Belonging to London:
Design and Locations

Synonymous with Bridget Jones is the city of London itself, and as production began the shoot, Zellweger arrived in the UK for 8 weeks leading up to filming. Not only would she rehearse and spend time channelling her inner “Bridge,” she would embrace all that is her character’s home. Fellner discusses the city’s role: “London is complicated, confused, gorgeous and complex; that’s the joy of it. Hopefully, we’ve been able to portray that beauty, as well as the contemporary and the period architecture – all wound in with Bridget’s story, her friends’ stories and the comedy of the film.”

Creating the physical backdrops to Bridget’s world and putting her in context was the work of a committed art team, led by production designer John Paul “JP” Kelly. “Bridget’s success was important,” he says. “Hence why we put a lot of effort into not just changing her home environment but also her work environment. By putting her in quite a high flying job, hopefully we have a set that gives that perception.”

Nowhere reflects Bridget’s delightful flaws more than her apartment, the small flat above The Globe pub. “Obviously, tastes have changed,” says Kelly. “Bridget would now find herself living in a contemporary home. I liked the idea of the colours becoming much lighter around her, which was, in part, reflecting her maturity.”

The process was a collaborative one, with ideas being fed in by set decorator SARA WAN, Maguire and Zellweger. “It’s been quite a lot of time with Renée working through how the character might have changed and what the colours and ideas and dressing would be like in her world,” says Kelly. “She was keen that a lot of the original details in Bridget’s character remained. So we did things like knocking through walls where she’d come up with this idea of having an open-plan kitchen, had the builders in, had it plastered and repaired, but never got around to painting it.”

To the astute they will notice little details that point to Bridget’s imperfections – a knickers left on the floor, a coat hanging over the door, shelves cluttered with a mess of books, letters and postcards, a discarded chocolate wrapper on her bedside table.

The good intentions are there, the aspirations to be a designer flat, but not quite making it. Her world may have changed successfully, but not flawlessly. “The comic aspects of Bridget’s character where on one side of the bed you’ve got political books that she’s researching for work and on the other side it’s diet books and self-help books and Kit Kat wrappers and that kind of split personality of her actually being a very accomplished and credible person versus the stumbling, bumbling Bridget that everybody loves. We wanted to reflect that in how the flat looked. It was important to try and get a sense of comedy in the set.”

In imagining walls had been knocked through, the design team was able to increase the light in the flat, transforming what was originally a dark flat into a very cool residence in the heart of Borough Market. Of course to buy Bridget’s flat in real time you would pay millions for it, because Borough has become so boutique. Ironically, however, in the intervening years another train line was built passing right by the window on one side of the flat, so the building was now hemmed in by two train lines.

For the filmmakers, it was perfect. “It seemed like quite a Bridget situation to find yourself in,” Kelly notes. “Buying a flat in the up-and-coming, affluent Borough Market, to suddenly realise that you were going to have a train line, no matter which way you looked out. It worked out neatly to show aspiration and advance, but at the same time everything not working out as you would have liked it.”

There was a fair bit of discussion as to whether Bridget would remain in the same flat. In the last 10 years Borough Market has changed dramatically, in ways that reflect both how London life and Bridget have grown. “Almost exactly, it mirrored her changes,” says Kelly. “That it still has a humility and a fun side to it, but actually has become prosperous. It was interesting to keep her in a world that had changed so much.”

Since Bridget’s debut, Borough Market has become a destination for fans paying homage to our heroine. In fact, despite the changes to the market since 2001, her home remains intact, even down to the same colour of its blue door. “One of the iconic images was Bridget’s flat above the pub,” says Hayward. “It represents old, Georgian London. When we made the first film, Borough Market was not a great area. Cut to 15 years later and the pub is still there, but the area has immeasurably improved. Right behind it is the Shard, which wasn’t there five years ago. That became quite symbolic of the film… that it contained both the old and the new London, the old and the new Bridget.”

The film shot over two days at Borough, with one of the scenes requiring that the market be transformed into a Christmas bonanza, in the middle of summer. CAMILLA STEPHENSON, location manager on Bridget Jones, says: “Early on, we decided to not change anything about the market; that included the stallholders. Artisan producer and organic butchers came in on their day off to be a part of the filming. We bought the entire market for the day, so everything you see on film is genuine.”

From her Home Counties accent to her unique eccentricities, Jones is quintessentially English. Whilst Edge of Reason took her out of her comfort zone and into Thailand, Bridget Jones’s Baby explores her roots in England, using some of the country’s most iconic locales.

Hayward shares that England’s capital is decidedly a character for Maguire: “I always thought the great illustration of that were the first shots we took of Bridget’s flat over the pub. That location was quite skanky on the first film, and now there is the Shard soaring as a symbol of all the area’s regeneration. It’s about the old and the new, cheek by jowl in London, and that was important to Sharon.”

“Because I had been living away for several years, when I came back, which coincided with the script landing with me, it was exciting to tackle London again,” explains Maguire. “When I left it in 2010 it was recession time, and things were bleak. When I came back, everything was bling and cosmopolitan. There was new architecture that made the most of the fact that London was an ancient city. It combined ancient brick with amazing glass and steel and allowed me to put the modern and the ancient on film.”

“Sharon and I spent a lot of time discussing the mirroring in London,” says Kelly. “This big passage of time made for quite a nice challenge as to how Bridget’s life has changed. It was a nice opportunity to show a change in London and a change in the world surrounding Bridget.”

The filmmakers embraced London to the point that not only did they shoot in some if the city’s most poignant spots, but as much as they could, they did so without closing the areas down. The message was loud and clear, Bridget Jones belongs to Londoners. “That’s always been the way,” muses Hayward. “We’ve long shot in iconic locations, whether Primrose Hill or the Supreme Court or places like Market.”

Fortunately for Stephenson, most organisations she approached were more than happy to accommodate Bridget Jones. She continues: “Not a single person asked us what the story was about. Just the mere mention of Bridget, and they said, ‘That would be lovely!’ Usually, you have to drop the name of an actor or a director just to get through the door. She’s has done very well for people visiting London.”

Other locations of note included The Supreme Court and The London Aquatics Centre at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, both of which opened their doors to filmmakers for the first time. As did, The Old Bailey, Islington, Highbury, Gatwick Airport, Cornbury Estate in Oxfordshire, Swinbrook village, Southwark and Albert Bridge, the list goes on. “If you’ve never experienced working in a location department, this is the film to experience it in, just for the sheer variety,” says Stephenson.

“From building a big set in a field, to a stately home, major train stations, the Olympic Pool, closing major London bridges, closing roads in London and creating a big traffic jam, using a major hospital, you name it we’ve done it. It’s got every type of location you can imagine, from rural to urban.”

In direct contrast to Bridget’s world is the world inhabited by Mark, where, aside from his career ascension, little has changed. “We updated him to a degree, but his is a conservative world that doesn’t change very much,” notes Kelly. “The times when we see Mark’s world are in his office in Lincoln Fields, and at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sits in the beating heart of political power in Parliament Square.

This is Mark Darcy’s world, a world of order, establishment and conservative propriety. This is the world that makes sense to Darcy, and is light years from Bridget’s world. Thanks to Stephenson, Bridget Jones’s Baby was the first film to use the Supreme Court. “Overlooking Parliament Square it’s a really interesting space that felt right for Mark, having moved his career up to a stage where he was no longer High Court barrister but a Supreme Court QC,” explains Kelly.

The Supreme Court is a working building so filming could only take place on the weekend. With only one day to dress the set and one day to shoot, some clever dressing was required. Stacks of papers and files dressed the tables. The courtroom was meticulously brought to life by the expertise of the props and arts team. Legal papers and files hired in props houses were stacked high on desks with more detailed papers that related to Poonani created by the design team.

It wasn’t all location work on the production. In addition to the interior of Bridget’s flat, which was built at Pinewood, the film has two big set pieces: the festival and the Hard News studios. The festival represents a moment in the story where Bridget is taken completely out of her comfort zone, when taken unsuspectingly to a Festival with her friend Miranda. Thinking she’s off for a weekend in the country at a boutique hotel, she is shocked when they arrive at a muddy, crowded, sensory assaulting festival.

“We wanted the festival to feel a bit like Glastonbury at its worst,” says Kelly. “As the story progresses, for Bridget it’s like arriving at Hell on Earth. There’s mud and kids on drugs and it’s just, why am I here? Yet a couple of drinks later and some prancing around in dance tents and it all starts to get a little bit rosier – until eventually she’s having the best weekend of her entire life. It was obviously a muddy quagmire that she could be dumped into at the beginning, but we liked the idea of the colours increasing as her visit progressed, becoming more fabulous and psychedelic.”

The festival site was built in Great Windsor Park and whilst the team drew inspiration from a variety of sources from the UK’s rich festival scene, it was Bestival that played a more significant role. “We thought the music aspect of the festival that they attend would be more the scale of Bestival, so we spent time down there with ROB DA BANK and his wife JOSIE, who is the creative director,” says Kelly.

Just as the stallholders in Borough Market were genuine, so too were many of the festival vendors, bringing their own stalls and bars to Great Windsor Park. The icing on the cake was shooting a sequence with ED SHEERAN, live on stage at Croke Park in Dublin, to be cut into the film alongside scenes from Bestival and a practical shoot.

In that it conveyed her success, Hard News was another important set for Bridget. When we last met Bridget she was working at the lower end of TV production, and yet here she is today producing a serious news show for a major broadcaster. Drawing inspiration from BBC and ITN news shows, the team built an entire news room, including studio gallery, studio floor and offices, designed to be filmed 360 degrees – so that from whatever angle they were shooting from, the frame would show all aspects of a working newsroom. Explains Kelly: “This set was fairly unique because the whole thing was always in shot. We filmed the filming of the show.”

They actually were filming the show, in real time, live with a setup that could have broadcast live to the nation, had the filmmakers decreed. The team turned to ITV’s Good Morning Britain to authenticate the Hard News production. Zellweger spent considerable time shadowing the team there when researching her character, and it was out of those meetings that the idea was born to use ITV’s team to produce Hard News. Led by Good Morning Britain’s series director ERRON GORDON, who plays Ryan Cooper in the film, what you see on screen is the genuine article: a real camera crew shooting Hard News as live with the actual gallery team delivering it.

Gordon explains his role: “Sharon and Renée came to ITV for research, and they watched editions of Good Morning Britain go out live. I got a phone call the next day asking if I would be in the film, as they wanted Hard News to be authentic. So myself, my vision mixer, JOHN WEBB, and a PA from This Morning on ITV came along with two camera guys from ITV. Because we shot Hard News as it was happening in the film, I was miming directions, but at the same time, directing the cameras on the studio floor.”