It ‘never felt necessary’ to revisit Bridget Jones’s weight in new film, says director
It's an aspect of the popular character that's dated.
The director of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy has said that her weight ‘never felt like something we needed to revisit’ in the new film.
Michael Morris helms the fourth Bridget movie, which comes nearly 25 years after the first, 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, and after two sequels which followed in 2004 and 2016 respectively.
The beloved heroine, created by author Helen Fielding, was first introduced to audiences as a relatable singleton in her 30s who swigged wine from the bottle, ate pints of ice cream and preferred big, comfortable knickers.
She was also someone who tracked her calories and weighed herself for every diary entry she made and was subject to a barrage of comments about her body size from others – especially in the first two films.
Oscar-winning actress Renée Zellweger put on and lost weight twice to play the part in the first two films, gaining 20 pounds.
However, Bridget’s weight and calorie intake doesn’t factor into Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, despite it featuring in Fielding’s 2013 novel of the same name.
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Previous Page Next Page Renée Zellweger is Bridget again, but this time she’s not pre-occupied with her weight (Picture: Jay Maidment/Universal)Morris says there are now other priorities for her to be ‘frazzled about’ as a 51-year-old widow and mother of two.
‘It just never felt like something that we needed to revisit, to be honest. I mean, I think things have a time and a place,’ Morris said in an interview with Metro.
Comment nowAre you excited for the new Bridget Jones film?Comment Now‘I’m careful because I grew up with Bridget, and I actually, weirdly, felt really connected to Bridget as not a woman, but I’m also really aware that that I probably would have connected to her differently had I been a woman. So it’s hard for me to speak to that specifically.’
The obsession with Bridget’s body and size is something which has received backlash, especially in retrospect.
The character is known for tracking calories, as she does in Helen Fielding’s novels (Zellweger pictured with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in sequel The Edge of Reason)(Picture: Jason Bell/Universal/Studio Canal/Miramax/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock) Bridget is more focused on being a single parent in Mad About the Boy (Picture: Jay Maidment/Universal)
‘All I can say is that I feel like the impulse of the filmmakers at the time was not to say a woman of this size is overweight or underweight or whatever. It’s to recognise and see people who are aware of all these different things that are being asked of them as women,’ Morris, who also directed Andrea Riseborough to an Oscar nomination in 2022’s To Leslie, continued.
‘And now I just felt like I don’t think it needs to be part of the conversation with her. She’s got so many other things she’s frazzled about. She’s not paying attention to certain things – that the kids are late for school, [that] she’s always coming [there] in her pyjamas.
‘We’re conveying a sort of chaos in her life in a way that didn’t need to be tracked like calories.’
In Mad About the Boy, Bridget is navigating life and parenthood without husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) after his death, and being encouraged back onto the dating scene by friends, colleagues and former flame Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).
The widow has two new love interests (Picture: Jay Maidment/Universal)Along the way she encounters 29-year-old park worker Roxster (Leo Woodall), who meets Bridget after rescuing her from a tree, and her son’s stern teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
Morris previously described the upcoming film as having ‘a style of Bridget that perhaps we haven’t seen before’ at the trailer launch event.
‘I love the Bridget films, obviously, but this is a new time. We’re all a bit older. We’ve lived a bit, and that’s what this film represents.’
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy releases in UK cinemas on February 13.
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