Bridget Jones stars look back on the film’s iconic makeout scene

Lynette Rice | Entertainment Weekly – December 21, 2015

While filming ‘Bridget Jones’s Baby,’ Renée Zellweger and Colin Firth talk about that (half-naked!) snow scene from 2001.

Baby, it was cold outside!

But that didn’t stop Renée Zellweger and Colin Firth from shooting one of the most iconic scenes from the Bridget Jones franchise. While shooting Bridget Jones’s Baby (out Sept. 16, 2016) in London, Zellweger and Firth stopped to chat exclusively with EW about the original film from 2001 and what it was like to shoot that romantic – and very stripped down – finale.

Renée Zellweger: That is so funny, actually.

Colin Firth: It was a difficult one and I wasn’t in my panties. I just remember finding it quite chastening to work with a person like Renée who never complains ever.

Zellweger: I remember that we shot it on a street that we were not able to lock down, so the red double-decker buses with people going by and I’m running down the bridge in my pants, my underpants.

Firth: It is a long time ago but what I do remember, I think I had friends and family come visit that day and sometimes if you shoot a scene like that, the unit can be small enough that people hardly notice you’re making a movie. But because it was night and because we snowed up so much of London for it, it looked vast. I’d never been on a film set before which looked so dramatic, looked so much like a film set. I mean from five blocks away you could see the sky lit up. And the snow machines! I think they had improved snow effects since then but I do remember everybody wearing protective masks except for two actors who obviously couldn’t wear a mask. And I remember thinking that’s not good.

Zellweger: Running in the snow in my underpants was [director Sharon Maguire’s] call. She thought it would be very, very funny and yeah, that is why I love her. I love that Sharon is doing Bridget Jones’s Baby, because she has a lot of British sensibility and humor.

In Bridget Jones’s Baby, Zellweger’s alter-ego is now 43, still single, and in a bit of a pickle: she’s pregnant and is not sure who’s the father. Is it her on-and-off again beau Mark with the bad sweaters or a hot new billionaire named Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey) who is way more of a threat to Mark than Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) ever was?