In July last year, both Steve and Julia’s sister Ariana Cotler (a graphic novel writer who used the name Violet Charles) were killed instantly in an accident in Utah, when a drunk driver crashed into them as they slowed down because of debris on the motorway.
Julia later wrote on Facebook: “I have lost my father and my sister. Because a catering company did not secure their load and canvas bags spilled on to the highway. “Because a pick-up driver thought nothing of driving while his blood alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit. I have lost my father and don’t have my sister with whom to grieve.”
Nine months on, plunged back on to the Bridgerton merry-go-round with a new series out this week, she is beginning to find some happiness again, thanks in part to her joyous creation.
“It was a strange year,” says the 52-year-old author with some understatement.
“It has been horrible. But I now know that I can have a life that encompasses both sadness and joy.
Jonathan Bailey (left) as Anthony Bridgerton and Regé-Jean Page as Simon Basset
“I have been really focusing on the joy and the fact that both my father and my sister were delighted by the whole Bridgerton thing. Bridgerton is a world we can escape to and, my goodness, we’ve needed it.”
With its beautiful buildings, stunning leads, heaving bosoms, burgeoning breeches, romance and surprisingly sensual love scenes, Bridgerton certainly provided some much-needed escapism in the height of second wave of the pandemic.
It is little wonder that Julia’s doctor husband, Paul Pottinger, would return from long days of working on the Covid wards last year to ask her to tell him stories from “Bridgerton-land”.
And now this second series, coming as we are haunted by the scenes of war in Ukraine, will again give us a few brief hours of escapism from the misery of the real world around us.
Bridgerton is nothing but pure joy. So much so that Julia never thought a TV show would be made of it. “Nobody makes romance novels into television,” she says. “I was sitting in Starbucks, where I often write, when I got a call from my agent telling me Shonda Rhimes was interested in optioning the books. And that was how it started.”
Apparently, Shonda — one of America’s most successful producers with hits including Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder — ran out of reading material while on holiday and picked up a Bridgerton book. She was immediately hooked. “It still feels crazy to think this happened. It’s a bit like a Cinderella story,” adds Julia. “It felt like a bolt from the blue.”
For the few who haven’t watched the series yet, Bridgerton centres on the aristocratic Bridgerton family, living in Regency England. In the first series we saw oldest daughter Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) fall in love with the handsome, very handsome, Duke of Hastings, played by Regé-Jean Page.
The series is revolutionary in many ways; not least in that it follows the romance novel arc of having a nicely wrapped happy ending in every story.
There is no place for cynicism here. There was devastation when it was announced that Page would not be returning for the second series, but Julia says that’s simply how romance stories work. The action has moved on.
This time around the focus is on Anthony, Lord Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey as he searches for a wife. Based on Julia’s second Bridgerton novel, The Viscount Who Loved Me, we see Anthony entering the marriage market after several years of rakish behaviour.
He alights on Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran) mainly because she is young, beautiful and malleable but standing in his way is her opiniated big sister Kate (Simone Ashley). Anthony and Kate start as furious foes until, well, you’ll have to watch.
“Anthony and Kate are these two characters who truly have the same goals which are to support and love their family,” she says. “But in this instance, the goals they have lead them into conflict.”
Another way in which the show has broken television conventions is its “colour conscious” casting with many of the key cast — including the Queen Charlotte — being people of colour.
Julia says her Jewish upbringing meant that even though she had not written the racial diversity into her books — she actually hadn’t imagined what her characters looked like at all — she was more than happy to see it in the television show.
“When I’d read a book and one of the characters would be Jewish, I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ And it was very powerful,” she says. “The point of romance novels is the happy ending; it is a type of art which celebrates happiness and love. Everybody should be able to have those feelings and everyone should be able to see themselves in the story. I love the idea that everyone can imagine themselves as part of this joyful world.
“It isn’t accurate, but if we were being accurate none of them would have beautiful straight teeth, they wouldn’t all be the same age, and at least one or two would probably have syphilis. It’s a fantasy.”
Apart from coming from a big family — as well as Ariana, she has two other sisters and a brother — there is little to link Julia with the world she has imagined.
She grew up in New England a clever bookish child who attended Harvard and was considering a career in medicine when she wrote her first romance novel.
“I always just loved to read romance books set in Regency England,” she shrugs.
“I don’t know why there is this idea that we have to view reading as something that always has to be serious.
“The reason I became a writer of this sort of stuff was because I was a reader; I wrote about what I liked to read.”
A poster for the hit series
There are eight Bridgerton books, as well as a further eight spin-offs looking at other characters in that world. All of them have been optioned by Netflix, which means we should be able to get lost into this brilliant dream-like world for some time to come.
Julia admits she is still flummoxed by the way the viewers took her creation to its heart.
“It has all been totally bonkers,” she says. “It is hard to say what has been the most bonkers. Jill Biden, our First Lady, was on television talking about it, I’ve just been told there’s a Bridgerton tea and there is even a range of expensive Bridgerton shoes. Although when I read that sales of corsets had gone up, I did think maybe things had gone too far.
“One of the most surreal moments for me was being on the set for the second series and they were filming at Hampton Court Palace.
“Netflix arranged for me to have a private tour by the person who holds all the keys to the doors there and she took me into rooms that most people don’t get to see. The whole time I was thinking, ‘How is this my world now?’”
The second series of Bridgerton starts on Netflix on 25 March.
A new paperback version of The
Viscount Who Loved Me (published by Piatkus) is out now
