Regency Romance
Shonda Rhimes & Betsy Beers Reveal Their Surprising ‘Bridgerton’ First Impressions
Dearest gentle reader, Bridgerton Season 4 is on its way, and we could not be any more excited!
On May 7, the Paley Museum hosted “Celebrating 20 Years of Shondaland with Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, and Special Guests,” a panel discussing all things Shondaland, the production company behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, and most recently, Bridgerton.
As Bridgerton heads into its fourth season, featuring the love story of Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), Shonda Rhimes and her creative partner, Betsy Beers, shared the story of how they discovered Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton novels.
As Beers put it, from her perspective, “Shonda had called me and said, ‘I just read this book. It’s amazing. I was sick in a hotel room, and I found this book…'”
Rhimes, who shared that she and Beers often finish each other’s sentences, added, “And I was really sick, but the book was so good that I got up out of the bed and went to the bookstore to buy the next book.” When Beers asked what the book was, Rhimes shared: “It’s a romance novel. It’s called Bridgerton.” Specifically, The Duke & I by Julia Quinn, the first novel in the Bridgerton series, which later became Season 1 of the Netflix show.
Meanwhile, Beers was not sold on the Regency Era romance, retorting, “Do you still have a fever?” However, once she got her hands on the book, she had to agree. While the story was incredibly different from their other hits like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, they both became “fully entranced” by the narrative.
While Rhimes shared that romance novels are not her cup of tea and noted that her first impression of the book was that “it’s a bunch of sad White ladies trying to get married,” she could see herself in Quinn’s characters. And, if she could see herself in these characters who were so removed from her reality, other people might, too.
She continued, “We like to do workplace shows. So, we’ve got Grey’s, our medical show, we had Murder, which was, our legal show, and we had Scandal, which was our Washington fixer show.” While Bridgerton may have seemed like a departure from their broadcast hits, she saw it differently. “This felt like, ‘Oh, their workplace is the marriage mart.’ This is really important work, and their work is getting married.”
Beers, on the other hand, was most excited that each “terrific” story followed a member of the enormous Bridgerton family. She called the series “a great way to comment on the current day through the lens of a different time.”
While we don’t have a set date for Season 4 of the show, we cannot wait to watch Sophie Baek enter Bridgerton‘s Regency workplace soon.
Bridgerton, Season 4 Premiere, TBA, Netflix
