The workplace romance shown in Bridget Jones’s Diary would not withstand modern-day scrutiny from human resources, Renée Zellweger has said.
Speaking with co-star Hugh Grant before the release of the fourth Bridget Jones film, Zellweger was asked if Jones’s boss was exploiting his powerful position when he made overtures to a junior employee.
She told British Vogue: “I’m sure HR would have some stern rules down at the publishing house these days, don’t you think?”
In the 2001 film Daniel Cleaver, played by Grant, seduces Bridget at a London publishing house.
Zellweger suggested HR would have held a meeting, and spoken about “how you engage” with others. And “Daniel would’ve had to be re-educated”, added Grant.
To research the role, Zellweger said she worked at the publisher Picador for two months, flying under the radar as “Bridget Cavendish” as she filed newspaper clippings, including articles about herself.
After its release more than two decades ago, the first film in the Bridget Jones series, an adaptation of Helen Fielding’s bestseller, banked a then record £7.8m in three days. The film was followed by Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, in 2004, and in 2016, the success of the third instalment, Bridget Jones’s Baby, made producers Working Title the first British film company to take home $1bn in the UK.
The fourth film due in February, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, comes from Fielding’s 2013 novel of the same name.
Zellweger said the gender roles pressed upon Bridget were much more regimented and reinforced in her era as inescapable prejudices. But she believes things have changed.
“You were not valuable as a woman if you were not partnered up and beginning your own family by a certain age,” said Zellweger. “But I don’t think that women my age are imposing that on their daughters.”
Discussing the England of today to that 20 years ago, Grant asked if it was less jolly a place. “Or have we just turned into those old people who complain about everything?” replied Zellweger. She did not think it sadder, she added, but different.
“We’ve had our turn and now we’re going to compare everything to the way we like it to be,” she said.
