Who Is Lady Whistledown on ‘Bridgerton’? Her Secret Identity Revealed

From the get-go, there is one character in Bridgerton with far more power than anyone else. No, I’m not talking about Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuval), but the mysterious scandal sheet writer Lady Whistledown. Voiced by the iconic Julie Andrews, Lady Whistledown delivers barbs as the characters of Bridgerton try their darnedest to find true love. Whistledown doesn’t just gossip, though; she determines the course of people’s lives. Her word can raise a debutante to glory or ruin someone’s chances at happiness forever.

Naturally, the characters in Bridgerton live in both fear of Whistledown’s pen and in its thrall. The mystery of “Who is Lady Whistledown?” seizes the imagination of everyone from Queen Charlotte herself to the servants working in Bridgerton House.

So who is Lady Whistledown? While it’s speculated that it could be everyone from Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) to Lady Featherington (Polly Walker), young Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie) spends the season narrowing it down to the modiste, Genevieve Delacroix (Kathryn Drysdale). That seems to be who Lady Whistledown is until her true identity is revealed in the season’s final moments…

Major spoilers for Bridgerton ahead!

WHO IS LADY WHISTLEDOWN ON BRIDGERTON?

Lady Whistledown is… Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan).

Yes, the sweet, shy girl has been opining on everyone from Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) to her own damn mother, all season. It is she who drags Marina Thompson’s (Ruby Barker) pregnant condition into the spotlight, thus ruining her chances with Penelope’s beloved Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton). And she has been lying to everyone — especially best friend Eloise — the whole damn time!

“I think it has to take a huge toll on her,” Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan told Decider earlier in December. “[Penelope’s] a fascinating character, because she’s a million different things. She is this really sweet girl — but then, as Lady Whistledown, she’s pretty savage. She absolutely tears people down.”

Coughlan revealed that it took conversations with her Bridgerton cast mates to understand the vicious power Penelope truly wielded.

“I was speaking to Phoebe [Dynevor] one day, and I was like, ‘Oh, Penelope really loves Daphne.’ And she said, ‘But she writes all this stuff about her!’ And I thought, ‘Oh yeah,'” Coughlan said. “But I think there’s a lot of compartmentalizing in Penelope’s life. Because she’s very different around her family, in which she’s this outcast; to how she is around Eloise, where she’s bright and sparkly; to how she is around Colin, where she’s this romantic, but would never tell Eloise that. I think in being Whistledown, she gets to release a lot of her emotion and stress, and the things she feels like she’s too shy to say.”

“But also, she’s only 17. She’s a kid. She’s even more innocent than a 17-year-old would be now — in fact, she’s a lot more. I think she thinks she’s in control, but she’s not,” Coughlan continued. “I kept saying, ‘But Penelope won’t screw Marina over. If she does that, that’s awful. And also, it screws her family over: it screws her sisters, her mom, her dad.’ So then, when it happened, I went, ‘Oh my god. I can’t believe it.'”

Ironically it was speaking to another Bridgerton sister that helped Coughlan reconcile Penelope’s seemingly strange capacity for cruelty as Lady Whistledown.

Coughlan said, “Claudia [Jessie] said, ‘Look, she’s a kid. She doesn’t realize the amount of power she’s accrued in this position, and how much it can make or break people.'”

“But I think she feels terrible. By the end, her heart is broken by what she did to Marina. Even though it was the right thing to do for Colin, it’s very murky,” Coughlan said.

IS PENELOPE LADY WHISTLEDOWN IN THE BRIDGERTON BOOKS?

Yes, she is! However that didn’t mean that Coughlan was certain from the drop that the show would take Penelope in that direction.

“I was reading Book 4, but I was also — as I have now admitted to you — lurking online. I went on the Bridgerton fan forums, because I then realized there’s this huge fandom behind the books. I sort of read that Penelope is revealed as Lady Whistledown, and I went, ‘What the what, what what?'” Coughlan told Decider. “And then I sort of panicked, and I was like, ‘But does that mean I am? Does that mean I’m gonna be?'”

“So when I finally sat down with Chris Van Dusen, our showrunner, I said, ‘Am I — am I her?’ You don’t know how to ask that question. ‘But is it me?’ And he said, ‘No, it is. It is you,'” Coughlan said. “And when I found out Julie Andrews was voicing her, I just burst into tears because it was just so exciting.” 

WHY DID BRIDGERTON REVEAL LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S IDENTITY IN SEASON 1?

While Bridgerton honored Julia Quinn’s novels by keeping Penelope Featherington as Lady Whistledown, they jumped the gun on revealing her identity. Bridgerton book readers don’t discover that Penelope is Lady Whistledown — or the depths of her feelings for Colin Bridgerton — until Book 4, Romancing Mr. Bridgerton.

Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen explained to Decider the reasoning behind the choice to end Season 1 with this revelation…

“For me, it felt like it was time,” Van Dusen said. “I think that there were always two tracks for us in the writers’ room, when looking at Lady Whistledown. We knew that there was a portion of the audience that had read the books and had their thoughts and theories about who Lady Whistledown was. Then, there was an entirely new group of people that are not as familiar with the books, and have no idea where the story of Lady Whistledown went. It was about keeping the mystery alive and fun for fans of the books, but also, never being ahead of it. Never telegraphing where we’re going.”

So there you have it: Penelope Featherington is Lady Whistledown!

Now what’s going to happen when and if Eloise Bridgerton finds out…

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