Emma Thompson Is a Feminist and
(Isn’t Afraid to Joke About It)  

Tony Phillips | Signature – October 14, 2016

“You don’t want terribly to talk about ‘Howard’s End,’” Emma Thompson asks politely, “do you?” It comes several questions in, after she’s already answered queries on her script and star-turn in the latest installment of the Bridget Jones franchise. And whereas the Hollywood studio equivalent to essentially crashing this press conference for the prestige, twenty-fifth anniversary re-release of “Howard’s End” — which netted Thompson her first of three Oscars — would have at least roused publicist intervention, if not a full-on starlet meltdown, Thompson makes do with that one tiny nettle of an adjective: terribly.

“Fun,” the fifty-seven-year-old says, “and sometimes fun.” She’s parsing the difference between joining the Bridget Jones ensemble acting alongside stalwarts like Renée Zellweger and Colin Firth and newcomer Patrick Dempsey to writing the script, respectively. “It was absolutely lovely,” she elaborates on the former, but of that other thing, picking up a screenplay that had already passed through everyone’s hands from Jones’s creator, Helen Fielding, herself to “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig and “One Day” author David Nicholls, Thompson is more circumspect.

It has been a long haul since Fielding’s “8 stone 13” confection first appeared in the pages of British newspaper The Independent on the last Sunday of February, 1995, clocking in with “alcohol units: 2 (excellent), cigarettes: 7, calories: 3,100 (poor).” There have been two big-screen adaptations – 2001’s “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and 2004’s “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” – and four books including Bridget’s 1996 debut and 1999 “Edge of Reason” followup – along with a musical that’s been percolating in workshops since 2009 and countless wannabes companions.

Witness: “They openly contest many traditionally feminine behaviors promised by category romances, such as a predilection for cooking, washing, or cleaning, and most importantly, they reject female passivity in relationships, as they actively search for a man” from Katarzyna Smyczyńska’s deadly 2007 academic tome “The World According Bridget Jones: Discourses of Identity in Chicklit Fictions.”

But its that third book, 2013’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, that still rankles singletons as Fielding quite unapologetically – and sorry for the spoiler – offs Mark Darcy having the widow Jones explain in the book’s first pages that he expired some five years prior.

As luck would have it, “Bridget Jones’s Baby” is based not on this novel, but rather a series of Independent columns from 2005 that, fear not, dear singletons, are also collected in Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries to further crowd the universe of this forty-three-year-old television producer who still drinks too much, particularly for someone who’s preggers, but quit smoking “1,891 days ago” and even goes in for a bit of Soul Cycling, tracking it all in her diary, which now resides on her iPad, natch.

“She’s been through quite a lot,” Thompson continues of the character. “She experienced what my grandmother used to say was really one’s heart is no use as a heart unless it’s been broken ten times so she’s had her heartbreaks and she’s quite happy in herself. Of course, that’s the moment which this great big thing happens to her so it’s not as if this is a midlife crisis, but it’s that beginning of the second part of life, which actually can be an extraordinarily new lease.”

It’s not exactly a spoiler to say the “great big thing” that happens is a baby; it’s right there in the title, but one of the surprises Bridget’s indiscretions – in Colin Firth’s hotel room and Patrick Dempsey’s yurt, which mud bogs and Ed Sheehan cameo suggest is the Glastonbury Music Festival – also begat is a no-nonsense obstetrician that Thompson added to her script and then caved to playing when producers informed her it was the only way the character would stay.

“Dr. Rawling is a rather lovely character,” Thompson begins. “I’ve conceived of her as a sort of Army brat so she’s very good at short-term relationships. She’s also a single mother and has brought up her children on her own. She’s at first slightly suspicious of Bridget – and a little bit judgmental, if I’m honest – but as she gets to know her over the nine-month period, she comes to understand her.”

It’s then that Thompson takes a pause to drop in some of her research, calling Jones a “primigravida,” either Latin or OB-GYN-ese for a first-time mother. She does soften the blow a bit by also referring to Jones as an “elderly mother.” In the film, Dr. Rawling employs the more clinical “geriatric mother,” much to Jones’s chagrin.

“They have to take a lot more scans,” Thompson continues of the primigravida, “and check up on you a lot more so she gets to know her. Then she gets to understand that there are these two possible fathers, which is just, you know, a very modern problem.” She takes a pause to consider, then adds, “But it’s probably not modern at all. It’s probably ancient and it’s not even necessarily even a problem. It’s just one of those things. And she becomes much more sympathetic toward Bridget and by the end is tremendously excited to find out which one it is.”

One possibility that can be ruled out in the first reel is Jones’s former boss and full-time cad Daniel Cleaver. Though Hugh Grant has appeared in numerous films with Thompson, including an assist on her second Academy Award for adapting Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, he wanted no part of reprising Cleaver in this film, but Thompson begs off any gossip by saying that “Hugh signed off long before I was ever in the picture.” Neither will she gossip about any sort of rift between her co-screenwriter Fielding and star Renée Zellweger, whom singletons were quick to note was left off the dedication page of the latest Bridget Jones novel while Grant remains.

“Working with Renée Zellweger is a joy,” Thompson responds. “She’s just a delightful person and bright and brilliant and sort of better at being Bridget than I can imagine anyone being. She’s got the capacity to act that slightly scatty thing, which she isn’t at all, actually, in herself.” What Thompson will engage in is what she jokingly calls the “shit work” of screenwriting and she’s as quick to point out her work on a draft of 2014’s dud reboot of “Annie” as she is to mention her best-adapted Oscar.

“Each time out of the gate,” she begins, “whether it’s a rewrite that’s completely discarded or even a film that never gets made, I learn something.” She goes on to describe her fondness for banging out that first draft, but applies the law of diminishing returns to the next fifteen. Still, she says she’s much fonder of writing today than she was when she won her Oscar for it and for her it all comes down to that nugget that can be gleaned after a long day in front of the computer. And that nugget in her latest script?

“I suppose it’s the feminism in a funny way,” she replies. “I’ve built in a great many gags about women’s rights marches bringing London to a crawl, but deep down I believe in all that stuff. I’d be right there marching along. I take it to heart incredibly and it’s something I’m proud to pass on to to my daughter… to all my daughters, really.” And so it goes in my own writing, or, more accurately, slipping down the Youtube rabbit hole when I should be writing only to stumble upon Thompson’s 1993 acceptance speech for her first Academy Award for her role in – come on, she’s earned it by this point, just for not having me thrown out – “Howards End.”

After placing a hand over her mouth in the audience and mouthing “oh my God” when her “Remains of the Day” co-star Anthony Hopkins calls her name, she cuts through the crowd in a sequined top with matching, sea-green pants, wide-legged so that the overall effect is a giant wave crashing over the Oscar podium and all the kinetic energy that image implies. She thanks her collaborators, mentions a “pressing debt” to E. M. Forster and then frets about whether she’ll have to “give back the money” she earned portraying the Edwardian bourgeoisie Margaret Schlegel.

And then she’s out with it: the nugget of her speech. “Finally, I would like if I may,” she says, unknitting her fingers and grabbing her new gold friend with both hands, “dedicate this Oscar to the heroism and the courage of women and to hope that it inspires the creation of more true screen heroines to represent them.” Well-played, Ms. Thompson; very, very well-played.