In case you didn’t know, the fourth installment of the beloved Bridget Jones movie franchise, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, is due for release next month — and fans couldn’t be more excited.
At this point, it’s pretty impossible to picture anybody other than Renée as the onscreen personification of Bridget, but public opinion didn’t always sway in her favor.
To prepare for the role, then-31-year-old Renée worked undercover at a publishing house in London. At the start of the first movie, Bridget is a publicity assistant at a publishing company, so this was to give Renée a taste of what her character’s day-to-day life would be like.
And in a new interview with Hugh for Vogue magazine, Renée has opened up about her experience of working undercover for “a month or two” — and even recalled being brutally confronted with nasty articles about herself while working at the publishing house.
“How did Bridget come about for you?” Hugh asked his long-time costar in the interview. “There was a hullabaloo at the time: ‘Oh, we can’t have an American playing this British icon.’ I remember that.”
Hugh then asked if she was able to be “natural” at Picador, or if her coworkers thought “there’s the famous American Renée Zellweger poncing around our office,” and Renée insisted that “nobody knew.”
Well, it’s safe to say that Renée’s commitment to Bridget definitely paid off! Do you think that she was the right actor for the role? Let me know in the comments!
