Season one of Bridgerton made stars out of Regé-Jean Page and Phoebe Dynevor. Photo / Netflix
When the TV exec first suggested working on a period drama, her producing partner, Betsy Beers, thought she had ‘hit her head’. Meet the women who brought bonking and bodices to a new generation.
From the start Bridgerton was a period drama for people who didn’t think they liked period dramas. When Shonda Rhimes, the award-winning writer and producer behind Grey’s Anatomy and CEO of her own company, Shondaland, told her producing partner of 20 years, Betsy Beers, that their next project would be set in Regency England, Beers was taken aback. “I thought you might have hit your head,” she says.
History was not their thing. But Rhimes had been sick while on holiday and all there was to read in her hotel room was one of the Bridgerton books by Julia Quinn. “I couldn’t put it down,” she says. “I’m not going to diss Jane Austen, but this was so much juicier.”
Bridgerton is more like Gossip Girl meets Downton Abbey. Set in London high society of the early 1800s, it tells the story of the wealthy Bridgerton siblings as they look for love. There is plenty of scandal — and it all looks irresistible, with pastel-coloured dresses, beautiful tailoring for the men and sumptuous interiors. It made a star of Phoebe Dynevor, as the naive Daphne Bridgerton, and Regé-Jean Page, who played the Duke of Hastings in series one, and launched a thousand memes with a scene where he is seen suggestively licking a spoon.
It only takes a few minutes of speaking to Rhimes, 52, to realise that she is determined — and her instincts were right. The first series of Bridgerton was watched by a record 82 million households in its first month, when it landed on Netflix on Christmas Day, 2020.
Underneath the high camp style, frills and flirting, the show is revolutionary: a relatable drama where not everyone is white and women — gasp! — enjoy sex. And luckily for fans a third series is on its way, as well as a prequel about Queen Charlotte due early next year. Still can’t wait? Rhimes and Beers, 65, have written a book, Inside Bridgerton, telling the story of this unlikely cultural phenomenon.
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story builds on their fascination with the wife of George III. He suffered from mental illness and the first Regency bill stated that she should rule in his place if he was unable to. She doesn’t appear in the Bridgerton novels, so Rhimes and Beers wrote her in. “Queen Charlotte was the Beyoncé of her day,” Rhimes writes in the book. “Fierce, fabulous, unexpected. Weird. I want to be like her.”
In the prequel the young Charlotte is played by India Amarteifio (DCI Roz Huntley’s daughter in Line of Duty). “Queen Charlotte is an over-the-top presence,” says Rhimes. “She has everything she could want yet she is suffering underneath.”
Her heavy wigs and bejewelled dresses add to Charlotte’s imposing air. From the start Beers and Rhimes knew they wanted a particular aesthetic — one that lets the viewer know they are in the 1800s but has a touch of modernity that makes it feel relatable, like a nod to a Chanel jacket. Necklines are low, the men’s breeches are tight and the colours are eye-poppingly bright. “Regular regency dresses felt a little dry,” Rhimes says. “Our costume designer Ellen Mirojnick was one of the first people we hired.”
Beers says that Netflix didn’t understand why they were spending so much money on the costumes. They made 7,500 outfits, including period-specific underwear. “I wish I could have tried them on,” Beers says. “I remember looking at some of Daphne’s tiny dresses and thinking that won’t happen for me.”
Daphne Bridgerton had some of the steamiest sex scenes, swooning over the duke. But series two went in a different direction, with considerably less bodice-ripping. What changed? Rhimes and Beers pause to think. “Every character’s romantic life is different,” Rhimes says eventually.
“It would be weird if everybody had the same kind of sex life, don’t you agree, Betsy?” Beers agrees (amazingly they say that disagreements don’t happen in their working relationship, everything is a conversation): “What is great about season two is it is about longing.”
Jess Brownell, one of the show’s writers, says of working on those first sex scenes: “[It was] one of the most awkward moments of my career … I was having fun but then I remembered my boss would read them … he had asked for them to be detailed.”
Intimacy directors worked behind the scenes, making sure the actors felt at ease. Sean Bean recently said that they kill the moment, but Rhimes won’t entertain not having them. “Sex scenes should be filmed like stunts,” she says.
She is unafraid to shake up established ways of working. Bridgerton changed the expectation of who could be in a period drama; this is not an all-white cast and viewers said how glad they were finally to see people who looked like them on screen. Rhimes calls it “colour-conscious casting” rather than “colour-blind”.
Why has it taken so long to get here? “That is a wonderful question to ask people who don’t do it,” Rhimes says. “The idea that I was making shows where I wasn’t represented is ridiculous. Honestly, the thing that happened was that it became clear that the business model for shows needed to change. Shows with a more inclusive cast have more viewers and make more money, they get more advertising dollars. We showed it was an economic model that was more profitable.”
Rhimes grew up in Chicago, the youngest of six children. Her mother went to college while raising them; her father was an administrator at the University of Southern California. Rhimes has said that “pretty wasn’t a compliment” in their house. Her father wanted them to work “twice as hard”. Growing up, Rhimes “wanted to be Toni Morrison but Toni Morrison existed, so that job was taken”. They later met at a dinner and Morrison wanted to talk about Grey’s Anatomy, which Rhimes found “hilarious”.
Feeling underpaid at ABC, who put out Grey’s Anatomy, she went to Netflix, where not only does she have creative freedom but she was paid a reported US$150 million. Does she have any advice for women starting out? “You have to remember that your seat at the table belongs to you and you have to own it. Women should not be miring themselves in that idea that they shouldn’t be getting the same as a man.”
Beers grew up in New York and “was a TV addict”. She started out as an actress before pivoting into producing — and meeting Rhimes. One of her “genius points” is music, says Rhimes — it was Beers who decided to use covers of modern songs in Bridgerton, from Billie Eilish to Miley Cyrus.
They both enjoy their work, to the extent that boundaries between making television and the rest of their lives are blurred. “For years I was such a workaholic that if I wasn’t working I felt like I was wasting time, which is ridiculous because that is creative time your brain needs to recharge,” Rhimes says. “We now force ourselves to have time to do nothing.” “Hilariously we are both jigsaw puzzle people,” Beers says.
Rhimes has three children, two are adopted and her third daughter was born by a surrogate. Her eldest daughter, who is 20, has never seen any of their shows, “which is correct — she has never wanted to watch us on sex or love”. Beers has a dog, Hank, who “watches everything I do — it’s amazing”.
She compares Bridgerton to one of the balls in the show. “It’s intricate, lovingly orchestrated and over the top.” Beers uses the word “delightful” a lot, and the most delightful thing for her? They have committed to making a series for each of the eight Bridgerton siblings — with two down, they have only just begun.
Written by: Susannah Butter
© The Times of London
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