‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy' Director Says Previous Films Weren't ‘Misogynistic,' but Instead Shone a Comedic Light on ‘Pressures That Existed' at the Time

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14-02-2025

Expertly timed to coincide with Valentine's Day, the fourth — and apparently final — installment in the iconic Bridget Jones franchise has now been released, available on Peacock in the U.S. and in theaters via Universal around the world, including the U.K.
The long-gestating 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy' — based on Helen Fielding's third Jones novel — drags cinema's favourite diary-writing singleton in the 2020s, this time as a widow with two small children and who's nervously reentering the dating scene. As the story sounds, it's considerably more emotional than the previous titles, but still manages to pack in the all-important rom and com.
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For director Michael Morris, 'Mad About a Boy' marks only his second feature and came his way after a chance meeting with Fielding at a friend's house. As she described the story of the novel he says it got him thinking about what would happen if he mixed 'Bridget Jones' with 'Truly Madly Deeply.'
Speaking to Variety, the Brit discusses going with his instincts to cast Leo Woodall before 'One Day' and explains why he thinks the first Bridget Jones films — while they may be looked upon as outdated now — were never intended to be misogynistic.
Your debut feature was 'To Leslie' which was hugely well received and took Andrea Riseborough to the Oscars. That film was about a single woman dealing with a few issues, but in a much less colourful and rom-com world than that of 'Mad About the Boy.' Did you see a connection between the two?
It's funny, because I've occasionally stopped to observe that myself. On face value, they're very different. What does one have to do with the other? But they are very much are entwined. There's a lot of shared DNA in an odd way, as you say, in these sort of compellingly flawed women at the very front and center, in every frame of the movie, pretty much. And both movies really sort of chart them finding that they have to adjust themselves. Obviously, one is in the drama world very squarely, and one isn't, but they do have to adjust their learned behavior and lived behavior in a quite uncomfortable way in order to be able to move forward. It's pretty fun, the challenge. This was one of the reasons I really wanted to do the film – can you do a comedy of grief? It's a challenge. It's a slightly different twist on the rom-com, because you want to be able to satisfy the comedy. You really want people to have fun and to laugh. It's part of Bridget's universe, but you also want to allow enough space in the filmmaking and the storytelling for the audience to inhabit those other more emotional parts.
So how did this film come your way? Before 'To Leslie' you were a relatively untested director in the film world, but had obviously done a lot of TV
It came just almost coincidentally. One evening I was at a friend of mine's house, and Helen Fielding was there. I never met Helen before, but we started chatting about what she was doing next and she said, 'Well, I've got this book that hasn't been done yet.' She started to describe it and describe how Mark Darcy was dead. I hadn't read the book, so for me, I had the experience a lot of people have, which was like: what Mark Darcy's dead? And I immediately thought, in my own sort of filmmaker lizard brain, it's like, what happens if you cross 'Bridget Jones' with 'Truly Madly Deeply.' And it just led to a long conversation and, fortunately, some of the television stuff that I had done Helen really loved. And so it came from there.
Were you involved in the casting process? You've brought back all the old favourites, but this time we've also got both Chiwetel Ejiofar and Leo Goodall.
That's the wonderful thing about about Working Title is that they really do support their filmmakers. So even though this is a big franchise for them, we very much approached it as: Who do you want? Who do you want cast? And this is maybe the power of the franchise or the power of Working Title — I'm not accustomed to wielding any of that — but I got the actors that I wanted. I literally sat down with (casting director) Lucy Bevan and (producer) Eric Felner and the team, and was like, do you think there's a chance that we could get Chiwetel?
Chiwetel's rejoining the Working Title rom-com universe!
Of course, he did 'Love Actually.' And he's done nothing else since then! Ha! But to get someone with those kind of dramatic chops to play a romantic lead in a film like this … it just inspires you to keep making the film, which is maybe a little bit different in its personality than the previous Bridgets. And Leo, we cast him actually before 'One Day' had come out. I fell in love with him in 'The White Lotus.' He has such an outsized presence in that and inhabits every scene he's in with so much confidence. And I really wanted that from from this part, because I just wanted the audience to fall in love with him right from the get go.
And now casting Leo feels like a really inspired choice
You've got to listen to your instincts. Because I wasn't the only one. They cast him in 'One Day' for a reason too. But he's got it. He's an absolute star. So yes, I'm pretty lucky.
The first Bridget came out more than 20 years ago, which was a very different time. I remember when this film was first announced, there were a few murmurings of discontent about how Bridget was a little dated and misogynistic and probably wasn't right for our times. Was that something you considered before setting out on this?
I understand those comments and I saw similar ones. But I think of it a bit differently, because I remember seeing the movie in 2001 when I was making my own way in London. It was a very different time. We make contemporary films, I think, as documents of the time that we're in. I was not part of the first films at all, but I don't believe that the intent of the filmmakers was in any way to be misogynistic or to partake in terrible things like fat shaming. I think what they were doing, if anything, was shining a light, in a comedic way, on those pressures that existed and on those things. Knowing Renée, she approaches everything with this warmth and I think she's always felt of Bridget as being representative of women who have had to deal with all that shit in the past. And now I think it's just effortless to leave some of that behind, because I'm not making that film. It wouldn't feel right in any way for her to be chronicling her weight in her diary, because that's just not the pressure that she's under. She's under a whole load of other pressures. Women are under all kinds of other pressures in the age of Instagram to be perfectly slick and tidy and on time and all this other stuff. But it's just not in the same categories as it was.
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