Hugh Grant says new Bridget Jones film is ‘very sad’
Hugh Grant was in two of the previous three Bridget Jones films. (Getty)
While Bridget Jones fans are likely very excited about a new instalment in the franchise, actor Hugh Grant has warned that it is “very, very sad”.
Grant, who played Daniel Cleaver in two of the three earlier Bridget Jones films, will be reprising his role in the upcoming release Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy.
Speaking on the Graham Norton Show, Grant said of the new film: “It’s actually a very good and moving script. And I say that as someone who’s horrid about scripts. This was brilliant. As well as being extremely funny, it’s very, very sad.”
Despite declining to reprise the role of Cleaver for 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby because he felt that his character “didn’t belong”, according to Vanity Fair, Grant seemed more excited to do so this time. However, they ran into the same problem as he said that there wasn’t “an obvious role” for him to play in the story: “They wanted to cram me in.”
Because of this, Grant ended up sitting down with producers to help shape the character – who was known for being a womaniser.
“I felt that what they proposed was fine, but not great. And I felt that he needed a third dimension, he’s in his 60s now, you can’t just have him smoothing his way down King’s Road eyeing up young girls. Something needs to have happened to him in the interim.”
“So we invented a rather good – I invented a rather good – interim story,” he said.
Renée Zellweger will also be reprising her role as the titular character Bridget Jones but unfortunately noughties heartthrob Colin Firth will not be returning as Mark Darcy.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is based off of the 2013 novel of the same name, by Independent columnist Helen Fielding.
In the book, readers are introduced once again to Bridget but this time she’s all grown up and in her 50s as well as being a mother to two children and recently widowed following the death of her husband Mark.
Fielding was revealed to have written the script for the movie but there is no indication as to how closely the storylines will match up.
The novel was based off of Fielding’s real life, according to Grant, who said: “She had a sad story. She got married to an American screenwriter, she had children and then he died.”
After Fielding started writing a novel about a woman like herself who was raising children alone, she realised the character was “a bit like Bridget” and so “she made it into a Bridget Jones book”.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy will be released on Valentine’s Day in 2025.
