When Season 1 ofBridgertonpremiered back on Christmas Day 2020, no one could have predicted how big the show would actually hit for Netflix — except, perhaps, those fans who already knew the romance genre’s enduring power and popularity. Based on the bestselling book series by authorJulia Quinnfirst published in 2000, the TV adaptation, which is set in Regency-era London, revolves around the titular Bridgerton family (of which there are eight siblings, alphabetically named in order of age: Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth) and their respective journeys to find love while also attempting to navigate the complexities of society — as well as stay one step ahead of theton’s notorious and anonymous gossip columnist, Lady Whistledown.
Ahead of the premiere of Season 2 on March 25, Collider had the opportunity to catch up with Quinn by phone about the phenomenon of her books being turned into an equally successful TV show, how involved she is in terms of the making of the series, and how the response to the first season was much more than initially anticipated. She also spoke about what she’s most excited for fans to see in Season 2 — which follows the love story between Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) — as well as how the format of the original romance novels has challenged the perception of TV audiences, which of her next book projects is due to be released, and the romances she’s been reading and loving lately.
Collider: In terms of your level of involvement on the show, are there any opportunities for you to give input or consult on different things, or are you more like a fan that just gets to watch and enjoy with the rest of us?
JULIA QUINN: I’m somewhere in between. As you’re probably aware, one of the very first things that happen when someone from Hollywood is looking to option a book… the first question they ask is, “Are you willing to give up creative control?” I immediately said yes, and I did that for a couple of reasons.
The first reason was this was not normal. Hollywood has not traditionally come looking at romance novels as source material. The closest thing we really had… well, there were Hallmark movies. Certainly nothing big and sweeping historical like this. The closest would beOutlander, but while the Venn diagram of romance andOutlandercrosses quite a bit, it’s not quite the same thing. I write squarely within the envelope of historical romance. That’s what I do. I was not expecting this, and I was aware that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, probably once in like the genre’s lifetime, and I was not going to mess it up in any way. I wanted to be the author they wanted to work with, but it’s really easy also to have that attitude when it’s Shondaland. I’m not going to tell the people at Shondaland how to make television. They’re smart. They know what they’re doing. So I said, “You guys can take it and run with it.”
That said, I am a consultant, but I joke it’s the easiest consulting job ever because they show me the scripts and I look at them. I’m like, “These are amazing.” And that’s pretty much it. I’m sure if something’s going on that I really had an issue with, I’m in a position to raise it, but that just hasn’t come up. For the most part, I’m like this fairy godmother off in Seattle while they’re all filming in London. To a great deal, I’m watching like a fan who gets to see everything a little early and gets to visit.
To an extent, readers of romance, the people who know your books, all kind of had a sense that fans were going to be here for the show. But I honestly do feel like it blew up in a way that nobody could have predicted. From your perspective, what was it like to see the response to Season 1 unfold?
QUINN: It was bonkers. I can’t think of another word. It was surreal. It was… I get asked a lot. “Oh, did you anticipate this kind of success?” And I mean, no. Who could? Nobody could. I thought we’d do well. I didn’t think it was going to flop. I knew that there were enough readers of romance and people who liked period pieces that were going to carry this to some degree. I was aware it was filling a hole in programming that really isn’t there. So I thought we’d do okay. I did not anticipate what happened. What was so amazing to me was the degree to which it entered the cultural zeitgeist. All of a sudden, late-night talk show hosts were mentioning it in their monologue, and then, of course, Regé-Jean Page hostedSNL, and it was spoofed onSNL, and NFL Total Access didthis really funny video.
People say, “Oh, is it crazy to see your characters brought to life?” You know, not so much, because they are characters and that’s what they’re meant to do, whether it’s on the page or the screen. What’s crazy is to see it just permeating the world the way it is. It’s kind of funny because our family had, and is still having, a very unique pandemic experience in that I’m off here inBridgerton-land, and my husband’s actually an infectious disease doctor dealing with COVID. So he would come home, totally exhausted in every way a human being can possibly be exhausted, and he’d say, “What’s new?” Every day, there was something that was legitimately amazing and incredible in its own right.
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Even in the midst of our reality, romance is just something that just brings joy to so many people. So it makes sense that the show, by existing, is kind of like a natural extension of that. But the series arriving also alerted people to a genre that they maybe hadn’t been reading before. Was that something that you noticed even just in terms of your own books?
QUINN: I’m trying to think of the right adjective to use that doesn’t necessarily apply it to me saying it. I don’t want to sound boastful, but it was incredible, and we’re seeing it spreading to my other books. I can’t necessarily speak to the genre as a whole, but I do think we’re seeing some lift [there]. ‘Cause I think there were a lot of people who maybe didn’t know what a romance novel really was or they just… it never even occurred to them to even pick up a book. They never even thought about it, and suddenly [they] see the show, and [they’re] like, “Oh my gosh, I wonder if there’s anything else that brings about this set of feelings.” I did an interview with Tamron Hall recently, and she said, “People are crediting you with bringing the romance novel back.” And I said, “Well, first of all, the romance novel never went anywhere.” But maybe what the show did was help make them cool, or just not uncool.
There are some phenomenal writers in romance and I think people needed to get past their prejudice against it — and also to accept the fact that it’s okay to read for fun. I think people have this sense that television and movies are for fun and reading is for serious pursuits. This isn’t to say that there isn’t… You can find very serious things in romance novels, I want to make that clear. They’re notless, but it’s okay to read for pleasure, to read for entertainment. And I think, for some reason, people think that reading must always be “improving” in some way. So I’d love to see an end to that. I think reading should be a joy.
You talk about what the show drew people to, not just in terms of audience, but I feel like we’re starting to see… let’s put it this way, the road to anything getting adapted is going to be a long and involved process. Anybody who follows the industry knows that that is the case. But I do think we’re starting to see Hollywood catch on to the fact that romance novels are this untapped mine of gold out there.
QUINN: Oh, yeah. An untapped mine in two ways. For the creative reason in just that there’s great material, and then also from a marketing standpoint, there’s a built-in audience. I’m sure Netflix and Shondaland did their due diligence and had some idea in terms of audience and what we could expect from this book audience coming in. But I know for a fact, for example, that they were really taken off guard by the Brazilian fanbase.
There are a lot of casual readers, but there are a lot of readers who feel very protective about their genre, and they feel like we’ve been maligned for so long that any movie or TV show or whatever that gets made, they are going to be there for. I can tell you there are a number of books that have gotten optioned or in various degrees of production. It’s fabulous. There are several I can think of off-hand, and some I don’t know that they’re public yet. There’s this rallying from the community of readers that tends to come around these adaptations and support them in a big way. There’s also kind of a thing too of you got to get this right. You’ve got to do the romance justice, you may’t skimp on the HEA, you can’t get rid of the most important parts of the story, but there’s definitely a loyalty there.
What are you most looking forward to the fans getting to see in Season 2 ofBridgerton?
QUINN: I’m just really excited for especially the fans who aren’t necessarily romance readers to see what we mean by romance series. How we’re going to have a new couple and their love story’s going to be different from Simon and Daphne, but it’s going to be just as awesome. Because I think that the structure of a romance series is very unfamiliar to TV viewers. “What, you mean it’s not Simon and Daphne for eight seasons? What are you talking about?” Conversely, when it was announced that the show was coming out and that it was Shondaland doing it, a lot of the book readers, they were like, “Oh my gosh, she’s going to kill everybody off in Season 3!” They were worried that she was going to turn it into a more traditional television show format. But no, that’s one of the things that the team at Shondaland was so excited about: being able to structure a television series like a romance novel series, which was something new and different.
I’m excited for viewers to see a new romance, and it’s a totally different type of romance if we’re going to play the trope game. We had fake dating, now we have enemies-to-lovers. And I love, again, these moments of family [that] are part of what makes the show so magical. Also, I just have to say there are scenes with Queen Charlotte, which are just… maybe I shouldn’t love the queen so much because she’s actually the only main character who wasn’t in the books, but she’s just fabulous. I got to meet her in person last September, and she’s just literally… she just rocks. I just… I’m mesmerized by her. Honestly, I’m excited about everything. No one is a bigger cheerleader for the show than I am.
Have you been reading anything for pleasure right now that you want to talk about?
QUINN: So I just finished reading this book called, and it’s not out yet,A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, [by] Adriana Herrera, which I thought was fabulous. And I loved it. It was a different setting than we usually see, it’s Paris right around the time that the Eiffel Tower was built for the World’s Expo. And I thought that was great. I finally readA Rogue of One’s Ownby Evie Dunmore, which I thought was really wonderful. That one made a big splash when it first came out. Oh, you know what I have sitting to read soon, and let me just get the exact right name. It’s by Lorraine Heath. She’s been writing historical romance for some time, set in Regency times, but she has a book coming out set in World War II calledGirls of Flight City. It’s historical fiction, not historical romance, and that one I’m excited to read, that’s sort of next on my schedule.
Is there anything that you can talk about in terms of book projects in the works?
QUINN: I have a book coming out in May that’s a graphic novel. It’s calledMiss Butterworth and the Mad Baron. It was first introduced inIt’s In His Kiss, where Hyacinth visits Lady Danbury every Tuesday to read to her because Lady Danbury’s eyes are getting old, and she has trouble reading. And she’s reading to her from this totally over-the-top, badly written novel calledMiss Butterworth and the Mad Baron. I had so much fun with it, but I put it in another book and then another book, and then eventually I ended up writing about the author — Sarah Gorely, who’s actually a man, he’s the hero of one of the books.
Then readers started asking me to write this novel. And I said, “No, you don’t want a whole novel written like that,” but then it occurred to me [that] it would make a really fantastic graphic novel. My sister was a cartoonist and illustrator, and we did it together. I don’t know if you saw in the news, she and my father were killed last year by a drunk driver. So it was… it was difficult, really, to turn back to that project at first, but we were able to get it back together. That is now complete and ready to go and coming out in May, and it’s really my last love letter to her. I just want everyone to see how brilliant and funny she was because the book says “written by Julia Quinn, illustrated by Violet Charles,” but the truth is she wrote a lot of it. That’s coming out, and I’m just excited for it, ‘cause it’s a new thing for me.
BridgertonSeason 2 premieres March 25 on Netflix.Miss Butterworth and the Baronis set to be published on May 10 from HarperCollins.
