While “Bridgerton” spent its first three seasons detailing the gossip, romance, rigid rules and scandalous underbelly of the Ton, the exclusive and aristocratic high society of Regency era London, the fourth installment opens the Netflix series up to the world downstairs, thanks to the “Cinderella” story at the heart of season.
Based on Julia Quinn’s “An Offer from a Gentleman,” Season 4 centers on the love story between Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) and his lady in silver, Sophie (Yerin Ha), an illegitimate maid who transforms herself into a lady of society for the night of Violet Bridgerton’s masquerade ball.
Though showrunner Jess Brownell admits both the season and Quinn’s book begin as a “Cinderella” story, what happens after Benedict and Sophie’s fated meeting is much more complex than a fairytale ending. “It’s not just a simple housemaid dreaming of being saved by a man from the nobility … it’s also the tale of the man from nobility having to earn the housemaid,” Brownell told TheWrap. “Sophie really does challenge Benedict in this way that defeats the damsel in distress stereotype of the Cinderella character.”
The upstairs-downstairs dynamic within Benedict’s love story was one of the things that prompted the Netflix series to swap the order of Benedict and Colin’s stories from Quinn’s books, with Brownell explaining the team felt strongly they wanted to “stay in the world of the upstairs” for the first three seasons.
“Every season is only eight episodes, and so we felt like we were still establishing the rules of the world,” Brownell told TheWrap, noting that once they had set up the realm of high society it was time to shake things up. “Going downstairs this season really does open up the world and add new texture to the show; it felt like the perfect time to broaden our horizons.”
From the get-go, Season 4 lets viewers in on the downstairs shenanigans, expanding the roles of the largely background actors fans have come to know as the housekeepers, maids and other staff through previous seasons and giving those actors a chance to shine.
“It does just add nuance and depth to the world and really high stakes — having a class clash be the obstacle of our romance,” Brownell said. “This season, they’re really up against it — Benedict and Sophie.”
Sophie comes to life in Yerin Ha, an Australian actress best known for appearing in HBO’s “Dune: Prophecy” and Paramount+’s “Halo,” whose audition was among the hundreds of tapes screened by Brownell and the “Bridgerton” team. It was Ha’s balance of “youthful vitality” and “old soul” presence that first made her stand out as both an attractive force and a foil to Benedict, with Brownell noting “the way that she interacts with the world around her is really special … she just leaps off the screen.”
“This character is a tricky one to play, because for her survival, she has to be quite subservient, and she has to be someone who goes along with what she’s ordered to do, but you have to know in her eyes that she has a strength and that she has other things going on,” Brownell said. “We needed an actor who has a real old soul and real depth to go opposite Benedict, because Benedict has done and seen everything, and you needed someone who could really challenge him.”
Ha, who is based in Sydney, completed a chemistry read with Thompson via Zoom, and even across the screens, Brownell recalled sensing an “intense chemistry” between the pair, saying “they just had an ease and a banter, and a sense of play.”
“We are always interested in hearing how our our leads feel — We asked Luke, after he had chemistry read with a few people, how he felt. And he absolutely singled out Yerin and said, ‘I just felt comfortable with her,’” Brownell recalled. “They were really a natural fit.”
Ha’s casting as Sophie, who was originally written as white in Quinn’s book, adds to the diverse “Bridgerton” world as the series’ first East Asian lead, an identity that Brownell and the team zeroed in on pretty early in preparations for the season.
“It was important for us to be clear on how we were casting the role before we began writing the season, because while racism is not a part of the fantasy of our world, race and identity still absolutely is, so writing with race in mind, I think, is really key,” Brownell said. “When we looked at our world, we felt like East Asian representation was an area that we were missing.”
While Brownell always envisioned Sophie’s last name of Beckett would change from the book, it wasn’t until Ha, who is of Korean descent, was cast that the pair sat down to discuss what might best fit the character, with Brownell noting she wanted to give Ha some agency in that name change. “We talked about whether there were any names like in her family or her family friends who she wanted to honor, but ultimately, we both agreed that Baek felt like the most natural adaptation of the name.”
Another identity consideration this season was Benedict’s sexuality, which the series expands from the book to include a sexual fluidity that Brownell has previously described as pansexual. Despite “Bridgerton” gender-swapping Francesca’s love interest from Michael to Michaela, as revealed in the Season 3 finale, Brownell opted to keep Benedict in a hetero-presenting relationship with Sophie.
“We’ve talked about [gender-swapping] for all the characters and all the love stories, in terms of figuring out where it was best to do that,” Brownell said. “We felt like with Benedict, the class issue is so front and center that it felt like that was the main thing to focus on.”
“That being said, I think Benedict’s pansexual or fluid identity is absolutely a part of his character, and always will be,” Brownell said. “It’s something that we wanted to hold space for, even in a season where he’s ending up in a heterosexual-presenting relationship.”
Brownell went on to note that ending up in a heterosexual relationship doesn’t erase Benedict’s queerness, and might even help defy some stereotypes depicted in media. “I felt like it was actually important representation to see specifically a queer man end up in a heterosexual-presenting relationship, because we don’t often see that when a man is presented as bisexual,” Brownell said. “Most often, I think in media representation, we see him ending up with a man, and that’s beautiful and valid, but I think it’s good to to balance it out.”
“Bridgerton” Season 4, Part 1 premieres Jan. 29 on Netflix.
The post How ‘Bridgerton’ Embraced the Upstairs-Downstairs Dynamic in Season 4’s ‘Cinderella’ Story appeared first on TheWrap.
