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Luke Newton Is Rooting for Colin Bridgerton

Jonathan Bailey Has Always Had Anthony Bridgerton’s Back

The ‘Bridgerton’ Cast Questionnaire: Charithra Chandran Is a Lot Like Edwina Sharma

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(upbeat music) - Well, I think it's really easy to kind of stereotype marriage in the past, particularly kind of aristocratic marriages as just very cold and formulaic and driven entirely about ideas, about finance and inheritance and profit and kind of position. And that is a very important element. And it's an element that, maybe we don't have so much today. But it is also a society that has a language of love, of romance, of novels, of ideas, of falling in love with somebody for true love, of love tokens in gift giving and really the kind of the London sees in the marriage market, it's about a combination of those things. - I don't think love and marriage is the same thing. Marriage is about alliances, and if you are lucky, you might find love and alliance coming together in marriage. But that was not the norm for the period. And I think there's something really terrifically precious if you do find that. (indistinct) - Violet needed Daphne to marry for love because she needed it to be a marriage full of love because otherwise she would have nothing. For Anthony, he's the head of the household. So he is already in control. Violet needs him to realize that love can play a part to make his life and easier. But there's a difficulty there because he pushes it away, he doesn't want anything to do with it. Whereas Daphne, that, she wanted to emulate what her parents had. Anthony doesn't want that in the slightest. So it's a very different form of navigation. I've been trying endlessly to put women in his path. But partly to put them in his path, so that he'll start to look and try. I don't think he should marry the first woman that he goes to see. I just need him to try and he has no interest in finding out anything other than whether they'll produce an heir, or whether they'll be good at dinner parties. - So he's really, he sort of got low self-esteem when it comes to love and marriage. I don't think he has got time for that, for complicated reasons to his mom and dad, but also, I don't think he thinks he's good enough for love really, that's deep. And the way that we date now, and everyone's dispensable. It's exactly the way that Anthony is at the beginning of season two. I think he just goes, no, no, no, no, no. And his mother brilliantly says to him, you're gonna end up alone. And I feel like that's a very sort of millennial fear, because there's such, like there's so much going around, the idea of conversations of meeting the right person, who that person is. There's so many ways of meeting people. The fact that he sort of secretly knows that he's not gonna commit to any single person, unless they're completely right, is probably quite terrifying. - Anthony sees it as what he must do and Daphne sees it as, what makes you happy? So I think it's that dynamic which is quite interesting in season two. - I just don't think Eloise wants to lose herself. I think she'd be scared of losing all of the things that make her awesome. 'Cause in her head I think she might have a slightly misguided idea, that she's going to have to offer herself up to someone sacrifice a lot, which would've been true then, right? You do have to let go of a lot of things. And I just think she wants the freedom to be like, I wanna work. I want autonomy. I want my own cash. I don't want all the men in my life to be in charge of it. And I think she'd be happy to do that with someone who could do that with Eloise. - Edwina's an incredibly naive at the beginning young woman, and she's grown up reading fairy tales and being told about the power of love and seeing her parents be deeply in love. So she comes into it with just the purest intentions. And I think slowly throughout the season, you see her kind of wise up a bit and realize actually there's more to love and marriage. And sometimes it's not as romantic and like a fairy tale as you expect. And you can either decide to play ball and accept that. Or you can decide to stick to your guns. - She's already had her heart broken by losing her dad. And so I think the thought of falling in love up with another man and letting someone in in that way is really scary. - And action. - She comes to London with a plan, with a solid plan, not gonna get married, not meeting anyone, not interested, not interested. And then yeah, once his face gets in the way, and then changes everything. - There's a lot of questions about Benedict. I think about where he's going and who he is and the perfect defense to being terrified about it is to sort of, stand back and put on a slightly arch smile. And actually I think the world of love of marriage is probably tilted more towards actually going out into the world and interacting with it. And I think Benedict isn't quite there. - I think Penelope's a real true romantic. I think she loves love. I think she doesn't admit it as much to Eloise because Eloise, I think it's really lame and embarrassing. She's so (indistinct) by Colin. And I think actually her feelings for him, I've been thinking a lot about this recently is that, she really truly sees him and he in a way really truly sees her. Like I don't think they have to sort of pretend around one another. Not that I think she pretends around Eloise but she definitely panders a little more to Eloise and it's fun because you see in this series, the relationship has taken a step forward in that they've become pen pals when Colin's went away. And because she's a writer I think that's allowed her to express herself in a very genuine way. To him and it's, she's not have, she doesn't feel quite as exposed. So they've definitely grown closer and it's interesting 'cause you get to see that dynamic and then Eloise coming in and being the cock rock of the century. (soft music) - There's something quite romantic about that time. You just send people flowers and I don't think we do that so much anymore. We just swipe left and right now, so definitely more romantic but I wouldn't want be a woman in those times. - It's too traditional. I think for me, I love like spontaneity and yeah, I think for me, I very much prefer now. I think I love that there's no rules. You can kind of do whatever you want. - I think we are so obsessed with being free about it today, and having all the choice, always the choice. Actually, we don't really jump in the swimming pool, we sort of tend to just sort of, we can get stuck a bit. It's maybe not so distant from how we are anyway. Like I think it's when someone walks into a ballroom and look walks, takes a walk around the room, essentially they're just swiping right, right? They're just going no, no, no. Or maybe no. But it's fantasy regency, and it's modern modernized regency or regency with a modern feel. So it's a bit more of a hazy boundary and it probably also shows up how it's not that different and how human beings back then were probably not that different. - The best in that. (indistinct) love about your victories. - Speed is just everything now, isn't it? Like even like double tapping, it's like you've made your opinion about something or scrolling. Like, there's like a reason why there's gaps in between pictures in a gallery. So you can like digest it, whilst you're walking to the next one. And I think like there's something nice about space and to be considered in things. So I find it quite romantic, because the only reason we sort of maybe pine after someone else is because we don't know them. So we don't know all of their crap, but they're gonna have all of their crap. And then you're gonna prefer the crap you had before. 'Cause you were like, at least I knew that crap and I knew my crap. And now I'm gonna have to explain on my crap to this new person, it's long. - Regency, era, love and marriage resembles Indian love and marriage in a way that it's a duty, it's an obligation to the family. And I think, there is actually something really important in that a recognition that a marriage is more than just about those two people. Of course it's about those two people, but it's also about two families coming together, a legacy living on. - Back then like it really took time, like to go on a date, to go and meet someone for breakfast, you'd have to get on your horse and ride off and do that. Or like to send a letter, to send a message to someone you'd have to write the letter and then send it off. And then a couple of days they would get it. I like that patience and time it took back then, to really get to know someone and build a relationship, it feels really authentic. - If it's about security and sustaining and ring fencing a family lineage and you enjoy that, that's great. From, as a modern gay man, it is like my nightmare, because you would sort of fail at every level and also society in actually, I wouldn't fail, society would fail. There's no room for anyone who is harnessing their actual true identity to maneuver in a way that is wholesome and generous to people who they are attracted to. So it's a kind of nightmare. - My thoughts on it are that, I am so glad I don't have to deal with it. I would've been a massive failure as a deb. I mean, I would've gone into the dancing, I'd have loved that. Yeah, I'll learn some languages, I'd have loved that. And I think there's something about the pageantry that is appealing but please don't ask me to choose my life partner that way, I'm sorry. - It makes us laugh a little bit, a lot of us when we're kind of doing some of these scenes. It's also a reminder of how challenging that must have been at that time for anybody who really, did wanna change that dynamic or did have dreams in another direction. - That's never ever going to stop being fascinating, I think for an audience for people in general for human beings, it's, love still makes the world go around. (indistinct)

The cast of Bridgerton explores how the themes of love and marriage impact their characters in season two.