Bridget’s back. Just as she is.
24 years ago Renée Zellweger slipped into those pants, and the world has been in love with Bridget Jones ever since.
Returning to her Academy Award nominated role, Zellweger is navigating a new life for one Bridget Jones in BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY, where she is alone once again, widowed for four years. She’s now a single mother to 9-year-old Billy and 4-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).
Pressured by her Urban Family to forge a new path toward life and love, Bridget goes back to work and even tries out the dating apps, where she’s soon pursued by a dreamy and enthusiastic younger man (White Lotus’s Leo Woodall). Now juggling work, home and romance, Bridget grapples with the judgment of the perfect mums at school, worries about Billy as he struggles with the absence of his father, and engages in a series of awkward interactions with her son’s rational-to-a-fault science teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
A romantic-comedy heroine for the ages, Michael Morris directs this new story about a woman whose inimitable approach to life and love redefined an entire film genre, and as he joined his cast down under for the Australian premiere, our Peter Gray spoke with him about collaborating with his leading lady, his visual inspiration for bringing her world to life, and what he personally sees as being the quintessential example of the rom com genre.
24 years ago Renée Zellweger slipped into those pants, and the world has been in love with Bridget Jones ever since.
Returning to her Academy Award nominated role, Zellweger is navigating a new life for one Bridget Jones in BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY, where she is alone once again, widowed for four years. She’s now a single mother to 9-year-old Billy and 4-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).
Pressured by her Urban Family to forge a new path toward life and love, Bridget goes back to work and even tries out the dating apps, where she’s soon pursued by a dreamy and enthusiastic younger man (White Lotus’s Leo Woodall). Now juggling work, home and romance, Bridget grapples with the judgment of the perfect mums at school, worries about Billy as he struggles with the absence of his father, and engages in a series of awkward interactions with her son’s rational-to-a-fault science teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
A romantic-comedy heroine for the ages, Michael Morris directs this new story about a woman whose inimitable approach to life and love redefined an entire film genre, and as he joined his cast down under for the Australian premiere, our Peter Gray spoke with him about collaborating with his leading lady, his visual inspiration for bringing her world to life, and what he personally sees as being the quintessential example of the rom com genre.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Peter Gray from the AE Review, Michael. I wasn't sure when to sort of get into the
00:05like serious emotional side of things but I feel like I'm just going to get it out of the way.
00:09I just wanted to say that the way that grief is used in this really touched me because
00:16I'm someone who lost my dad when I was very young so I was watching this going,
00:21oh I'm very much identifying with what the son's going through and how there's no
00:27proper way to deal with it and my mum recently gave me all like notes and stories about what
00:34happened when my dad died so I was watching this going, oh this is getting me, I was not
00:40expecting it from a Bridget Jones movie but I just wanted to say like thank you so much because
00:46I was like this is how we go through this, there's no right way to do it so it just was
00:50something that was really special. I just wanted to say thank you for that. Thank you, that's like
00:54incredibly meaningful, thank you. And like looking at like the way that it sort of tackles
00:58loss and like love and relationships and ageing and things like that, like obviously that's in
01:03the script but like how is it for you sort of balancing the drama and the comedy and sort of
01:09finding the right way to be like, we want the Bridget Jones story to be fun and light but at
01:15the same time you know she is going through something that is very serious but you find
01:19the right balances of humour but like how did you sort of come across to do that? Well I think when
01:23you're developing, because this has been a long project you know for me, myself and my fearless,
01:30fabulous producer, we've been at this for four years actually and so a large part of that time
01:34is obviously most of that time is not shooting or editing, it's actually sort of developing,
01:39you know I think any, you put a row of filmmakers next to each other I should say and
01:43everyone would make a different version of the same story and so a lot of it has been actually
01:48you know boiling down some of these ideas and telling the story the way that you know I saw it
01:55which is as you say was always going to be kind of equal parts you know the joy and comedy and
02:00like release of a Bridget Jones with you know where something that felt really authentic
02:06hopefully and honest about where she is, where her family is in this particular moment you know.
02:11I find like her relatability is probably what's one of the most like special things about her
02:16and obviously Renee probably has massive ownership on her at this point like how collaborative is it
02:21to be like where you go this is what I think she would do and then she's saying but this is what
02:26she would do like hey what's that relationship like? Well I mean so that I would never do that
02:32in that way only because I feel like I was making this film with Bridget Jones, I mean that's really
02:39what it felt like, I can't think of a better way to put it like Renee and I, so it all begins like
02:43before production and Renee and I you know we made sure that we were telling the same story,
02:49we wanted to make the same film and that's really important because that really gets, it means that
02:54when you do the sensitive stuff or when you do a scene that hasn't really existed in a Bridget
02:58Jones universe before, you're in it together and I know and I knew going in like
03:06Bridget, Renee is the world's expert on Bridget Jones, I mean like the way she sits at a table
03:11is Bridget Jones and there's a different way that Renee has to sit at the table and you see
03:15it by the way in Judy, like this is a woman who creates whole people when she or like can embody
03:20whole people so there was never going to be a moment of I don't think Bridget would do that,
03:26I think in the end it was like let me just hold hands with Bridget and step through it together
03:32and that's how we sort of did it. It's funny you say that because like I feel like because I watched
03:36the first three like leading up to this and just the way that Bridget walks is like,
03:42there's just a very specific walk and I was watching this, when I watched this I was like
03:46there it is, like it's just something to do with the arc, I was like and it's her inhabiting the
03:50character so much, like it's so great to see. She walked to set like that, I mean it wasn't like okay
03:56are we ready to roll, let me do my makeup and now I'll become Bridget, she was Bridget as she walked
04:01into the studio, you know off the plane into Heathrow and there's something really special
04:06about that, I think for everyone in the crew got that same sort of jolt of adrenaline because like
04:10oh she's back. Yeah and chemistry is obviously like always key with romantic comedies in general
04:15but just like stories, like we want to believe these people and you know the way that she plays
04:20off Colin and Hugh and then the way that she plays off like Shewetel and Leo, like when did it come
04:26apparent that you know Shewetel and Leo were the right people to, because we obviously feel
04:32so protective of her, I think with Bridget Jones's baby that's what I loved because we were like
04:37we want her with Colin Firth but if she ends up with Patrick Dempsey we're not mad. Are we mad?
04:43Yeah, it was the same with this, like you want kind of her to be like I'm okay if she chooses
04:49either one of them. That's perfect because that first film, I know the first one was a bit more
04:54extreme because Daniel was such a kind of classic cad, you know what I mean, but he's so charming.
04:59I don't think there's any other actor in the world that could have pulled off what Hugh pulled off
05:02because even as you get to know how dangerous he is as a character, you still love him. I was like
05:08yeah I get it Bridget, I get it, I understand. Yeah no, team Daniel sometimes, like he's great
05:14and so I really wanted that, obviously the dynamics very different in this film,
05:19she's a different character, she's at a different place in her life, you know she can't just sort of
05:23just make a casual choice anymore. She's got a family, she's got like a history now
05:28but I really wanted, like Leo brings like so much charisma. I had seen him in White Lotus, that was
05:34the thing because One Day hadn't come out when I asked Leo to do this. It was really just
05:40the outsized presence that he has, you know, he makes such an impression and I really wanted that
05:44for Rockster because it has to be fast and it has to be quick and you have to just
05:50warm to him right away and yeah when they met like we did a bit, we only had a day to rehearse
05:56together because he had been doing another film but it was really evident like between Leo and
06:01Rene that it was just going to be a great combo and then Chiwetel is just like literally one of
06:07the best actors in the world right and to see him go from like playing a real character at
06:13the beginning of this to how he arcs into this wonderful warm kind of present kind of person,
06:19it's just amazing. I'm also going to say as a gay man, didn't hate that he had his shirt off for
06:23that scene. I was like Chiwetel, all right, there we go. He's not kidding around.
06:29And I guess the funny thing is that you thinking like White Lotus is the way that you then go
06:34this is who we want for Bridget Jones because obviously White Lotus reveals some things that
06:38you're like okay, cool. But like the visual language of the film as well, like it's just
06:45are you looking at things in Bridget's world? Are you looking at other films, other stories
06:52to sort of put together this like the aesthetic that we sort of think of when we think of a
06:57Bridget Jones story? That's a great question because this is all three other films. Bridget's
07:01been in her same sort of really famous flat for instance in Burra and you know elements of her
07:08world have been quite similar in the first three. That's the you know that we've been sort of
07:11checking in on Bridget. This film gave me an opportunity because everything's different you
07:16know. All the basics of her world, she's in a different, when she goes back to work it's in a
07:20new place, when she's living in a different house and so I had the opportunity to
07:26really sort of recreate or create this particular Bridget world. Yeah and I wanted it
07:33to have like disorder and colour. I mean the big word for me was warmth. It just has to feel
07:41warm. Bridget's such a warm person and I equate sometimes chaos with warmth you know because of
07:47the times that I've visited people's lives and there's no chaos at all. There's no warmth either
07:52and I admire someone living in a pristine perfection but I miss something. I miss the
07:58mess you know. Miranda played by Sarah Solomoni comes in and goes I just wanted some real life.
08:03Yeah. I wanted some spoiled milk you know and that's how I feel about Bridget too. I really
08:08love the way that she just chaotically kind of hurtles through her life. Now I think that was
08:13what was so great about like revisiting her was that it was so familiar but at the same time you've
08:19you bring in those new elements and yeah like being in that house you're just like this is
08:24this is what a house would look like and then you know the nanny it is the same thing where you think
08:30oh is this going to be what we expect where she kind of takes over their life but she does
08:36it in such a beautiful way like it was just so wonderfully put put together and I'm like I'm a
08:42big romantic comedy person and just sort of after you know we obviously started so serious and I'm
08:48going to end on something much nicer being like for you is there a quintessential rom-com is there
08:54one that you look oh wow pinnacle like your gateway like the best rom-com aside from Bridget
09:00Jones yeah okay we'll we'll take present company we'll exclude it god there have been some just
09:06great rom-coms I mean there have been some like my sister is a you get on like a house on fire
09:12with her because she's a massive rom-com she'll be listening to this going why didn't you say this
09:16one this one and this one but like okay two two that jump out yeah when Harry Met Sally is like
09:21one of the all-time greats that the combination of of you just get their characters right away
09:27and you know that they're going to spawn and no matter what happens in the story if they're drawn
09:30together or not you just love it and also Annie Hall which is always my which is a different like
09:36it's a twist on a rom-com because it's but it is a rom-com yeah and it's just a like it's such a
09:41beautifully made and Diane Keaton is just so completely iconic in that so yeah that those
09:46two would be mine yeah one fun day is mine that's great Michelle Pfeiffer is just killing it yeah
09:52yeah yeah so oh anyway but no I I'm yeah I'm I love these films so much and as I said this one
09:58really spoke to me in a way that I was not expecting but I think that's so great because
10:02it's just showing this maturity of the characters and the story at the same time so congratulations
10:07thank you so much well pleasure to talk to you thank you