In "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy," the screen icon takes on a brand new bedfellow—grief

For 24 years, viewers worldwide have been smitten with the lovably neurotic, hopeless romantic Bridget Jones. She’s the everywoman, a picture of klutzy mishaps of the heart that looks more like a mirror than a photograph. Even before the first entry in the film franchise, “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” hit theaters in 2001, readers were so charmed by the character when she appeared in Helen Fielding’s column in The Independent that the satire didn’t completely connect. Yes, Bridget was too focused on marriage, men, calories and sex to be the perfect depiction of a modern woman looking toward liberation in the new millennium, and it was those outmoded obsessions that Fielding set out to lampoon. Yet the chronicling of Bridget’s lovelorn escapades still struck a chord in people trying to balance new modernity with the pull of romantic desire. When Fielding turned the column into a book, it was an instant fly-off-the-shelves hit. 

The film series, starring Renée Zellweger in the titular role, makes Bridget’s struggle between backward ideas of feminine self-loathing and her intrepid quest for love even more palatable for the average viewer. But though they take a more standard romantic comedy approach to the character, the movies have become comfort cinema staples for countless viewers, who still see layers of themselves in Bridget’s innumerable foibles, especially as they get older. And that’s the rarity about the “Bridget Jones” films — what began as a bit of rom-com fluff transformed into an intimate record of love and loss over decades. Audiences have grown up with Bridget, aging alongside her and hitting the same benchmarks in marriage, children, death, hangovers and wrinkles. Others, like me, came to Bridget when they were far too young to be watching randy, R-rated romances, and have found themselves caught up in the same woes through the years.

Now, “Bridget Jones” is back with the fourth film in the series, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” All of the franchise’s familiar players appear, but now, Bridget has moved beyond the push and pull of her two great loves, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). However, that doesn’t mean either man has exited her life entirely, at least not exactly. Daniel babysits Bridget and Mark’s children, Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic), while Mark is now a memory held in Bridget’s heart after his tragic death in a car wreck. Now, four years into being a widow, Bridget’s mind has no space for the trivial things that once concerned her. 

But for director Michael Morris, this phase in Bridget’s life presented a unique opportunity to introduce a new flavor to the long-running series. “Helen Fielding said, almost off the cuff, ‘Mark Darcy’s dead in this one,’” Morris told Salon over Zoom a few weeks before the film’s release. “It instantly came to life for me that this is a comedy of grief.” Viewers who have matured alongside Bridget might note that the film provides different kinds of comfort than previous installments. The first three movies were perfect for soothing fans after a breakup, preferably alongside a pint of ice cream. But loss looks different for their heroine now, as it might for fans, too. In exploring how our lives are shaped by the company we keep, Morris turns the page to a beautiful new chapter for Bridget, one where community surpasses courtship, allowing Bridget Jones to stand on her own for the first time. 

To bring this era of Bridget’s story to life, Morris took on the daunting task of steering the latest “Bridget Jones” away from the wry comedy the films were founded on and toward something entirely new for the series. While “Mad About the Boy” has classic rom-com elements and all of the idiosyncrasies fans love about Bridget, the film moves further into drama than the franchise ever has. Bridget’s choices aren’t just about what she wants, they’re about what her two young children need. The woman who was once famously preoccupied with herself has all but forgotten her self-interest to make sure Mabel and Billy have the stability their childhoods require. But in fostering constancy for others, Bridget finds herself stuck in her grief. 

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

As the film settles into this new rhythm, screenwriters Abi Morgan, Dan Mazar, and Bridget’s original scribe Fielding navigate the character’s stagnancy, while Morris plays with the idea of memory and how it bleeds into one's life as they grieve. Bridget can still sense Mark’s presence all over their London flat; even when she tries to escape it for a night out, the memory of how good it felt to arrive at a party with him by her side comes flooding back. For years, Bridget longed for love to make her life perfect, playing the part of the girlfriend, the mistress and the wanton sex goddess. But now, she realizes those titles all left her woefully ill-prepared for a role she never considered—the widow.

For Morris, whose debut feature “To Leslie” took the 2023 Oscar race by storm when grassroots industry buzz made it an awards season underdog, this version of “Bridget Jones” was a natural next step. “To Leslie” saw Andrea Riseborough’s character dealing with a similar fallout, reeling from literally winning the lottery in life to having it all crash down around her. It was a movie that centered a woman’s nonlinear journey toward recovery, and this era of “Bridget Jones” sees Zellweger walking a similarly winding path toward whatever waits at the end of the road. 

Director Michael Morris and Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones behind the scenes in "Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy" (Jay Maidment/Universal Pictures)“On its face, [‘Mad About the Boy’] is a very different film than ‘To Leslie,’” Morris says, laughing about jumping from what celebrities famously dubbed “a small film with a big heart” to the massive “Bridget Jones” franchise. “But actually, you scrape just a little bit under the surface and here we go with a magnetic, strong, in-every-frame woman, played by a wonderful actress who is the heart of the film. She has one way of living her life at the beginning, which isn’t necessarily the most healthy way, but that’s what she’s doing [to cope]. Over the course of the film, she’s forced to make the hardest moves she can make, sometimes against her will, to turn her life and point it forward.”

One of those difficult moves is dipping her toe back into the dating pool — and really, it wouldn’t be a “Bridget Jones” film without a few romantic misadventures. But just like Bridget has entered a stage of her life that she never prepared for after Mark’s death, she’s also caught in a state of the world that she could’ve never anticipated. Everyone’s favorite analog diarist is smack dab in the middle of a universe ruled by tech. One might imagine that Bridget, who was always getting herself into trouble with real-life flirting, would make just as many gaffes over text. But faceless communication turns out to be a godsend for a woman who can’t even bring herself to get out of her pajamas most days.

Fans of Bridget’s blunders need not worry, there are plenty of opportunities for her to embarrass herself. One such chance is a brief, real-life meeting with a handsome public parks employee named Roxster (Leo Woodall), who helps Bridget down from a tree after trying to rescue her kids as if they were helpless cats. The encounter quickly moves to Tinder, and despite Roxster being quite a few years her junior, Bridget can’t help but fall for him — especially since he’s already seen all of her unflattering angles while clinging to an old oak in the park. 

New technology does, however, present its own unique obstacles. Morris fancies Bridget’s struggle to adapt as the franchise’s latest play on its classic comedy of manners. “The films are about how we move through the world with people opposite us, and the dating tech that is now part of our life is another string in that bow,” he says. In 2025, Bridget’s got to deal with Tinder, ghosting and the perennial scramble to choose which emoji works best in a text — but without taking too long to decide, lest the message seem too overthought. For an overthinker like Bridget Jones, texting is all fun and games until it turns into a battle of love-bombing wits.

Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones, Leo Woodall as Roxster and Director Michael Morris behind the scenes in "Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy" (Jay Maidment/Universal Pictures )That’s a far cry from “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” a film that was released when the majority of viewers didn’t even own a cellphone. Now, most new romances are forged digitally by simply swiping right. Watching a character as universally beloved as Bridget Jones enter the minefield of online dating is jarring, yes, but the fact that we get to check in with her at all is what makes the film so uniquely exceptional.

“I celebrate it massively,” Morris says about the franchise’s longevity. “I cannot find one single set of films that goes 24 years about the life of a woman living in a city. That’s it. Not a woman who turns into an animal, or a woman who flies. A woman living her life — that’s really experimental when you take a step back from it!” The director also credits Zellweger with the series’ endurance, calling her one of the few actors who’s also an effortless physical comedian. Indeed, it’s Zellweger’s performance that has made Bridget Jones into such an icon. She’s expressive and malleable enough for viewers to project themselves onto the character. And in “Mad About the Boy,” Zellweger gets the chance to imbue Bridget with more dramatic resonance than she’s had yet, particularly when things get thorny (and eventually, horny) with Billy’s science teacher, Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

But after years of watching Bridget Jones crawl London in search of the perfect suitor, it turns out that she doesn’t have just one ideal mate; she’s got dozens. Her equally maladjusted parents, her close circle of blunt friends, her lovers and, most importantly, her children bring her the comfort that she has long been searching for. It’s that camaraderie that sets Morris’ film apart from the other installments, and thus, what makes it so special. “Bridget allowed people to be seen,” Morris says about the character’s impact. “That sense of being seen and therefore held by the film is really important. In this version, the world is different, and it’s more challenging. The film recognizes that, and Bridget goes through more emotionally than she ever has.” 

The movie’s emotional beats work even better than its comedic ones. The fourth “Bridget Jones” movie gets downright existential, moving past matters of the heart to contend with what we do with our love after we experience earth-shattering loss. For a mother to two young children like Bridget, that means finding simple ways to communicate something incredibly complicated.

But the “Bridget Jones” series has always been deceptively good at making the complex feel approachable, and right now — when it feels impossibly daunting to even think about looking at the news, or even getting out of bed — that affability is desperately needed. This isn’t just the levity viewers are seeking, it’s the community they require. Fielding’s column welcomed readers into Bridget’s chosen family by asking people to see themselves in Bridget’s anxieties and compulsions. They fell for her because she felt more like a friend than a character, and the final sequence of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” stresses that friendship and fellowship are more important than any romantic love. “It's a celebration of her biological family and her chosen family,” Morris says of his moving ending. “If we feel we’re a part of that family, maybe we’ll feel some security and uplift going forward.”

“Bridget’s gone through a lot,” he continues. “But she’s here, and she’s just where she needs to be.”