As Bridget Jones fever takes hold with the release of the hugely-anticipated fourth film, cast and crew of the original hit have revealed more about the iconic movie. Helen Fielding’s chain-smoking, chardonnay-chugging, unlucky-in-love character became one of the most successful British cultural exports of all time. But it was no easy feat for Texas-born actress Renee Zellweger, the unlikely star to play the thoroughly British singleton in Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001. Her co-star Hugh Grant, who plays Daniel Cleaver in the films, said: “There was a whole scandal of ‘Why isn’t this a British actress?’ and I didn’t know Renee Zellweger very well. A Texan playing Bridget, it did seem a stretch.”.
Determined to prove her critics wrong, Jerry Maguire star Renee started working closely with dialect coach Barbara Berkery and also decided to gain weight, reportedly eating 4,000 calories a day to pile on 30lbs. In a new Channel 5 documentary, We Love Bridget Jones: All The Laughter & More, Barbara reveals: “There was a very well known Chinese restaurant we were going to for lunch and of course at the time she was eating a lot of food to put weight on as Renee was very slim.”.
Despite the shock and horror that an American was going to play Bridget, Barbara and Renee persevered, spending a lot of time together working on her accent. Barbara says: “We thought about where she comes from, we placed her in the suburbs around London of a middle class family going to a good school and wanting to get into the media. Renee thought she’d like to do something in London which would be part of what Bridget might do.” Renee decided to work undercover as intern ‘Bridget Cavendish’ in a publisher for a few months, where nobody recognised her and nobody knew who she was. She even put a photo of her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey on her desk, but no one twigged.
Barbara says: “I would meet Renee at lunchtime. We would do our work in a cafe and it was quite pleasant. I think we got on well together. I think that she was aware of the pressure of the accent. Because there have been a lot of actresses who wanted to play this particular role.” When filming finally began, Barbara remained by Renee’s side to ensure her accent was faultless. Barbara adds: “So, half past five in the morning I would be in the car and we would collect Renee. And then we would go to Shepperton Studios. We would do the exercises in the car, we had exercises for lots of vowel sounds. By the time we got there she’d be absolutely in the accent.”.
Renee wasn’t the only star of the movie to come under pressure in the role. Colin Firth, who played love interest Mark Darcy, based on Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Darcy, was bombarded with people begging him not to play the original Mr Darcy, but he decided to embrace both roles. In a BBC documentary, he revealed: “People begged me not to play the part, because they were all in love with Mr Darcy. I didn’t fit. You’ll spoil it forever. In the end, of course, famous for that scene where he emerges from a lake, Colin’s Mr Darcy made him ideal casting for Mark Darcy.
The cherry on top was a stellar supporting cast, including Gemma Jones as Bridget’s mum, Jim Broadbent as Bridget’s dad and Patrick Barlow as the memorable Julian, the brief, tango-tanned love interest for her mum. In the C5 documentary, Patrick says: “I felt a lot of pressure. Everybody was so excited, particularly people who’d read the book and loved the book. And when I said I was playing Julian and they all went, my God, that’s a fantastic character. And so that’s a real pressure. So Bridget’s mum leaves Bridget’s dad, for the host of a shopping channel. He is rather vain, posh, creepy, ingratiating. That’s Julian.” Patrick adds: “I think everyone knew that they were in something rather special and that carries through and people were kind of aware of that. It was a lovely atmosphere actually. And everyone loved Renee. She used to speak in an English accent in the lunch queue, I noticed. I'd like a salad and whatever. It was interesting and charming. To see that she was so in it, as it were.”.
In order to bring the books to life, production designer Gemma Jackson was tasked with finding the locations that would go on to become so well-known. Gemma says: “I just felt that there was a London out there that could be looked at slightly differently through the eyes of somebody like her. We looked at a lot of different places when we were trying to find where we were going to put her apartment.” During the search, the team stumbled across the perfect location, in south London’s Borough Market, which wasn’t quite the gastro hotspot it is now. Gemma says: “When we found Borough, we just loved the railway line. The whole area was just dull, except the architecture. We went into that filthy old pub that was there and they took us right up to the top and it was pretty grim, but it had a lot of interesting shapes to it. So Bridget’s flat above the pub we built at Shepperton Studios, because you really couldn’t have shot it there. It just had all those extraordinary, slightly funky qualities about it.”.
