Oh Baby!
Bridget Jones is back
in exclusive first look

Lynette Rice | Entertainment Weekly – December 21, 2015

The last time we saw Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) at the end of The Edge of Reason in 2004, the wanton sex goddess was engaged to Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and was well on her way to a happily ever after.

But a lot can change in a decade, it seems.

In Bridget Jones’s Baby (out Sept. 16, 2016), 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 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?

“This is part of the new challenge, discovering where she is now in her new life,” Zellweger tells EW. “But as an actress, it feels like stepping back with an old friend. I love this character, I like that she tells stories about what it’s like to be a woman and these really relatable situations at certain times in life. It’s so right to tell a story about Bridget in this stage of her life.”

Growing up Bridget

“This is part of the new challenge, discovering where Bridget is now in her new life,” says Renée Zellweger, posing with costars Colin Firth and Patrick Dempsey.

Carrying on

“I’m so excited for this because there’s not a lot of romantic comedies anymore,” says Zellweger. “Bridget Jones is one of those movies that I watch on TV over and over. Why are the Brits making these movies? What has Patrick been like to work with?”

Playing Bridget

“I love all these characters. I love her world and her family and her friends,” explains Zellweger. “I like that she tells stories about what it’s like to be a woman.”

Girl Power

“I like that she tells stories about what it’s like to be a woman,” Zellweger says of Bridget.

McDream job

“Bridget Jones is such an iconic character and so beloved, certainly here in England and around the world,” says Dempsey (Jack Qwant). “To come in and be part of that has been a lot of fun.”

Moving on

“It’s completely reinvigorated me,” Dempsey says of jumping back into a movie after his tenure on Grey’s Anatomy. “It’s just a completely different approach. With the show, you’re just grinding it out to get through it. In this instance, you take the time to walk through things. I really love it.”

Mark Darcy loves Bridget Jones

“He’s known her since she was a child and I don’t think he loves her because there’s a reason to,” says Firth. “I just think he does. In fact there’s a scene in this film where it says something along those lines, that it defies logic.”

Still Mr. Darcy

“I’ll be the same human being. I think you’ll see a lot of the same characteristics,” says Firth. “Time’s gone by and I wanted to acknowledge that.”

Love is a battlefield

“He’s a very different kind of rival,” Firth says of Dempsey’s character. “He’s not somebody I’ve known since we were kids. He’s an outsider and he threatens Mark Darcy in a very, very different way than Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) did.” 

Awkward!

“I think that’s her essence really, isn’t it?” Zellweger says about Bridget’s klutzy personality. “All of us do things in our personalities that we don’t outgrow.”

Love at first sight

“I think he’s astonished by her and is intrigued by her,” Dempsey says of his character’s reaction to Bridget.

Who’s the daddy?

“There are various mysteries to be resolved,” says Firth. “Who does she end up with? Whose baby is it? You can resolve one and make the other a question. Those are things which might not be revealed until very later on. I rather like it. It’s not often you have something where you have the possibility of keeping a surprise.”

Picture day

Shooting outside in London meant dodging the paparazzi. “It’s a big story here. Everyone’s picking it up in the states and all those pictures are running everywhere,” says Zellweger. “There’s such anticipation for the project, which is extraordinary.”