‘Bridget Jones' star Renée Zellweger's emotional admission: ‘I didn't want Mark Darcy to go away'

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2 days ago

For more than two decades, Renée Zellweger was Bridget Jones. And now, as she hangs up the diary in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, she's doing it with both laughter and tears.
"I love this character,' Zellweger proclaimed during a recent FYC screening event for the film. 'I love her vulnerability, and I love to find spaces where she's just not quite feeling that she measures up, and the opportunity to meet her again in different stages of her life and to learn how she's different.'
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The fourth and final installment of the beloved franchise — which was streamed in the U.S. on Peacock and is in Emmy contention in categories including Outstanding Television Movie, lead actress for Zellweger, and directing for Michael Morris — offers something fans have never seen before: Bridget not only older and wiser, but grieving, growing, and still full of hope.
Morris had one hope when introducing the film to the audience inside Ted Mann Theater at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. 'I hope it immerses you in her world,' the filmmaker said before the screening. 'I hope it brings you whatever feelings it brings you.' For Morris — a London native who remembers exactly where he was when that first movie came out — this fourth and final chapter in Bridget's story was more than a conclusion. It was a celebration, a meditation on love and loss, and, in his words, 'a joy to work on.'
Peacock
Taking the stage to join Morris for a panel after the screening, Zellweger — who has played the charmingly chaotic Bridget for just about 25 years — is finally ready, although a bit reluctantly, to let her go. The two-time Oscar winner shared a moment that made her particularly emotional on set. It was the final time she saw Colin Firth dressed as Mark Darcy. "It just got me. I didn't expect to be so emotional about the end of this shared journey with my friend ... the finality of it just really was a gut punch. ... It sounds so silly, but it felt very profound in the moment," she chuckled.
"Maybe I'm crazy because maybe I love a fictional character," she said, "I didn't want Mark Darcy to go away."
Zellweger also gushed over her other longtime costar, Hugh Grant. As lovable lothario Daniel Cleaver, Grant had the role before the actress even signed on as Bridget Jones. Zellweger remembers meeting him for the first time as a "fangirl," saying the chemistry was instant. She was living in a dormitory on top of a theater in Austin when she first saw Grant — on screen.
"I would sneak down there and watch all of the animation festivals that would come through," she recalled. 'And here's this guy playing Chopin ... in Impromptu." She thought he was handsome. "When I heard he was in this Bridget Jones film that I was going to go and do in England. ... I think I had a heart attack.'
After losing Mark Darcy, some might have entertained the thought, but Grant's rakish Daniel Cleaver was never supposed to be Bridget's endgame. However, in a roundabout way, Mad About the Boy throws fans a curveball. 'Of course, she couldn't have ended up with Daniel," Morris pointed out when posed with the question. "But she sort of did. Because he became part of her family."
Photo By: Jay Maidment/Universal Pictures
With Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver out of the romantic picture, this opened the door for new potential love interests, which author Helen Fielding explored by introducing the younger Roxster (Leo Woodall) and the more age-appropriate Mr. Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Morris knew exactly what he wanted in these characters and who he wanted to cast. 'I was absolutely laser-focused on trying to get Leo and Chiwetel into the film,' he says.
The thoughtful casting process carried into Bridget and Mark's children, Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic), whom Morris championed out of thousands. In fact, one of his favorite scenes is when Bridget and her children are about to release the balloons in Mark's honor. "The scene could be a terribly sad moment," the director noted. But in an unrehearsed glance between Renée and Mabel, a smile turned an act of grief into a display of love.
Zellweger recalled her favorite scene as the one with the lip plumper. "I had the best time trying not to laugh … and watching (an unsuspecting) Emma Thompson's face," she said.
The fourth installment is a more somber and reflective entry in Bridget's saga. Zellweger describes it as 'the most intimate' of the series, noting that Fielding drew on personal experiences to guide the story.
Since 2001, Bridget Jones has matured as a mother, as a woman re-entering the workforce, as a widow, but she hasn't lost her essence, an aspect that continued to intrigue Zellweger as she factored in how life has impacted Bridget.
Photo by Daniel Kroll/'How has she changed and grown? How are her values different? How are her choices different?" she mused. "I'm sure everybody feels that they see a lot of themselves in this character. I think the profound gift is that she taps into those things that we all recognize in ourselves, our humanity and feeling not enough, or our fears and all of that."
Morris says he struggles to find other examples of where we've taken one character through something like this over two decades. "Occasionally, there were sequels," Morris said, "but this is a franchise set around a real woman. … She's actually just a person living her life, and we've known her for 25 years. That's a real privilege to work on something like that."
For the director, it's that duality — joy and heartbreak, comedy and humanity — that defines the Bridget Jones films. His take is both visually and emotionally different from its predecessors. It evolves cinematically. It looks and feels different because Bridget is different. 'I think there's a life that [Renée] brings, and there's a joy that is there, even when her world is falling apart, and she's a fabulous catastrophe," Morris said, "but even when it's falling apart, we just lean right in, because there's so much optimism in the way that [she] brought Bridget to us."
Filled with drama, humor, and Easter eggs, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy serves as a fitting sendoff for the franchise. Even the last bit of filming, Zellweger said felt like a farewell party.
"I loved the dancing in the garden,' she said. 'It was one of our last days filming. And setting up as you guys saw, standing off the side for a little while and watching everybody dancing on that floor under the disco ball in that glorious garden. ... I can't think of a better way to wrap up the experience than to watch the joy because that was real with all our friends out there, with the music blasting under the stars. That was very special."
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