Patrick Dempsey Dishes on
‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’
Laura Schreffler | Haute Living - September 8, 2016
©
Brian
Bowen Smith
Patrick Dempsey is a man who
has built his career around playing Prince Charming personified. In every
way possible, he has become the living and breathing embodiment of the
almost-attainable, ever-so-perfect man. So imagine our surprise when the
guy who was referred to as ‘McDreamy’ for the better part of his
career strides onto our Malibu shoot looking like he’s stepped off the
cover of a romance novel, saying, “I don’t think there’s [such] a
thing as happily ever after.”
Before you go all, “That’s crazy talk!” let’s pause a moment and
remember that Patrick Dempsey is not, as much as you’d like him to be,
the characters he plays. He isn’t Robert, the cynical divorce lawyer who
falls under the spell of Amy Adams’ Princess Giselle in Enchanted;
nor is he Andrew Hennings, the gorgeous and established son of the New
York mayor and obvious romantic choice for Reese Witherspoon’s Melanie
Carmichael in Sweet Home Alabama; he certainly isn’t Dr.
Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd, Meredith Grey’s (Ellen Pompeo)
one-and-only on Grey’s Anatomy; and neither is he Jack
Qwant, the latest member of Bridget Jones’s (Renée Zellweger) love
triangle in the upcoming film, Bridget Jones’s Baby.
That said, give the guy a moment to clarify before you jump down his
throat, m’kay? “I don’t think it’s that perfect,” he continues.
“You need the ebb and flow of life. You need the good days along with
the bad days in order to experience something and stay even-keeled.”
Despite his refusal to believe in a quintessential fairytale ending,
perhaps there’s more Prince Charming to Dempsey than he thinks: his
previous statement sounds exactly like something Jack Qwant would say.
There’s more than a few similarities between Dempsey and his upcoming
silver screen character. Both men are quite Zen in their approaches to
life, pragmatic about their paths, refuse to shy away from difficult
situations, and have really good hair.
Jack’s particular predicament is the plotline of Bridget
Jones’s Baby. (Warning: a few plot spoilers may be revealed here.)
We pick up with the beloved Bridget Jones—a zany, calorie-counting,
chain-smoking singleton—fifteen years after 2001’s international box
office hit, Bridget Jones’s Diary. She is older and wiser,
finally thin and now a serious news producer, but little else has changed in
her life. When she decides to join a friend for a weekend outing, Bridget
finds herself behaving like a twenty-something at a Coachella-like music
festival—which is where we meet Jack.
Viewers will discover the truth about Dempsey’s character at the same
time Bridget does. He isn’t just a ridiculously good-looking guy at the
event; he’s sleeping in a designer yurt because his company is
sponsoring it. Jack is the ultimate catch: he’s not only a billionaire
tech entrepreneur who has created an algorithm for online daters, but also
philanthropic.
Not that this matters to Bridget, who sneaks out the morning after her
booze-induced night of sexual empowerment and goes off on her merry way.
But, as with any good rom-com, there’s a twist: she soon discovers
she’s pregnant. And no, Jack isn’t the only possible baby daddy. You
see, she has also recently slept with her estranged ex, Mark Darcy (Colin
Firth). Shit hits the fan when Bridget, who hadn’t gotten around to
telling either guy about their 50/50 father status, is forced to come
clean.
For the record, we’ve found another similarity between Dempsey and his
character: both happen to have enviable composure. Stepping into an
existing family as the new guy, effectively replacing the rakish and
charming Hugh Grant, might have been daunting if it wasn’t for the
welcoming crew and cast—Zellweger, Firth, Bridget’s besties Shazza
(Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (James Callis), and her
ever-entertaining parents Pamela (Gemma Jones) and Colin (Jim Broadbent)
are all back for round three—as well as the exceptionally funny writing.
“The script was offered to me and I really liked it. I was pleasantly
surprised; I didn’t really know what to expect, but I had a good
time,” Dempsey enthuses, noting that Zellweger was also a big part of
the enjoyment. “She’s great—really easy to work with and fun.”
In fact, he commends her decision to take a six-year hiatus from
Hollywood. “I think that’s always good, to take a step back, take a
look around and live life.” He notes, “Everybody was very nervous
going into [the movie] because there was still a lot of work to be done on
the script and it had been a number of years since the last one [Bridget
Jones: The Edge of Reason was released in 2004]. But, once we
started getting into those first few weeks—I’d say about the third
week—everybody started to relax and say, ‘OK, we’ve got something
here that feels good.’”
It was a collaborative effort, for sure. Helen Fielding, the tour de force
author of the three Bridget Jones novels, as well as Dirty
Grandpa director Dan Mazer and actress Emma Thompson (who also
hilariously plays Bridget’s deadpan, no-B.S. OBGYN) co-wrote the script,
while Sharon Maguire, who helmed the original Bridget Jones’s
Diary, directed.
Alas, for those expecting to see a brawl between Mark and Jack (à la the
infamous snowfall fight scene between Darcy and Grant’s Daniel Cleaver
in the first film) when the Universal Pictures release hits theaters on
September 16, you’re S.O.L. “That’s the big question,” Dempsey
teases, before revealing, “We don’t do that!”
And we’re back to Prince Charming—this guy is a lover, not a fighter.
IDLING IN NEUTRAL
2016 has been a curiously liberating year for the artist
formerly known as McDreamy. At the age of 50, after spending a decade
playing Derek Shepherd on Shonda Rhimes’ hit ABC series, he’s finally
free to do exactly as he pleases.
“When you’re on a long-running show, you’re pulling the same beats
over and over again. It’s very hard to [make] new discoveries the longer
you’re there so, when you put yourself in a [different] situation,
it’s much more stimulating,” he explains of his Grey’s days, which
abruptly—for fans, at least—came to a close in 2015 after a decade. He
adds, “It was ten years of never being in control of my own schedule.”
Nor was he in control of his character’s life or dramatic death by car crash—poetic
injustice for a man whose main interest in life is race car driving. “I
think you’re hired as a performer. You’re not the producer, you’re
not directing or any of that. You’re there to execute what the creators
have wanted you to do, and that’s your job,” he shares. “That was
great for a very long time, and it’s given me an incredible platform and
I’m forever grateful for that, but then I was like, ‘Okay, I want to
challenge myself a bit more.’”
Via his company, Shifting Gears Entertainment, Dempsey is putting himself
back in the drivers seat—and taking control of his career as a producer,
director and actor. He currently has more than ten projects in
development, all of which he truly believes in.
One of them includes The Art of Racing in the Rain, a
Universal Pictures film that, for Dempsey, is familiar territory: it
revolves around a dog named Enzo who recalls the life lessons he’s
learned from his race car driving owner, Denny.
Then there’s his passion project, The Limit, a
collaboration between Sundance TV and AMC that is set in the
late 1950s and depicts the early days of a Formula One racing league.
Another is Micronesian Blues, a crime thriller series for
Cinemax based on the true story of a former marine turned Los Angeles beat
cop who accepts a teaching job in the paradise of Micronesia, seeking
peace, only to find himself amidst a barrage of criminals, from gangsters
to crooked CIA agents.
The series appearing on cable is telling. “I don’t know if I’d go
back to network television to do 24 episodes a year,” he muses. “You
just don’t have a life, and I’ve done that. I would much rather do a
show that’s ten episodes, be done, and then go back. You can never say
never, but I think, for right now, at this point in my life, I have no
desire to return to that kind of intensity.”
At the moment, he’s simply relishing steering his own career, taking on
projects that excite or intrigue him. “This year has really been about
acquiring material; it’s been a really good development period,” he
notes, adding that—for the first time in a long time— he’s looking
forward to what comes next.
Though it’s relatively new ground to cover for a man who has been
acting the better part of his life (his first film was the 1985 romantic
dramedy Heaven Help Us), he finds this independence
exhilarating. “Being in control of all development aspects [is thrilling
to me],” he says. “I like to challenge myself. I like to put myself in
a place where I’m uncomfortable—in a good way—where it forces me
outside my comfort zone. I’m
constantly looking to improve myself.”
SHIFTING INTO HIGH GEAR
Earlier this year, on January 13, Dempsey hit the big 5-0. Did
he cry about it? Hardly. With so many positive changes in his life, he
embraces the age like one of his beloved turtleneck sweaters… both of
which he wears extremely well. “I’d much rather be 50 than 20,” he
declares. “Life gets much easier.”
Moving into a new decade was certainly more effortless now that he has the
ability to surge forward instead of idling in neutral. “I think there is
some consciousness in the fact that you turn 50 and realize that, if
you’re going to do this, you have to do this now—there’s no
postponing anything. [So this change] has been a long time coming.”
Getting out of a rut has improved his life in several ways, the most
important of which is quality time with his family. Though he and his wife
of 16 years, celebrity makeup artist Jillian Dempsey, separated in 2015,
today, they are back together and better than ever (she even acted as his
groomer for our shoot).
Dempsey is, as we’ve become accustomed to, thoughtful while reflecting
on how the two have managed to make their relationship work. “She’s an
amazing artist in her own right; she has her own identity. In her
profession, she’s a star. That’s important in a relationship. You have
to maintain your core relationship and allow [your partner] to have their
own identity outside of that.”
But it takes more than just owning who you are separately, in his opinion.
“You have to be able to be supportive and say, ‘You need to go out
there and do this for yourself, and you know we’re back here when
you’re ready,’” he continues—noting that love, like a car,
requires regular maintenance. “When you have children, you really need
to work on things. I think it’s too easy to just give up and walk away.
You need to get in and fight it out a bit and work on issues. You have
your shit and their shit that you need to work through.” He pauses a
moment, before noting, “You have to be well-rounded in the sense of
balancing out yourself as a person. The more balance and harmony you have,
the happier you are. I guess that’s where ‘[happily] ever after’
comes from.”
These days, Dempsey is in the driver’s seat regarding his schedule and,
more importantly, his life. If he’s filming somewhere foreign, such as
London, where he shot Bridget Jones’s Baby, then the family
is going with him. “For me, from now on, I don’t want to be gone
longer than a week because I think that’s just too much. [I’ve become]
careful with what [I] choose to do.”
His choice is to be at home in Malibu as often as possible with Jillian
and their three children, twins Darby and Sullivan, 9, and Talula, 14. He
chooses to be both cheerleader and coach: the former, figuratively; the
latter, literally—he’s actually Darby’s soccer coach. “Driving my
kids to school and picking them up and running them around, I think
that’s part of life.” He adds, “Life is a constant refinement. You
just keep chipping away at it and trying to get better at things.”
In a sense, Dempsey is perfectly imperfect, and he’s OK with that.
“I’m definitely not McDreamy; I’m not a perfect person. I’m a
human being with flaws and issues like everybody else.”
RACING AGAINST TIME
If there is one thing you truly need to know about Patrick Dempsey,
it’s his love of race car driving. In the past, he’s even gone so far
as to say, “It’s all I think about on a daily basis.”
In 2015, he took home the first place trophy in the GTE-Am class at the
Fuji Speedway in Japan, and scored a second place win at the prestigious
24 Hours of Le Mans in France. He has also competed in the Rolex 24 at
Daytona, as well as the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000, Circuit of The Americas,
and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Though he no longer races competitively, he’s still very much involved
in the racing world. He is the current co-owner of Dempsey-Proton Racing,
where his team races a Porsche 911 RSR. This year, he even acted as the
2016 Ambassador at the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France.
“I have the team and I’m still very active with Porsche, and will
continue to be, but to do a full season at this point is very challenging;
it’s too much time away from the family,” he says. “But I’m happy.
All the goals I set out to achieve, I reached. It was the right time to
transition, take a step back and reassess what I wanted to do after.”
There will always be, no matter how much he tries to squash it, a part of
him that longs to go back on the track. “I miss being competitive, and I
miss racing,” he admits, “but I really wanted to focus on developing
the next step of my career.”
If he’s being honest (and he is), the shift has been coming for quite
some time. It’s only now that’s he decided to act on it. “There were
things I wanted to do for myself that would make me a better person and,
once those things were realized or I had time to focus on them, I could
step back and do the [others]. But I’ve learned to take things one step
at a time,” he says.
It’s an art, being in the moment, and this particular medium has taken
him years to learn. “You’re either thinking about the past, and
that’s informing you where you are right now in the present, or you’re
thinking about the future and what you want. But then there’s the
reality of where you are and what you have in front of you.” He adds
firmly, “You just need to be in the moment. I think that’s what racing has taught me.”
Racing, as well as his role as a brand ambassador for TAG Heuer, have
Dempsey waxing poetic about taking time to smell the roses. “Racing has
forced me to be present. A good day at the track is always something that
transcends your reality and, I think that when you’re looking at
long-distance races, or 24-hour races, you have to remember to stay in the
moment. If you’re [facing] an obstacle, something happens during the
race where you’re a lap down and you’ve got to battle back; you just
deal with the adversary and you shake it off and continue to go down the
road. Eventually, you make up time.”
Dempsey continues, “I want to take the time to balance work and pleasure
and family… but you have to be able to be focused on one thing at a
time. You have to be real clear on what your priority is, and then that
will determine how you spend your time.”
He smiles—a big, gorgeous, matinee-idol, sexiest-man-alive grin—and
pauses. “Time… it’s so fast,” he says. “With racing, it’s a
metaphor. Everything is about time, how quickly you can do something. But,
in life, you really have to savor the moment and not worry about getting
it done so quickly. You have a clear idea of what you want to do and what
your intention is and you go after that, and then you deal with what comes
up in that process. Eventually, you’ll get to where you want to go, I
think.”
In our opinion, Patrick Dempsey is right on track. With each comment, he
drives home that he is right where he needs to be and, more importantly,
where he wants to be.
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