Dearest gentle readers, we are happy to report the game is afoot.
Indeed, while it seemed like the ton had been abandoned in the months since Bridgertonseason four premiered in January, it turns out Regency-era romance has remained top of mind at Netflix.
The streamer announced on Oct. 8 that a new prequel series is in the works, and this time Violet Bridgerton is taking center stage.
Much like Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Storyexplored the early life and romantic journey of Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel in the main series, India Amarteifio in the spinoff), the currently untitled prequel will explore the backstory of Ruth Gemmell’s Violet, and her love story with Bridgerton patriarch Edmund.
While Violet has become a beloved character in the main series—doing her best to shepherd her eight children into love matches—her romance with Viscount Edmund Bridgerton, and her grief over his passing, has only been mentioned in dialogue. (Rupert Evans played Edmund in a season two flashback.)
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Bridgerton‘s Nicola Coughlan Details “Bittersweet” Step Back in Season 5
This time, viewers will get a front row seat to the events that drew them together.
Though details otherwise remain under wraps—with not even Lady Whistledown able to reveal them—Netflix confirmed media mogul and Bridgertonconnoisseur Shonda Rhimeswill once again pen, executive produce and act as executive producer on the series. She’ll be joined by writer Nicholas Nardini, who also contributed to Queen Charlotte.
Following the news—which also affirmed that filming for season five featuring Francesca (Hannah Dodd) and Michaela (Masali Basuza) is underway—it’s safe to say fans were more than ready for Violet’s story.
“Violet Bridgerton, you deserve all the world,” one user wrote on Shondaland’s Instagram announcement, while another added, “Bestie, shut the drawing room door!!!! Are you kidding me? This is amazing.”
While Violet played the role of dutiful mother across the first three seasons of Bridgerton, season four saw the matriarch finally seek something more for herself—and that more arrived in the handsome form of Daniel Francis’ Lord Marcus Anderson.
For Ruth, who has made Violet such a beloved character, portraying a second chance at love was a dream.
“It was important to me to show that whatever age you are, you still love,” she told Vogue Singaporein February. “You still lose someone, you still grieve, you still feel nervous, you still feel like a teenager, but just that we come with baggage.”
But while visitors to the ton will likely need to wait quite a while for Violet’s story, there are plenty of behind-the-scenes Bridgertonsecrets to keep your interst piqued. Read on for more.
Liam Daniel/Netflix
One cast member has an upper hand, however. Charithra Chandran, who plays Edwina Sharma, grew up playing croquet!
“The interesting thing is I played a lot of croquet in my past like at boarding school and at university,” she told E! News. “So I was very familiar with croquet, Pall Mall is very similar. So we got sent all the rules beforehand, got to read them up, but there were always people to describe what was happening. And but most of it was choreographed and then like, sometimes they’d record us just messing about which I think some of those scenes made and or shots made and which is lovely.”
It turns out showrunner Chris Van Dusen did it intentionally to show Anthony’s transition from party boy to leading man.
It’s impossible for Anthony to look anything but ravishing, but is it bad that we kind of miss the sideburns? We’ll always have season one.
We figured the cast was drinking water the whole time, but alas, they’re actually guzzling the real thing! According to Netflix, they usually use “PG Twips or Twinings.” We’ll pretend like we know what that means.
The show’s head food economist (a job we didn’t know was real) Lisa Heathcote needed food that wouldn’t spoil during many of the show’s ball scenes, so most of that stuff is inedible. However, in the actual dinner scenes, the food is real. Since the actors need to eat the food over multiple takes, it’s often made out of raw vegetables. Sounds like dinner at Grandma’s house.
Jonathan Bailey rides a black Spanish Friesian horse named Jack, while Simone Ashley rides a Spanish Bay horse named Nirvana.
Since most of the horses became attached to their assigned actor during season one, many of them returned for season two.
We just hope Regé-Jean Page’s horse is doing okay.
“When I researched Queen Charlotte and found out that she was of African descent, it gave me so much more scope to create her beautiful looks,” the show’s makeup and hair designer Marc Pilcher told Vogue. “I used the silhouettes of the period but in a celebration of her ethnicity, I used locks, braids and Afro-textured styles. Her giant Afro was in the shape of a Gainsborough wig, but influenced by Beyoncé as Foxxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers in Goldmember.”
Pilcher echoed his comments to Essence, saying, “I saw Beyoncé Knowles in Austin Powers Goldmember and that’s when I thought, ‘That’s what I want.’ I wanted the biggest afro someone had ever seen. That wig in particular was actually four or five wigs all placed together. So we had the wigs for the ringlets and then the we bought afros and then straightened them out and reset them on curls sticks and brushed them through so that we would get the best volume of afro, then sewed them on top of each other just to get that beautiful shape.”
“In the writers’ room, we refer to them as PenEloise,” he told Screenrant. “That’s slowly becoming a thing, as the fans of the books tweet and are on Instagram. I think they’re using that hashtag a lot.”
He added, “When we saw them, we immediately knew that was Penelope and that was Eloise Bridgerton. I think we have something special with them.”
“It was all so that the cast would feel comfortable, and we all we really left it in their hands to take the scenes for as far as they wanted to take them,” he told E! News. “Those scenes were heavily choreographed, much like an action sequence, like ‘Your hand goes here, your leg goes there.’ They were all really, really rehearsed.”
Dynevor told E! News. “I feel really proud of those scenes, honestly. We worked really hard at making them feel real. I was very safe. I felt very safe with Regé and an intimacy coordinator. We blocked them out like they were intricate stunts.”
“We were very clear that there needed to be a show of power, so it’s Daphne who takes her own hair out of the braids, and it’s Daphne who pushes him away so he can see her,” Lizzy Talbot, Bridgerton’s intimacy coordinator, told Vulture. “Phoebe wanted to remove her hair from the braids herself, because it’s an empowering moment and so much is tied up in women’s hair at that time. That’s a very definitive moment that isn’t necessarily rooted in the sexual act, but it is paving the way for it.”
“One of the interesting things about Bridgerton was that so many scenes we did involving beds were on beds of Regency size,” Talbot told Vulture. “That was honestly one of our biggest challenges. Reǵe being as tall as he is, is not really suited to a Regency-sized bed, lengthwise or even widthwise when there’s two people on it. So we had to work really hard to make sure that if there’s ever any rolling action—which happens quite a lot in these scenes—that they didn’t accidentally roll off the bed.”
She added, “That was a real issue! On nearly every bed that we had.”
“We had a huge tank underneath to collect the water, because you can’t just rain in a studio and have it just go everywhere. It’s got to be properly collected,” set director Gina Cromwell told Buzzfeed. “So there was an enormous range of pipes and things going on. I mean, from my point of view, I was just involved with making sure that there were flowers, always flowers, and that there was food and pretty things like that. But I know that from the point of view of the audience, they were (hopefully) fooled into thinking that it was actually an outside set.”
“That’s just to symbolize that she has a lover that nobody knows,” John Glaser, one of the show’s costume designers, has said. “Usually, the miniatures were up to the person, so people knew who they were, but they wouldn’t display them. She has an eye. So she’s the only one who knows who her lover is.”
“It was so much fun,” Coughlan told Variety. “We had to film that in the middle of COVID. I had to be super, super secret. I had to be flown over from Ireland, and tested and tested and tested, and do the fitting. It was hyper secret; I couldn’t let anyone know I was there or what was going on. But it was so much fun to film that.”
“Just that physical moment of lifting her chin,” she shared. “I did exactly the same thing with Daphne.”
Per the actress, this small gesture helped her see “how it all connected.”
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