Unmasking Benedict & Sophie’s ‘Bridgerton’ Love Story
Inside the enchanting Season 4 romance with Luke Thompson and Yerin Ha
When stepping onto the Bridgerton set in October 2024 for Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek’s (Yerin Ha) magical masquerade meet-cute, it was easy to see the dream world set to unfold before them with that love-at-first-sight spark.
Dreams dance between the worlds of reality and fantasy, as Benedict and Sophie do at the beginning of Season 4, but there’s always an awakening. And while it takes Benedict and Sophie time to unmask the truth, that fairy tale night was just the first page of their magical love story.
When Part 1 landed on Netflix, three words reverberated across the fandom: “Be my mistress.” Benedict’s confidently delivered offer to Sophie didn’t exactly strike the right chord. “For someone like that to get it so spectacularly wrong, it’s like watching a really established singer sing off-key,” Thompson says, turning to costar Ha while sitting for their Swooon digital cover story interview one snowy January morning. (Note: The below contains spoilers for Bridgerton Season 4, Part 2.)
That less-than-stellar note is quickly squashed at the start of Part 2 as Benedict attempts to get an answer from the resistant Sophie, unaware of just how deeply offensive his words were. While Sophie searches for work elsewhere, eager to escape the Bridgerton residence, Benedict realizes that the key to winning over Sophie is to be honest about his true feelings.
When Sophie learns that Araminta (Katie Leung) is seeking her out while working at Hyacinth’s (Florence Hunt) recital, Sophie runs up the stairs, and Benedict races after her. While he goes to comfort Sophie, she confronts him, pointing out that she never asked for him to pursue her. This ignites Benedict to finally speak candidly, letting a love confession to end all love confessions erupt. “There is not a single moment you do not fill my mind,” he says. “You’re the person I’ve been searching for all my life.”
In true Darcy-esque fashion, Benedict tops off the moment with an “I love you. I love you. I love you.” What follows is the pair finally giving in to their charged feelings. “When she hears the word love, I think that holds so much weight for her,” Ha reveals. “It is something that she has craved for her entire life.”
While Ha believes Sophie feels as if Benedict sees her merely as “a toy” with the offer to be his mistress, it is his genuine confession of love that unmoors her. With the revelation of his true feelings, Ha says, “the walls really start to come down.” So much so that Benedict even begins planning their future together, organizing a plan to move them into My Cottage, putting into jeopardy the close connection he has with his family.
Pulling Back the Mask
In a secret garden meeting, Benedict shares these plans in an effort to reassure Sophie of his commitment. But Benedict also reveals even more of himself in what Thompson deems a “coming out scene,” in which Benedict discloses he’s had relations with both men and women, and he refuses to be ashamed of it. “I certainly take Benedict at his word when he says [that],” Thompson shares, noting that Benedict doesn’t offer this information expecting any negative reaction from Sophie.
What Thompson says is “refreshing or maybe slightly unusual” about the scene is that “it is totally for her benefit, as in it’s something about being honest and proving that he can be honest about things rather than sort of like trying to exercise any sort of sense of shame.” Regarding Benedict’s onscreen relationships, Thompson adds, “We’ve had lots of stories about repression and the angst of repression and sexuality, but I do think Benedict is striking as a male character in that sex seems to be just something that’s undefined about him, and I don’t think that bothers him.”
In Benedict opening up about this side of himself, Thompson says, “It’s just trying to show Sophie that he is serious and that he’s willing to show all of who he is, rather than just give her a part of him.” Benedict certainly has come such a long way from the rake-ish ways of his past.
Sophie earnestly tells him, “Love is always a thing to be proud of,” and Ha couldn’t agree more. “For her, it’s something that’s lacked her entire life,” as she’s been led to believe that her father never loved her by excluding her from his will, a falsehood sold to her by Araminta. “That act of [Benedict] opening up and laying it all out on the table, I think she sees it as a very courageous act and also a very vulnerable and beautiful one,” Ha adds.
It takes Sophie a little longer to be as forthcoming about her feelings. When Sophie confirms she’s not with child after her and Benedict’s passionate (but hasty) tryst, she decides to leave for a job in America after tending to the family amid the sudden loss of Francesca’s (Hannah Dodd) husband, John (Victor Alli). She’s resolute about not wanting Benedict to sacrifice the relationship he has with his family or put her in a position to doubt their future.
Grand Gestures
Upon Sophie’s departure from Bridgerton House, though, Araminta has her arrested. Whisked away to prison, Sophie’s situation seems hopeless until Benedict learns the truth about her identity, uncovers her necklace in his room, and realizes she’s been the Lady in Silver all along.
After learning she’s been arrested, Benedict crashes Sophie’s court appearances with Violet (Ruth Gemmell), convincing the judge to release her to their custody. When Sophie gets to Bridgerton House, she convinces Eloise (Claudia Jessie) to assist her in infiltrating Penwood House, now run by the new Lady Penwood, Cressida (Jessica Madsen). There, Eloise distracts her old friend, and Sophie sneaks off to find her father’s will, which proves that he has included her in the document and certifies her legitimacy.
When she returns to the Bridgerton family home, Sophie is kept from getting too close to Benedict after the staff is instructed to make sure they stay in separate rooms, but Sophie manages to get her pal Hazel (Gracie McGonigal) to distract Footman John (Oli Higginson) long enough to sneak across the hall into Benedict’s room.
That’s when Sophie finally admits she didn’t think she deserved love before because she’s spent her entire life thinking the one man who loved her had betrayed her. But finding the will restored her faith, and Benedict’s actions also prove that the love he claims to have for her is real. “I think that’s all she wants is for somebody to see her, and the fact that he doesn’t really care about her legitimacy, and for him to just accept her…” Ha says. “I think that’s all anybody wants.” In Sophie’s case, “that small act can really change someone’s life. Benedict really does that for Sophie,” Ha concludes.
Steamy With a Side of Silly
While publicly proving Sophie’s legitimacy is the next step, she and Benedict can’t stay away from one another, eyeing a steamy bathtub as they embrace, which leads to a scene plucked from the pages of Julia Quinn’s novel An Offer From a Gentleman. “It’s a long time to be in a bathtub,” Thompson quips matter-of-factly.
Both Thompson and Ha note that capturing the spicy moment took about two days to film. Thompson paints a less sexy picture, admitting, “You end up being shriveled like a prune, and the petals were disintegrating.” He even goes so far as to compare the bath to soggy cereal. “It was like, when you have Froot Loops, and you leave them in milk for ages. It was like that, but with petals,” Thompson says with a giggle.
“The problem is, it was a very long tub, and Yerin is not the tallest person in the world,” Thompson begins to explain as Ha interjects, “You can just say it how it is,” alluding to her shorter stature. “She needed the purchase of the end of the tub,” Thompson manages to say, explaining how Ha didn’t have anything to push her foot against to stay upright.
“In a weird way, though, I think things like that do make those scenes kind of easier, actually, because at least it’s fun,” Thompson points out. Ha can’t fault him there, saying, “Yeah, it is funny.”
Loving Out Loud
By the time Benedict and Sophie attend Queen’s Ball as a means of wooing the Ton in their favor and legitimizing Sophie after a tense conversation behind closed doors with Araminta, it’s all sweetness between the couple.
“It’s that little detail about the fact that she has been legitimized over a small fudge on the truth,” Thompson explains, noting how the Bridgertons convince Araminta to drop her suit against Sophie by threatening to reveal she withheld Sophie’s dowry from her for Araminta’s daughter Rosamund (Michelle Mao). They agree to the arrangement by claiming in front of Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) that Sophie is the late Earl of Penwood’s niece, making her a Gunn by name.
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“It’s the perfect reverse image of the first masquerade ball because the first masquerade ball is all disguise and all fantasy or lies… and at the end, it’s all out in the open. Everything’s true, except this tiny little fudge,” Thompson continues. Sophie learns to embrace the fantasy of their predicament, while Benedict experiences a dose of reality as he gears up for the next chapter in his life.
As the pair cap their evening with a dance around the ballroom, one might wonder, when did Sophie learn to twirl like that? After all, Sophie was getting dance lessons from Benedict during the masquerade. Ha’s theory? “I always say that maybe Alfie gave her some dancing lessons on the side just to keep her up to speed.”
“It was nice to dance with you,” Thompson shares, turning to Ha before he asks her about the waltz that they learned for their big ballroom scene. “What was it called?” He wonders. When Ha tells him it’s the fleckerl, he says with a smile, “We perfected the fleckerl… Apparently, it takes dancers years to perfect it.”
Thompson’s joking tone suggests that it wasn’t so easy, and Ha confirmed. “It was hard, but we got there,” she admits. And while completing the dance may have been rewarding for the stars, the real triumph comes when Benedict proposes to Sophie in the middle of the ball, bringing their fairy tale romance out of their dreams and into the real world.
Happily Ever After
Benedict and Sophie’s love story concludes in the Season 4 finale with a joyous country wedding at My Cottage with nearly the entire Bridgerton family in attendance, even Viscount Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) and Viscountess Kate (Simone Ashley). “It was beautiful,” Ha recalls of filming the special occasion, which brings the loved ones from their lives together, meshing the upstairs and downstairs worlds in love. “I think it’s a perfect way to end the season, but in terms of filming it, Yerin doesn’t like that much attention,” Ha adds.
“And so walking down the aisle…” Ha begins to say, before Thompson asks, “…It felt like your wedding?” She confirms as much, but despite the oddity of filming a fake wedding, the stars admit it was a full-circle moment for their filming process as the pair began their shoot with My Cottage scenes.
“We had such a good time at My Cottage when we filmed, and that was just us two, and then to bring the whole cast to that place and everyone in the story, you know, to have the Crabtrees there as well, and obviously the whole family, was really cool,” Thompson says.
If anything, Sophie and Benedict’s country nuptials strike that balance between their reality and the fantasy dream world established at the masquerade so many months prior.
This time, though, there are no masks in sight, and only a promising and very real future ahead of them.
Isn’t that the real dream?
