Entertainment
‘Bridgerton’ Star Confirms Show Is Moving on After Major Whistledown Twist
Bridgerton Season 4 may have belonged to Benedict and Sophie on paper, but it still found room to leave the Ton in chaos on the way out. After Penelope finally stepped away from Lady Whistledown and appeared ready to start a new chapter as a novelist, the finale pulled the rug out from under everyone with the reveal that Whistledown had returned anyway — and not by her hand. It was exactly the kind of last-minute twist the show loves, and it instantly turned the conversation from one romance to the next looming mystery. Who is she?
While promoting Season 2 of Big Mood, Nicola Coughlan told Radio Times that she is more than ready for the series to keep evolving beyond Penelope’s time at the center of the Whistledown saga.
“I think in a way, it’s great because it’s a show that keeps reinventing itself. Same thing – you have to hold on tightly, let go lightly. Like I loved leading that show, it’s amazing but it’s exhausting – it was so much work. You don’t really have a life when you’re doing it, which I was sort of fine with. It’s about eight months filming and then it was like six months promotion around it. It was amazing but I’ve taken everything out of that that I could possibly want.”
What Can We Expect From ‘Bridgerton’ Season 5?
Coughlan added that it now feels “lovely to pass it on to someone else” as the series moves forward and noted that Season 5 is about to begin filming. That lines up neatly with how the creative team has framed the twist. In a previous interview with Radio Times, showrunner Jess Brownell confirmed that she, Shonda Rhimes, and the writers already know who the new Whistledown is and have been writing toward that reveal. Brownell explained that once Penelope’s identity was exposed, some of the old tension around Whistledown naturally disappeared, so handing the pen to someone new opens the door to fresh red herrings and a new mystery. She also said the move lets Penelope step into a different phase of her life with Colin, rather than keeping her trapped in the same secret forever.
“Shonda and I and all my writers know who Whistledown is and we’ve been writing to that. But that was what was really exciting to us was to A: let Penelope move onto a next chapter as a novelist, in her romance with Colin et cetera. But I think once we revealed that Penelope was Whistledown at the end of season 1 and especially now that she’s come out publicly at the end of season 3, the stakes of it – we lost a bit of them in season 4. It was really fun telling the story of her having to face some accountability with the people she’s written about, but it’s also so fun now to have red herrings and clues and have no one know because it’s not from the books at this point… Yeah we’re going a bit rogue.”
Bridgerton streams now on Netflix.
- Release Date
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December 22, 2020
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Tom Verica, Tricia Brock, Alex Pillai, Alrick Riley, Bille Woodruff, Cheryl Dunye, Sheree Folkson, Julie Anne Robinson
- Writers
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Abby McDonald, Sarah L. Thompson, Daniel Robinson, Oliver Goldstick, Leila Cohan-Miccio, Azia Squire, Sarah Dollard, Eli Wilson Pelton, Janet Lin
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Luke Thompson
Lady Violet Bridgerton
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Ruth Gemmell
Benedict Bridgerton
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