A refreshing period drama set in Regency London, Bridgerton will arrive on Netflix this Christmas Day!
Bridgerton is the newest romantic drama series from Shonda Rhimes’ production company Shondaland, which is known for producing shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. Check out its teaser trailer below:
The Tale of ‘Bridgerton’
Based on the novels of author Julia Quinn, Bridgerton is a tale of love, family, friendship, and scandals that circulate the high society.
Daphne Bridgerton, the eldest daughter of the powerful Bridgerton family, makes her debut at Regency London’s competitive marriage market. While it seemed easy for Daphne to attract a flock of suitors, his older brother Anthony becomes overprotective and picky in their search for her future husband.
Enter the committed bachelor of the season, the Duke of Hastings, who catches the eyes of every momma seeking a husband for their daughters. The encounter between the Daphne and the Duke might have started on the wrong foot, but soon enough, their attraction for each other becomes undeniable and unrelenting.
As all of these take place, the nobles’ actions are also being driven by the unidentified yet influential writer Lady Whistledown, whose published scandal sheets become fuel to gossips.
Through virtual roundtable interviews, we got to sit and chat with showrunner Chris Van Dusen, and some members of the cast: Phoebe Dynevor (Daphne), Regé-Jean Page (Simon, the Duke of Hastings), Jonathan Bailey (Anthony Bridgerton), and Nicola Coughlan (Penelope Featherington). Check it out below:
What can you say about Bridgerton being dubbed as a period piece for Gossip Girl?
Phoebe: I think that’s such a compliment. I love Gossip Girl and I love period pieces. Mix them together and I think you’ve got the dream show. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of accurate because we’ve got the narration of Lady Whistledown and it’s gossip in the 18th century, it’s the first version of the tabloids.
So it is kind of, it’s a real mix of modern and period, obviously, and we follow these young men and women as they find love and as they discover themselves. And it’s a coming-of-age story as well, so in a lot of ways, yes, that’s sort of an accurate description.
How did you create the on-screen chemistry of Daphne and Simon?
Phoebe: I think a lot of it was actually in the prep. We were able to spend quite a lot of time together. We had sort of six weeks running up to the shooting of the show and we did a lot of dance rehearsals together. And we actually did some with everyone as well. I think that when we first met the whole cast, we all did sort of one big dance like a little practice and a boogie, which really brought us all together and it sort of enabled us to know what this world is.
And so with Regé, we had a lot of dance rehearsing to do, and it just really brought us together. I think there’s a lot of trust that comes with dancing. And it’s a fun experience and we had an amazing intimacy coordinator as well who did all our intimacy scenes. And so we got along really well, we just really wanted to do that justice. It’s such a big part of the story in season one, so we just wanted to do that justice and hopefully, we did.
Regé: I’m not entirely sure that we can take credit for creating the chemistry. I think, Julia and Chris spent a lot of time creating these characters and writing them, and giving us all this wonderful chemistry to work with. So the majority of our job, I think, is getting out of that way. It’s just kind of channeling what we’ve got and making sure that we can show it at its best.
And beyond that, it’s just finding trust with the person you’re working with. We spend an awful lot of time together. We spend hours and hours and hours in dance rehearsals, and then the extra dance rehearsals that we organized ourselves because we were scared that we weren’t good enough at the real dance rehearsals. And then we spent hours and hours and hours on set. We spent the best part of six months almost never out of each other’s company and so I think everything happened quite organically.
