Hugh Grant’s absence from the third movie in the Bridget Jones franchise was a major talking point among fans, as was the supposed death of his character in an off-screen plane crash. The original plan was for Grant to return as Bridget’s womanizing ex Daniel Cleaver, but the actor ultimately declined because he felt there was no clear role for his character in the plot. Fortunately, he didn’t feel the same way about the newly released fourth film, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, in which he plays a prominent role. So what did it take for Grant to sign on this time?
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“Hugh’s very much his own person, and he’s never going to do anything that he doesn’t feel strongly he should do,” director Michael Morris tells Parade in an exclusive interview. “So there was a moment where I met with him candidly, and discussed the film. I think he was trying to sound out whether he felt that there was going to be a role for him here, because God knows if there wasn't one for him in three, it would be hard for him to find it in this one.”
But once Morris discussed the plot of the film — which involves Bridget navigating life as a single mother following the death of her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) — Grant was intrigued. “I think he was really interested in the project and by project I mean this sort of combination of tones,” Morris explains. “There’s an awareness in all of [the characters], of their lives getting more complicated, and Daniel is absolutely one of them, and I think [Hugh] wanted to play that.”
The film has to strike a delicate balance between comedy and tragedy, as it explores Bridget and her children’s grieving process for Mark Darcy alongside her adventures in dating as a 50-something. “The film is really about Bridget at a stage of her life where she has no choice but to walk through some really difficult things,” Morris says. “But you want to deliver a Bridget that makes people essentially happy to see her — that sense of, there she is again and there are her friends, and there’s nostalgia and love interests and mishaps and all the rest of it. It’s a very warm franchise, and I wanted to capture all that warmth.”
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Morris is no stranger to walking that kind of tragicomic line, having directed multiple episodes of the Breaking Bad spinoff series Better Call Saul. “I learned a lot from Saul, particularly about how much comedy informs its opposite and vice versa,” he says. “If I were to just set out to make just a comedy with no other components, I feel like it might fall flat because it's not rich enough. I think we live in a complicated world and we’re all complicated people, and honoring both things is really important.”
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Another unexpected resemblance between the two projects is that much like Better Call Saul, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is packed with Easter eggs and callbacks for diehard fans to appreciate, including a couple of absolutely iconic wardrobe items which make a return from the first film. “I came to this having just wrapped the final season of Saul, and specifically having directed the first episode of the final season, which is an Easter egg frenzy in which so much of what you see relates to some element of Breaking Bad,” Morris reflects, adding that since he had such a clear understanding of the power of the Easter egg, he was eager to introduce as many as he could into the fourth Bridget Jones movie.
“It’s a way of rewarding people who have spent 24 years with this character, and a way of observing all the history and the richness of it. Also, this is a story of a real woman who lives in a real house in a real city. She doesn't sort of jettison her life [in the time between films], just we're coming back years later. Her life should be all around her. She would keep it on her bookshelves, and she would wear the same clothes.”
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is available to stream on Peacock now.
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