Exclusive Interview
‘Bridgerton’ Boss Reveals New Season 5 Details: ‘Time to Shake It Up’
What To Know
- Season 5 of Bridgerton will focus on Francesca Bridgerton and Michaela Stirling’s romance.
- In Julia Quinn’s When He Was Wicked, they spend most of their time in the Scottish Highlands.
- Showrunner Jess Brownell teases to Swooon how the shakeup will impact the show in Season 5.
At this point, we’ve only seen a 30-second teaser for Bridgerton Season 5, but it hints that the show will expand its horizons. Figuratively, in that a same-sex couple — Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd) and her late husband’s cousin, Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza) — will take Bridgerton‘s center stage for the first time, but also literally.
Thus far, the period drama has occasionally made jaunts to the countryside (ahem, My Cottage), but its couples remain in Mayfair for the most part. Their further travels are only mentioned, never shown on screen. Season 5, should it follow the book that it’s based on, will actually see Francesca and Michaela in an entirely different location. In Julia Quinn’s When He Was Wicked, the two spend most of their time at Kilmartin House in the Scottish Highlands, which appears to be shown in the aforementioned teaser. In a conversation with Swooon, showrunner Jess Brownell revealed what the shake-up means for the show going forward.
When we spoke to Brownell, she was still keeping the Season 5 leads under wraps. We wondered if she could confirm if Season 5 would offer a different setting than usual, since both Francesca and Eloise’s (Claudia Jessie) book romances unfold outside of London. “You are right that both of those characters, their stories take place a bit outside of Mayfair,” the showrunner told Swooon. “But we’re fortunate that we still have Hyacinth’s [Florence Hunt] debut ahead of us, and I think she is quite keen to debut sooner rather than later.”
She added that the youngest Bridgerton sibling’s debut might not arrive immediately in Season 5, but she anticipates that “we will always find ways to bring the story back to Mayfair and to the balls and to the marriage mart.”
The widowed Francesca herself will reenter the marriage mart in Season 5, per its official logline. Still, Brownell told us that she was looking forward to exploring her next couple outside of Bridgerton‘s usual bounds. “However, I think it’s actually exciting for the show to be injected with some fresh energy in these next couple of seasons and to leave London a little bit,” she explained. “We’ve been on for four seasons. It’s time to shake it up a little bit.”
Bridgerton, Season 5, TBA, Netflix
