Darcy and Jack:
Completing the Love Triangle

In essence, our heroine is the perfect contradiction. On the one hand a self-possessed, independent career woman, and on the other a hopeless romantic in search of the perfect man. Bridget has often thought that the man of her dreams is one Mark Darcy, whom Fielding based on a literary character who is more than 200 years old. “He is an archetypal gorgeous Englishman who’s funny, clever and repressed,” says Hayward. “It’s hard to think of anybody else that could be a better Darcy than Colin Firth.”

“I love Mark Darcy, and I love Colin Firth,” praises Maguire. “It’s easy for me to direct this character and to direct Colin because he’s such a heartthrob. It’s just everything about Mr Darcy – his haughtiness, the fact he’s prickly, brainy, obviously a tiger in the sack and he looks like Colin Firth…”

As with Zellweger, for Firth to come back, timing had to be right. “After we did the second film, I remember saying that the only way I could contemplate a third was after I’ve deteriorated a bit and can actually tell a story about people at a completely different time of their life,” laughs Firth. “I wanted to visit the same people, but to have moved to the next generation to see what life has dealt them.” Still, trickier than he expected. “I know that sounds strange, because I’ve played this guy a hundred times now. Perhaps I was afraid he might feel a parody.”

Actually, that was precisely how Firth tackled the first film. “Bridget Jones was obviously a deliberate and self-conscious parody of Pride and Prejudice, and I approached it in that spirit. I thought I’m going to do a sort of pastiche of somebody that I was known to have played on the BBC. It’s like a hall of mirrors. I existed in Helen’s books as myself, and Mr Darcy existed in the books as Mr Darcy. Then there’s the Mr Darcy of Bridget Jones’s own fantasy. You could get lost in it all. Yet I had to inhabit the role, so I thought, well I’m just going to send up Mr Darcy a little bit. But once we were on set, you find that it becomes more specific and much more human than that.”

It was the faith Firth had in her to navigate the production that reassured the actor. “It is a luxury to feel enough trust in your director to be able to submit to any her requests. I have that in abundance with Sharon. She’s not just about comedy; she’s not just about romance. She knows what is funny in this particular convention. It’s not only her skill at directing this material and the way she connects with the actors. She is of this world. Her heart is so much at the centre of it.”

“Colin was extremely conscientious about the role,” lauds Maguire. “Even though he’s played Mr Darcy from so many angles and this is of course the third time he’s playing Mr Darcy in this movie, he’s still conscientious. Comedy is not integral to the character and that in itself makes it a challenge to play, but someone who is socially inept is in itself funny. He plays Mark very seriously and it works.”

In preparation for the role, Firth revisited the first film and found something unexpected. “I was struck by how substantial they were. I thought it was a very human, affectionate and sympathetic look at loneliness and people’s foibles and the kind of silliness that our desperation leads us to. Fifteen years on, and I found there to be much more life in it than I had imagined. It’s like coming back to an old friend and the familiarity is a part of it now. Time has added dimension to what we’re doing.”

When we meet Mark Darcy he is still a respected human rights lawyer at the top of his game, but a bit jaded, prickly and most certainly romantically disappointed. “We find him at the end of a marriage which clearly has not worked,” says Firth. “Still, he clearly hasn’t forgotten Bridget.”

“He doesn’t do polite conversations; he behaves like he’s got a poker up his arse and always makes Bridget feel verbally incontinent, even when they were together,” says Maguire. “He’s taken emotional withdrawal to the next level, but she still loves him.”

“The advantage of leaving a genuine time gap since we last saw these characters, is that it tells a story,” continues Firth. “If someone’s still thinking about the same girl after 15 years, then that feels like love. Despite the time that’s past, despite the knowledge of each other’s shortcomings and foibles and all the disappointments that they’ve experienced, they’re still longing for each other. The premise is: Can they resolve their differences and find each other again after all this time?”

Whether they can or not is of course hindered by a new love interest in Bridget’s life, the ludicrously rich author and internet-savant named Jack Qwant. The pattern of the last two films followed the premise that in love there is a choice between a good guy and bad guy disguised as a good guy, with Bridget invariably making the wrong choice. “We invented Jack as an American in a very English setting. He’s charming, funny and very American,” says Maguire. “He’s found the algorithm for love, and thinks he knows what works when it comes to love. He and Bridget match up 97 percent, so they should be together, whereas Bridget and Mark match up only 8 percent.”

Very much so, Jack is the antithesis of Daniel Cleaver. “Whatever we think about either of these guys, Jack’s actually a lovely guy,” offers Firth. “We may not like algorithms for love and the way he goes about what he does, but he’s charming, adores Bridget and he seems to like Mark. This is quite infuriating: to have as an adversary someone that you can’t bust on having terrible ulterior motives.”

Dempsey’s name had always been in the mix for Jack, having first come to the producer’s attention as Dr Derek Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy. “Patrick was the choice very early on, because he’s a credible alternative,” says Hayward. “He’s the right age, devastatingly handsome and he’s American, all of which rings the changes from Daniel. We wanted it to be someone different but somebody equally gorgeous, and he’s a great actor. He’s an American equivalent to Colin.”

So, all roads led to Dempsey for Jack, but it was the race track that potentially jeopardized his being able to board the project, because Dempsey was in the middle of a racing season (his other job is racing driver). “I was right in the middle of a season racing,” explains Dempsey. “So we had to work around the race dates to make it possible for me to do the film. It’s the first production that’s ever worked around my race dates! The first race with this contract, I ended up winning in Japan, so it was a good omen.”

In much the same way that Jack is the new character on an established scene, similarly Dempsey was coming into a dynamic that was long established. “I’m the new kid on the block. I was very nervous because they’ve had all this experience together and have a dialogue and a relationship that works well. That’s what Jack brings into this dynamic; he’s stirring it all up in many ways.”

“Patrick is lovely as Jack,” enthuses Zellweger. “He is dashing and handsome and charming and he’s funny and naughty and fun, like the Daniel Cleaver character. Still, he is the polar opposite of Daniel in so many other respects.”

“Darcy’s the quintessential English one, and Jack is the quintessential American,” says Dempsey. “It’s been fun trying to find that. How we make these characters sympathetic, vulnerable, but yet strong at the same time, and what their wants and aspirations are for Bridget and for the baby. While the other characters are much more established, for Jack it’s been a case of finding that out as we go along.”

The scene that often gets the biggest laugh is when the men carry Bridget to the hospital. “It’s the broadest scene, and I was quite worried about it,” says Maguire. “But we went for it and looked for the truthful moment in it. Poor old Mark Darcy offers to carry her, but the truth is she is this enormous weight and you can see that on his face. She checks if he’s ok and through a pained face he says, ‘It’s best if I don’t talk!’ It’s just so English, people trying to be polite to each other in extreme circumstances. Then Jack comes to the rescue being all American, but not being able to carry her either.”

On reaching the hospital the men are faced with a revolving door. “When we were working out how to do that we hadn’t quite worked out where they were going to put her once they were inside,” laughs Maguire. “But because the wheelchair wasn’t there they dumped her on the desk. Renée plays it so truthfully; the look of horror captures the comedy of the moment. It has a feel of The Three Stooges about it.”