Bridget Jones director on finding ‘real heat’ between Leo Woodall and Renee Zellweger
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy director Michael Morris shares “precious” memories of reuniting Hugh Grant and Renee Zellweger, those age-gap sex scenes and reflects on the scenes he wishes he didn’t have to cut
Renee Zellweger was apprehensive about playing Bridget Jones again. Of course she was: you’re careful about reprising the roles that define you. But it was a preliminary meeting with director Michael Morris that convinced her to put on her British accent one more time. “My memory of that,” Morris says of their conversation, “was, ‘I only want to do this if there’s a real reason to bring Bridget back.’ And we discovered that there was.”
She’s still the same old Bridge: glugging wine from the bottle and being quizzed about her singledom at dinner parties, so on the one hand not much has changed in Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, released nine years after the last instalment.
And yet, this is Bridget entirely anew. She is coming to terms with the death of her husband Mark Darcy while bringing up her children as a single mum. The film sometimes crams in nostalgic references, and it can be disorientating to flow from fml-style comedy into seriousness, but at its best Mad About The Bay is a raw exploration of grief.
“I wanted to use this generation of Bridget Jones to make something that I don’t know exists that much, which is a comedy of grief,” says Morris, who has only directed one other feature film, 2022’s To Leslie, about a single mother who squanders her lottery winnings on alcohol, which has a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “Grief is something we all go through, and how Bridget goes through it is what makes her so special. She’s a joyful person.”
There are two new love interests. One is played by Leo Woodall, the 27-year-old One Day actor, who establishes himself as a sublime leading man in Mad About The Boy, and the other is acting titan Chiwetel Ejiofor. Colin Firth returns in flashback scenes, as does Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver. Written out of Helen Fielding’s original novels in Bridget Jones’ Baby because he didn’t want to re-appear, he was tempted back by the script, written by The Crown and Eric writer Abi Morgan, Helen Fielding and British screenwriter Dan Mazer.
“Very few couples are as enduring as Mark and Bridget,” says Morris. “Twenty-five years later people still talk about Mark Darcy and Bridget Jones. We all have a relationship with them.”
Rehearsal time with Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant was arranged pre-shoot, and Grant was also wary of returning. “The table read was amazing,” says Morris. “It was like watching Led Zeppelin get back together. It was amazing to see them click back into it like they’d never been apart. There was a shared sense of ‘here we go.’ We all felt there was something precious here.”
With Bridget and Roxster, we felt like there was a real connection. Not hit the bed and fade to black, it felt like there was real heat
Morris, who accidentally calls Renée Bridget during our interview, says the Oscar winner helped choose clothes for Bridget. “She knows the character so well,” says Morris. “She’s really invested in asking, how much does this item cost? She doesn’t want to wear something that would be out of the price range of the character. It wasn’t ‘What looks best on me?’ It was ‘No, that’s gorgeous but she would never be able to wear that.’”
There were “challenging” parts to filming, in particular the prologue montage where multiple characters appear as visions in Bridget’s mind, offering conflicting pieces of advice. It was a single shot filmed in a small room and actors were saying their lines to camera and then ducking below props to get out of the way of the team, who shot the whole sequence in one fell swoop. Morris laughs at the memory: “Poor old Shirley Henderson diving under the table and curling up in a ball so you couldn’t see her as the camera came round! It was an old fashioned, no tricks shoot.”
Fanatics will be pleased to discover a series of Easter Eggs, including bright blue cocktails in homage to the famous blue soup from the inaugural movie. “Our brilliant props department pantone matched the colour of the original soup! It’s a nice way to honour the 25 years of history,” says Morris. “If it makes people smile, that’s wonderful.”
Much has been made of the age-gap romance with Boxster, the 29-year-old gardener Bridget has surprisingly raunchy on-screen sex with. He saves her from being stuck up a tree (classic Bridge) and the two have fabulous chemistry. The first scene the duo shot after meeting was actually their final scene together in the film – not that you’d know it from the chemistry. “Renee’s brilliant at that. She’s really good at creating spaces between people, and Leo is naturally warm.”
It’s clear how proud Morris is of the intimacy scenes. The first films were shot in the era before intimacy coordinators, when audiences rarely got more than a smooch and a fade to black. “I think we have a really good scene there. It’s very intimate the way we shot it. When we watched Bridget and Roxster, we felt like there was a real connection. Not hit the bed and fade to black, it felt like there was some real heat.”
With men, in Mad About The Boy, Bridget asserts more control. She’s not always waiting around for them to like her, more acknowledging she has agency in choosing the right one. “It’s not ‘I hope he likes me’ but ‘I am ready for what I’m ready for. She has to take her own power back, and in doing that she can open herself up to finding love.”
Morris says that it’s “not for me to say” what kind of female role model Bridget Jones is for today, but the critics are less afraid: the film has landed plenty of positive four-star reviews, including Morning Wire’s, with many praising the film for its warmth and different approach to the character of Bridget Jones.
With no more Helen Fielding novels to adapt, this really is supposed to be the end. Yet, something tells me we’ll be thinking about Bridget for another half-century whenever we have our own blue soup mishaps. Long may she reign.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas now and streaming on Peacock in the US