're dressed as well as you're ever going to be dressed. But you're also in a very vulnerable place, ready to lean on your co-star immediately."

The Bridgerton actor was happy to star in the film and noted it was the first time he had a Black woman as his love interest since he starred in the 2016 remake of Roots, which is largely set on a plantation, "a fairly unimaginative place to only find Black love interests".

He said: "I think it's important to normalise your own existence.

"To normalise seeing two Black leads in a film that is about a universal experience of escaping to find true love in Italy."

Rege is set to star in a West End production of The Great Gatzby and promised the stage show will stay true to the discussions of race in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.

He said: "We keep those explicit discussions in there, because I think you can't separate class and race in America, certainly not in America in the 1920s.

"I think we see an opportunity there not to invent anything but to delve deeper into revealing what Fitzgerald is writing in that book."

The actor also has a film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo coming up, which is based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas, who was the grandson of an Afro-Caribbean slave and "existing in 19th century France as a Black man."

Rege added: "He writes about a society that contains a lot of Black folks in it in France, with nuances and politics that are not the same that race has had in the 21st century, but I don't think we represent those very often.

"I think it's important to paint that picture with the understanding we have now, not to invent it, but to paint it with greater detail."

The Black Bag actor has set up his own production company, A Mighty Stranger, which he believes is a "natura evolution" for his career, drawing parallels to pop stars who "creatively direct" their own music, even if they don't write all their own songs.

He said: "I think there's an illusion of how passive an actor's role needs to be.

"We know all the writers on Beyoncé or Taylor's albums, but we also expect that to be their product that they crafted for us in an artistic manner."

Read the full interview with Rege at https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/film/a70880148/rege-jean-page-interview/.