When she walked into the London casting room of The Wheel of Time, Madeleine Madden scanned the faces – a sea of white – and thought, “Yep, standard.”

To announce her presence, she politely inquired, “The Wheel of Time?”

“They were like, ‘Oh no – upstairs’,” she recalls. “Then I walked into the actual room and it was such a diverse room of people, I just felt so relieved. For so much of my life I was the odd one out.