By Viviana García
London, (EFE).- Bridget Jones has been changed by “the tragedies she has experienced” and people can relate to that, said in an interview with EFE Renée Zellweger, who plays the character created by writer Helen Fielding.
In the fourth installment, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the actress reprises her role as the now 51-year-old character juggling family responsibilities, her friends’ insistence that she find a new love interest after the death of her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), and raising her school-age children, Billy and Mabel.
Every morning when Bridget takes Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic) to school, she encounters the demanding science teacher, Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who enforces harsh discipline with his whistle, but who is a sensitive man underneath.
After the death of “Mr. Darcy,” Bridget is looking for romance.
In this sequel, she falls in love with Roxster (Leo Woodhall), a man 22 years her junior, who helps her down from a tree where she was hanging while playing with her two children in a London park.
Bridget Jones, a British cultural icon
The American actress told EFE that “the tragedies (Bridget) has experienced since we last saw her have changed her.”
“I think it’s such an unusual thing that you can fall for a character in one moment in your own life (and then) catching up to her at a time when she’s experiencing something that by this stage in life most of us are very familiar with: loss and grieving, ” Zellweger added.
The star said that Bridget Jones has been a British cultural icon since the character first appeared on the screen 25 years ago, due to “the magic of Helen’s talent in creating these characters that feel universally relatable and cross-generationally relatable.”
Chiwetel Ejiofor told EFE that he “loved” his character.
“The whistle (and) everything. He’s a bit uptight initially, but there’s a lot of subtext to him. And the way he approaches life is really endearing for me in the way that he engages his students – he’s an educator – and the way he looks at that responsibility,” he added.
Meanwhile, Leo Woodall said he felt some pressure when he was offered the role of Roxter, but that the actress helped him because she is a “generous” person.
“We had coffee with Michael, the director, and we just had a good old chinwag and I realized, ok, this person (Renée) is very welcoming, very generous, very kind, very fun. And I thought, well, this is going to be a very fun job,” he said.
Not a perfect Hollywood heroine
Director Michael Morris told EFE that it was easy for him to accept the role because he has always loved the character and ires Zellweger, whom he described as an open and generous person.
“I’m very interested in a film about how an optimistic, joyful person deals with a tremendous loss, and still manages (to find) the different approaches that she has to facing life again and stepping back into life,” she added.
In Bridget Jones, people discover “a woman who is absolutely not a perfect Hollywood heroine,” and yet people are “drawn to her because all those things, how refreshing she is, how different she is from the perfect,” Morris stressed.
Both Morris and the main actors agreed that they would be willing to play their characters again if the British author were to write a new Bridget Jones book and bring it to the screen. EFE
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