Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bridgerton season 3.
Bridgerton showrunner Jess Brownell has opened up about one of season three’s biggest talking points.
After the series finale began streaming last week, many fans were quick to voice their excitement when Francesca was introduced to Michaela – a gender-swapped version of Michael, her love interest from the original book series.
In an interview with Teen Vogue, Jess admitted that this deviation from the Bridgerton novels was something she’d been pitching since she began working with the show in season one.
“I didn’t want to just insert a queer character for queer character’s sake. I want to tell a story that accurately reflects a queer experience, and the first time I read Francesca’s book, I really identified with it as a queer woman,” she explained, highlighting that in the novels, Francesca feels “different” without “really knowing why”.
“As a queer woman, a lot of my queer experience, and I think a lot of my friends’ [experiences have] been about that sense of feeling different, and navigating what that means,” she said.
“My hope is that watching this season, people see how we’re telling a piece of that story, even starting in episode one of season three with Francesca, in terms of all of the debutantes having always imagined what they wanted their husbands to be like. Francesca realises, ‘I’ve never thought about that, actually. Why is that?’ It was a thread we were playing with.”
Jess noted that she sought out Bridgerton author Julia Quinn’s approval before making the change to Francesca’s storyline, and anticipated that not all fans of the original books would be happy.
“We talked about the fact that with almost any single book, there would be a side of the fandom that would be disheartened to see their favourite characters changed,” she said.
“I don’t think that there is any book that wouldn’t happen with, so for me, again, it came back to story, and it came back to character. Because Francesca’s book resonated [with me] in the way that it did, it felt like a natural adaptation.”
Jess also opened up about how she and the team plan to move forward with Francesca’s storyline in a separate interview with Variety.
“When we started talking about queer representation on the show, we started with a discussion that this is a show about happily-ever-afters, and that we’re not interested in queer trauma – that we really want to see queer joy,” she said.
“And if we’re going to tell a queer story, we would like to find a way for there to be a happily ever after.
“So we have done a lot of research to figure out how we can achieve that within the confines of our world. And after people see the next couple of seasons, I’ll be able to talk about that more.”
“There are some good examples from history, without giving too much away, of women like Francesca, who are able to carve out happily ever afters,” she also told Teen Vogue.
However, she was reluctant to say any more, so as not to give away spoilers for season four – or which of the Bridgerton family members it would centre around.
Jess did settle one fan theory, though, insisting that they would not be “combining books” for season four, instead focussing on one central couple’s love story.
Last week, Bridgerton fans were dealt a blow when Jess confirmed that viewers would probably have to wait until around 2026 for their next fix of the hit period drama.
Until then, all three seasons – as well as the spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton – are streaming now on Netflix.