The Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy gang rolled into Sydney for the Australian premiere and I had the chance to speak with director Michael Morris about this 4th instalment in the popular series.
Matt: As a director coming on board to an existing franchise, what’s your creative approach? Do you have a clean slate to do whatever you want, or do you watch the previous movies and incorporate their style and their elements into this?
Michael: My approach is to become as familiar as possible with the world of the film. It’s a franchise which has existed for 25 years and therefore it’s full of incident and detail. It’s not a franchise about a shapeshifter or a wizard or a woman who fights crime or breaths underwater… it’s just about one woman’s life as she lives in a city.
I look back on 25 years of my life and I still have stuff on my bookshelf. If there was a favourite t-shirt I had 25 years ago, there’s a good chance it’s still in my closet. I wanted her world to feel real and so it should have photos from the other films, and it should have sly references and things hanging on the wall that might remind you of something. It’s how we live, I think.
Matt: Renée Zellweger is a two-time Oscar winning actress, but I have a sense this is the role she’s best known for. Having worked with her so closely here, what is it about Renée that makes her such a great fit for the character?
Michael: Truly, she is Bridget Jones. She’s 25 years into it. My experience is that it was like making a film with Bridget as much as it was with Renée. Why she was so great in the beginning is such an interesting question. Renée is the least “starry” Hollywood actress I’ve ever come across. Everything she does is one-on-one and she dissolves the boundaries you’d think might be there.
She talks to people, she confesses things about her life, and she laughs at herself. She likes to be close to be people and she makes people feel very close to her. In the same way, Bridget reaches through the screen and makes people feel like they’re friends with her. That part of her is all Renée.
Matt: There are a lot of returning characters and each feel like they have their own small subplot. How do you balance all of that up inside of two hours? Was it clear from the outset or was there experimentation in the editing room?
Michael: There was a lot of editing work. The first cut where I said “I’ve got it” was 2 hours and 40 minutes. For me, it was a process of understanding what the 2 hour and 40-minute version is so that I can then make it a 2 hour and 30-minute version which is a better version.
It’s one of the big advantages of this franchise. It’s incredible. When you’re listing the actors who are in this and you start talking about Gemma Jones, Jim Broadbent, Sarah Solemani, Sally Phillips. Shirley Henderson alone is an unbelievably talented actress, and I haven’t even talked about Emma Thompson yet. It’s absurd.
Matt: We learn at the outset that Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy has passed away prior to the events of this film. He does appear in a couple of cameos and was curious about the decision to visually incorporate him into the film in that way?
Michael: For me, that’s important. I needed to find a way to see and feel his presence in the film because it’s a major part of what this film is about. I gather there are some die-hard fans who’d be saying you can’t make a Bridget Jones film without Colin Firth and I’d say yeah, that’s the point. That’s what she is going through. How can she figure it out?
Matt: Leo Woodall feels like he’s having his break-out moment with Prime Target on TV and now Mad About the Boy in cinemas. How did he come across your radar and what made him the right fit as young Roxster?
Michael: He’s known properly now for the Netflix series One Day which he was brilliant in. But One Day hadn’t come out when we started the casting process and so it was just The White Lotus which he’d done. For me, he just “jumped out” of that series. He was so grounded, charismatic and unapologetic. It’s rare for an actor. Often, you get a sense that an actor wants to be seen a certain way or is asking to be liked. Leo didn’t have any of that. I wanted that for Roxster so he was my first and only choice.
Matt: Helen Fielding created Bridget Jones back in the 1990s and, just like the previous films, she’s a credited screenwriter for Mad About the Boy. She clearly cares about these characters and their world and so I’m wondering how hands-on or hands-off she is with the filmmaking process itself?
Michael: She’s the author of this world, she wrote the book on which the film is based, and she co-wrote the screenplay with two other great writers, Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan, but she’s been around long enough to understand the filmmaking process. A director is always going to tailor the film to suit what it’s ultimately going to be – the style, the emphasis, the audience experience. It’s a collaborative process all round.
Matt: What are you working on at the moment? What might we see from you next?
Michael: We’ll see. Films are like delicate figurines, and I find when you mention them, they burst and fall into a million pieces, but I do have a couple of stories I’d like to tell.