Bridget Jones’s Renée Zellweger on Tinder, babies and London’s property market
As ‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’ hits cinemas, we ask
the film’s stars and director how Bridge is coping in the city in
generation Tinder. We’re
chatting because, after more than a decade, the wine-drinking,
wobbly-thighed, wanton sex goddess is back – with a bump. And exactly
how have the intervening years changed Helen Fielding’s hapless heroine?
Well, Bridget is 43 now. There’s no calorie counting (she’s at her
ideal weight) and no smoking. But despite that happy-ever-after at the end
of ‘The Edge of Reason’ in 2004, she is not Mrs Mark Darcy. Why
did Zellweger want to wiggle back into the granny pants after all these
years for ‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’? ‘I love the character. In my
heart it was an immediate “Yes”. I couldn’t wait to catch up with
her. And I like the idea of revisiting a character, checking in with her
at different stages of her life.’ According to Zellweger, Bridget has
made it okay be who you are. ‘I’m a late bloomer myself. She is
challenging certain paradigms about what our lives are supposed to be by a
certain time in our lives, what it is that we imagine our lives are going
to be versus the reality.’ And
what about London? How has the city changed? Bridget is living in the same
flat in Borough Market, but now owns it. How on earth did she afford that,
I ask ‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’ director Sharon Maguire? ‘We
rationalised it because there’s a railway line running either side of
the flat, so basically it’s Piccadilly station. The whole flat
rattles.’ Borough Market itself
is unrecognisable, though, completely gentrified into a foodie heaven
since the last movie. ‘When we chose Borough in the very beginning [of
the franchise], it was quite unglamorous. It was just basically a market
with lots of run-down buildings around it. Now, it’s so chi-chi it costs
£8 for a potato.’ Don’t
expect to see Bridge meeting up with the old gang for one too many bottles
of chardonnay on the South Bank, though. Shazza, Jude and Tom are settled
with babies. ‘You don’t go out every night getting drunk and trying to
get off with people once you’re married with kids. That is one of the
facts of life,’ laughs Sally Phillips, who plays Bridget’s BFF Shazza.
She should know; she’s got three kids. ‘There’s something poignant
about seeing everyone all these years later, older and full of regrets,
faces smashed by sleepless nights with their children.’ The
dating-by-app generation has completely passed Zellweger by. ‘You
don’t have to go anywhere anymore to meet people,’ she says
incredulously. ‘I used to say: “I am not staying in this apartment!
You wanna meet people you gotta go and meet ‘em.” But now that’s
just not true, apparently! I learnt about Tinder last year. I couldn’t
believe it.’ ‘I
don’t think Bridget could cope with Tinder,’ adds Maguire. ‘She’s
slightly a dinosaur in that respect.’ To
replace Shazza and the gang, Sarah Solemani (‘Him & Her’) joins
the cast as Bridget’s child-free thirtysomething colleague and new
partner in crime, Miranda. Solemani jumped at the chance to appear in the
film. ‘When I got the call: “Do you want to play Bridget Jones’s
best friend?” I was like, “I am her best friend!”‘ The character,
she says, is close to her heart. ‘My mum would talk about things that
had happened to her or her friends and say, “That was so Bridget
Jones.” She passed away when I was 16, so it’s extra special to be
connected to something now that she knew.’ Miranda’s
generation of millennial feminists is good for Bridget, reckons Solemani.
‘Women now are a bit less self-deprecating. There’s a confidence. Me
and my friends don’t feel there is still a huge pressure to get married
and have children. Miranda says, “You need to just go out and have some
sex.” That is basically Miranda’s arc: getting Bridget sex. And she
succeeds!’ Which
is how Bridget finds herself on the way to becoming a ‘geriatric’ mum.
After a tumble with charming American Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey) during
a wild festival weekend and a one-night reunion with Darcy at yet another
christening, she’s pregnant and entirely unclear about who her unborn
baby’s father is. Now
she’s back, is there any chance of a fourth film? Zellweger smiles
before replying, quietly. ‘I love her so much – the physical comedy,
her vulnerability, her openness. Yeah, why not? It could be interesting to
watch her improvising her way through motherhood. And quite
hilarious, right?’ |