A Day On the Set of Bridgerton's Season 3 Finale

This scene we've been shooting since Monday.

It is now Wednesday.

The ball days are always, like, the big, big days on set.

I knew how demanding it was gonna be

and that it was gonna be an almost every day...

And then you're filming for, like, 12 hours.

Shall I have a vodka?

No, there's no time.

Have a cup of tea, go to bed, and do it on repeat.

[upbeat string music]

Hello, I'm Luke Newton.

Come and join me shooting a day on Bridgerton.

[upbeat string music]

[marker writing on paper]

Today's date is the 22nd of-

Today's date.

Could be December right now.

Hell knows.

January the 83rd.

Today's date is the 22nd of February, 2023.

We are filming the scene number...

[Claudia whispering]

[Claudia laughing]

I believe it might be scene 33, part five.

We are filming episode eight.

Which is the final episode of season three.

And we are currently at the Butterfly Ball.

[Person] It is the Butterfly Ball.

Do you wanna say that?

Oh yeah, that's a great answer!

[Claudia laughing]

Yeah, thanks.

That's terrible.

I know all of my lines.

We have been filming since July.

Almost the full year.

Since I was 12, and I'm now 46.

[Claudia laughing]

And as you can tell, I'm dealing with it incredibly well.

It's the final ball, like, the final, final ball.

It's in typically over the top Featherington fashion.

There's a lot of pieces to cover in.

We've got, like, 40 cast,

maybe, like, 150 supporting actors,

and then all the crews.

So the ball days are always, like, the big, big days on set.

[upbeat string music]

[marker writing on paper]

My day begins with a little morning cry.

[Claudia laughing]

And then I get to work, someone brings me a coffee.

It's outrageous the way I get treated actually.

In a way, that's brilliant.

Quick breakfast, get into the chair, hair and makeup.

You get dressed, or go to block first,

then come back and get dressed.

I got up at half six.

I'm in hair and makeup for about three hours.

It takes a million years because I'm in a corset.

And then I go and see one of my best mates

who's my makeup artist.

She's very good.

This is not me.

I look like a foot.

You can't see it 'cause I'm wearing

my blundstones at the moment, my proper boots.

This is a wig.

I have this much hair in real life.

And this is tight across my arms.

This one's quite loose, but usually my arms can go, like...

[Adjoa squeaking]

And then I can't get them any higher than that.

And then eventually you get called to set.

And then we start bloody acting.

I hope I can say bloody,

'cause I've said it twice now.

And my day will end when I get home

at about half 10, quarter to 11.

Shall I have a vodka?

No, there's no time.

Have a cup of tea, go to bed, and do it on repeat.

This scene we've been shooting I think since Monday.

It is now Wednesday.

Since God was a boy, we've been filming this scene.

We have four days here.

The challenge is, of course, is having everybody in here

and actors complaining when they're not in scenes,

why they have to be in the background.

But this is Bridgerton balls and what it is.

This is like ultimate Jenga on steroids.

You have about eight scenes

held within the frame of one ball.

We could be having a scene, and behind us we have...

The rest of the ton are here.

We're shooting on me, the ton is doing this way.

If we shoot something from another point,

we have to get you and me in the background.

So you have to see everything in 360°, in 4D all the time.

For Tom Verica, who's directing,

it's the ultimate crazy mind game.

Once I had the script, I started shot listing.

Plotted kind of where all of our actors are.

So if I can isolate a character off

or be over a character and work them in to editing later on,

then I have to break all that down.

I think the hardest thing about shooting these sequences

is that we can jump in at different parts of the ball.

For example, today we've jumped in towards the end.

Yesterday we started sort of earlier.

We have three cameras going.

We don't normally have three cameras going,

but we need it for this because

the amount of coverage that we need to get.

Put it together in the edit, and it'll come together.

It's a real collaborative effort

from all departments really.

And it's a totally different experience filming

this series as a supporting character to a lead character.

I knew how demanding it was gonna be,

and that it was gonna be an almost every day...

I think I knew I had to really just get my head in it.

These times can be quite challenging

because there's a lot of waiting around.

Conservation of energy is very, very important.

Knowing when to bring the fun,

and then, also, when to just key into what's happening.

You have to very much support the other actors.

It feels like one big family, having everyone in.

You have the Bridgertons, the Featheringtons,

Lady Danbury, the queen.

Well, as someone who deals with crippling social anxiety,

mostly it's just the overwhelming amount of people

in a space.

That's the hardest bit for me,

and that's a really selfish answer.

But the crew deal with it really well.

[Claudia laughing]

[upbeat string music]

[marker writing on paper]

I prepare well in advance.

I'm working with the production designer, with our DP.

We kind of see what our parameters are.

What's amazing about being at these balls

is seeing the amount of detail

that's gone into every element of the design.

Whether it's the food, the room, whether it's the costumes,

whether it's the hair, whether it's the makeup.

You can really see that the team have come together

to create something beautiful on a colossal scale.

I had an idea for a visual effects roof,

so we're putting a glass dome on this, which is not here.

And then we talked about the stage

and I wanted a little ray stage

in the middle of the room.

The queen enters and then Pen ultimately reveals

her moment here, and I wanted her to be

up on the stage a little bit.

Thematically, metaphorically,

it's about her stepping into the light

and finding her voice.

We thought about the floor treatment

and the fact that, from an overhead shot,

it would look a bit like an optical illusion.

It gives her gravitas, but at the same time

she's sort of caged by the columns that surround her,

that she's breaking free.

And that all plays into that final speech really.

We looked at the Featherington characters

and what we've done in the past for them.

It's a real explosion of color, this one, isn't it?

It's regency pumped up,

but it's also, for the Featheringtons,

it's pumped up as well because they've got this

in-your-face, bold color palette.

We can tweak the knob up to number 11 really,

'cause we're in the world of Bridgerton.

First thing we wanted to do was

take Penelope away from the regency line.

We wanted to move her a little bit into the future,

and we wanted to definitely give her a waistline.

That was done by George's innovation of...

1950s WASPIs.

[indistinct]

It has the feel of regency, but it's fantasy.

We come up with any silhouette we like,

any period that we like,

that looks good on the actor and for the character.

With Penelope, George gave her a nice

1950s Marilyn Monroe shape.

She still looks regency, she still looks period,

but it's a subtle change that people

that love her character won't think it's a huge change.

When we have her initial transformation at the...

[indistinct]

Ball, she came out with quite a strong color.

The whole ball ends up going really badly for her,

so her color palette goes straight down.

This is her coming back out at the end,

so we've got a stronger color again.

We always like to go out with a bang.

And working with John, who's the costume designer,

you tend to really do that.

And because he does that, I am allowed,

with both the hair and the makeup,

to go pretty moody I would say.

I think it feels a little bit like a cabaret.

We've got quite strong colors,

even some of the men has got makeup.

With Penelope, my inspiration was

a very old glamorous Hollywood, Rita Hayworth definitely,

and then I think a little bit of

Jessica Rabbit actually, iconic.

We got the red lips as well for her speaking out

to everybody and telling everyone

that she's Lady Whistledown.

The butterflies, the visual effect element.

And that requires a lot of

kind of conceiving ahead of times.

'Cause that's what a lot of these actors here

are reacting to,

which nobody knows what it's gonna look like yet.

So my biggest surprise will be

once we kind of layer it in that last piece.

[upbeat string music]

I think a lot of this season is Penelope

realizing she can no longer separate her two identities,

who she truly is and Lady Whistledown,

that they're one and the same person,

and in order for her to live her truth

and for people to really accept her,

she has to accept that within herself

and present herself to society.

So she takes a sort of terrifying move

to write to the queen and tell her, you know,

I am Lady Whistledown

and I want a chance to explain myself.

So she sort of comes up in front of all these people,

which is something Penelope would never normally do,

and say, This is why I did what I did,

and you can accept me or not,

but this is what's happened.

So it's, like, a huge moment for her.

Hello, or should I say, dearest, gentle readers?

Penelope speaking her truth is probably

the most fabulous thing.

We all have our own internal narratives going,

and if she's made the internal narrative one off,

My voice is never heard

and I have to stay in the background,

and the only way I get heard is when I write

as this sort of fake version of me, Lady Whistledown.

When she owns her own narrative and goes,

I am that powerful and front footed woman

within the body of this shy, retiring person

that society has made me.

She owns the truth of all of who she is.

As a notion philosophically, that's what we all want to do.

We want to go, This is who I am.

I'm not gonna have to fake it

because society doesn't like me being who I am.

I'm just gonna own who I am.

I'm giving myself goosebumps, marvelous.

No one has ever taken any part of me seriously.

I only realize now how common that feeling must be,

to be a young lady to whom no one listens.

I don't know that there's ever been a two page

monologue in this show.

That's a lot of words to say altogether,

and also for the character,

someone like Penelope would find it

so intimidating to stand up in front of 200 people.

I wrote about all of you because I was captivated by you,

living your lives so out in the open.

And in writing about all of you,

I suddenly felt as if I had a life, I had power.

It felt like a really momentous thing,

and then you're seeing Eloise in the audience,

and seeing Lady Featherington and the queen being there,

and she speaks to Lady Danbury for the first time onscreen,

I'm sure that offscreen and they've spoken,

but Adjoa and I were saying, It's so funny,

in three seasons we've never had a conversation.

You knew it was me.

I suspected.

You are not the only lady of the ton

who can keep a secret.

Something in Julia Quinn's books is that Lady Danbury

and Penelope are really good friends,

so it's really nice to have that.

I hope it's only the start of that relationship.

That would be very fun.

Pen, ever since I found out you were Whistledown,

I've done everything I can to try to separate you from her.

Colin and Penelope meet towards the end of the ball

and they're both on different pages at this point.

It's quite an emotional scene.

There's lots of honest feelings.

It's a really beautiful moment

towards the end of the story.

Luke and I have had that advantage of having worked

with one another for two seasons previously.

So having that groundwork there

was really beautiful to come in and build on.

We spoke today about, you know,

filming episode eight as opposed to episode one.

We're like, It's been eight months.

So it's such an intense process,

but I think the best thing has been

having Luke as a partner within it.

And, you know, having someone that's as invested in

the characters and gives as much time

and care makes it just, like, a fantastic process.

[gentle orchestral music]

I love you.

[gentle orchestral music]

You are a very good man, Mr. Bridgerton.

[gentle orchestral music]

I love you.

[gentle orchestral music]

Bridgerton is such a big world.

I feel like we're custodians of the Bridgerton love story

for a time, and we'll pass it on to the next people.

But I take the responsibility seriously,

and I know these books have been beloved

for, like, 20 odd years,

so I want to, you know, honor them as much as I can

and get it right for the fans.

[Person] Okay, we're rehearsing!

I've gotta go.

You see all these people going in?

I'm being called back the video village,

so I gotta go direct a scene.

Good to see you.

I hope you've gotten enough time with everybody.

[Person] Rolling, rolling!

[Person] Rolling, rolling!

[upbeat orchestral music]

[indistinct]

Wrap her up.

Thank you, I'm sorry.

I'm so tired.

Delete this.