Getting Acquainted: Meet the Hosts

and cry and love right along with them. I wanted this show to be about a world and about an entire society, and there's a vibrancy to this world. Things are fresh, things are youthful. There is an effervescence and a sparkle to every thing, and I think that's true for the set design, the costume. Certainly everything is rooted

in the regency time period, but still slightly updated. The volume is turned up on everything that was Chris Van Deuson, creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Bridgerton, the show that led us to be gathered here today. Welcome to Bridgeton the Official Podcast. I'm your host, Gabrielle Collins, and you can consider me your official guide behind the scenes at shantaland so I

live for the art of fact history, drama docs. I also love spreadsheets and stand well oiled production teams, so naturally, Bridgeton was a super combo of the stuff I love about life's top shelf, medicine, television. So gather your dress, straighten that assinator, and come with me on this podcast. We're going to hear how Bridgerton came to life. And y'all, I have some friends coming along and they are excited to talk about how life behind the Scenes rocked. Allow

me to introduce my highly esteemed co hosts. Hi, I'm Jess Brownell. I was a writer on season one of Bridgerton and also on season two. I'm Hannay Craig. And I'm the historian who is lucky enough to be on set with Bridgeton. And I'm Anna Belhood. I was a researcher and Chris Benduson's personal assistant on Bridgeton, and I am You're certified behind the scenes guide Gabrielle Collins. And this, oh my god, it tured you off? Do I click? Do you want me to click? How big this file?

This is? Gonna be a big file. Oh was I doing that? I'm so sorry. Take control of my computer. We're connected. Can you say something? No? Hold on? Wouldn't have been a we've got a connection issues. This is the glamorous world of podcasting these days. Compared to when it's pouring rain and you ankle deep in mud and you just kind of like push all your equipment up a muddy hill to try and get to the next location. That's how glamorous. This is very glamorous. So this is

what we're going to do on this little episode. It's a minisode, little appetizer before we get into the main course of the show. Since there are so many voices you're going to hear on this podcast in the coming weeks, we just wanted to take the time to introduce ourselves and talk a bit about what's to come on the podcast. So you're basically going to get to know your guides. We're just gonna sit here and get giddy about Bridgerton

and what it was like bringing it together. Jess Annabelle Hannah. I'm really excited to go behind the scenes and learn about your time on set in the throes of production. We are going to give you a peek inside the writer's room. Yes, we're going to learn how the sauce was made. We're going to get into the themes and modern twists in Bridgerton with book series author Julia Quinn, and we'll get into how the writer's room debated and came to some of the decisions you all made on

the show, Jess. We'll also hear from Chris van Dusen and Shonda Rhimes is long time producing partner and an executive producer on Bridgerton. Betsy Beers, Oh, I actually used to work for I started my career at Shondalan, asked Betsy Beers's assistant. Believe it or not, that's right, Jess. I love how you never leave us hanging on the sidelines. When you're talking about being in the writer's room. You pull up a seat for us, and we feel like

we're there with you. So if you're really pulling up a seat in the writer's room, you're feeling a little bit sweaty because you've been sitting in there for ten hours. You're drinking sparkling water, which is, for some reason, the official beverage of writer's rooms. Actually, season one, we wrote in a windowless room. So okay, that's the seat that's being pulled up, just you can set the scene. That's perfect.

I will also mention that Madame Delacois is named that because we drank so much Lacroix in the room that when we were joking, when we were trying to come up with a French name, I think someone pitched as a joke like de Lacroix. Did ye really get it stuck? I'm gullible, I'm not lying. It's like a joke at this point that TV writers rooms are obsessed with Lacroix. They're always stalked with it. We would go through cases and cases a day. Wow, wow, and yeah, that's how

she got her name. It's like we hate to strip back all the glamor is. It's so true from such humble beginnings came you know, this very sexy show. Oh, Hannah, listeners are going to feel the same way about what you have to say. What are you most excited to get into? Oh, it's just going to be exciting to think about all the stuff we put together for Bridgeton.

You know, for me, it's like a world that's like one foot in the past, one foot in the present and then just all this glitter that comes from schandaland it's just going to be exciting to think about that again. And I will talk about history to anybody, so I'm happy to do that on the podcast Awesome Awesome. I'm excited too because Will Hughes Jones said that Google and Wikipedia are wonderful things, but that you were like a

walking encyclopedia. I do see myself as the kind of the reference resource, the walking reference library that anyone can pull on. I think it's helpful that I've worked quite a lot with productions over the years. I understand how something goes from script to filming to final production. Okay, so tell us a little more about how you ended

up being the historian on Bridgerton. Well, I think if someone had said to me many years ago, oh, Hannah, if you get a PhD, then one day you can work on a Shonda Rhimes production, I wouldn't have believed it. So it wasn't the sort of typical path that I thought that history would take me to. But of course it's a very exciting, magical path that I've ended up on.

And I've always loved history even as a child, and some of my childhood memories involved visiting historic sites with my family in Europe and in England, and what really captured my imagination actually were sort of things like the set of stone steps that you see in a castle with those dips in the middle of the steps, and I just used to walk down those steps and think how many people must have walked there before me to

have made that dip in stone. And you can see the marks on a wall where all the hands have gone, and I just think, who were those people? Were they like me? What were they doing? Were they happy? Were they sad? And that always took me to kind of wanting to read about the past and think about the past, And it is just kind of an excuse to sit in a kind of landscape of your own imagination that's filled with all these ideas from all the books that you ease, and then as a historian, all the sources

you start to study. My head was always kind of teeming with the voices and the stories and say for me, it always felt like film and television became a place where lots of these people then also came to life. It was sort of a natural progression for me. Each episode Hannah will give us a Regency era history lesson. She's gonna unpack the stuff that will make you go back and watch Bridgerton again looking for clues twice. I'm

unashamed to say that I have, Hannah. Your expertise is going to help us to contextualize the setting of the show and help us low keep easter eggs. Yeah, but don't worry. I'm not going to set a test at the end or anything. But if you do want to write an essay, I will read it for you. I love a test. I miss school. I would like to take better. Okay, all right, we need like Bridgerton the board game where you get tested on history or something. You as you advance you get to like, you know,

make out with a duke. Yeah, and lazy time Reston of Iniquity. I would be in all the time, hang out in the den of Iniquity. Yes. And finally, on the podcast, we're going to geek out with the production and custom designers and the cast about how this fantastical world was built. Annabelle will be our guide. Yeah. I had the privilege of seeing just how Bridgeton came from being in Chris Vanderson's imagination and the just the sheer power of everyone working together to make this show. I

am Chris van Dusen's personal assistant. That's pretty self explanatory. But then you're not just getting lunches and helping schedule things. You're on a lot of email chains and you know a lot of things. I know a lot of secrets. I could be lady whistled down with how many secrets I know. People friends are texting me being like, do you know what's happening with this? And I'm like, I literally can't tell you. I'm so sorry, I literally can't

tell you what's happening. That's really really cool. Now that Bridgeton has become such a huge hit, there's lots of crew that are coming out with behind the scenes photos, and if ever I'm tagged in one of them, I'm usually like standing in a corner on my phone and my laptop at the same time. I'm never doing anything interesting. I'm never like standing in the middle of a field. Yeah, but you are the island of calm though the whole time, and about you. You know, when everything else was I

tried to fitting around you. You would like the calm person always. Yeah, sometimes with a hard stare, I'm so excited to get to experience this for season two, to be uncertain, experience all the stress. But it is fun. That's what people. We say. It's stressful, and we say it's crazy, and we say we're standing in the pouring rain. But then at the same time, you catch yourself looking around me like I wouldn't actually want to be anywhere else.

Is it kind of maybe type too fun where you're like, as it's happening, you're sort of complaining, and then you look back on it and you're like, that was awesome. Yes, I got the sense that y'all were in sync from day one, like especially during writing and when the engines fired up on set. Yeah, it always the first day of set always feels like the first day of school.

You're meeting new people for the first time. You know, you can be as prepared as possible for the first day of school and you still feel like you've forgotten something. And that's definitely what Bridgeton felt like day one. And then by day two everyone was friends. Everyone got along and it was like, all right, let's make this TV show nice. You know, there was only one of the writers on set per season one obviously because it was London and far away, so we didn't get to experience

the crew tightness. But that writer's room, I will say we are still all on a group thread. We talk like every day. It was such a close knit group, and I feel like that close knit energy, you know, is reflected work, Like we were really able to bounce off of each other in this awesome creative way. And you're in the rider's room now, right, I am for season two? Yes? What's that like? Before we get into the behind the scenes of season one? I see people

on Twitter and everywhere else freaking out about season two. Well, no spoilers, but it's going very well. We're really excited about what we have to present for season two and we hope that the fans are gonna come along with us. Nice, it's all I can say. That's so we're allowed to say, Annabelle, are you hanging out with Jess two? What's going on? I've been in the Rider's room, but I've just been listening.

Annabelle saves us on the regular. She's being humble, but we'll run into a story problem and she's like, here's this a convenient historical fact that solves your story problem for you. Oh, thank you, Annabelle nice. Okay, we're all a happy family. Now, let's go back to Chris Van Duson, the creator, showrunner and executive producer of Bridgerton. This is a show about love, and it's a show about family, and there was a real family dynamic with this cast

and with this crew on set. Every day we were in some of the most amazing locations and a lot of it was challenging, and just to watch everyone rise to the occasion and really give everything. They're always just so amazing and so inspiring to see. And Annabelle, you are in so many ways so up close to the

process of a showrunner. That's what I love working with Chris is that he has the entire world of Bridgeton in his head as in credit and I'm like trying to bother him with scheduling stuff, and he's got all these things going on in his head. But it's great to work with him. I genuinely feel like I'm one of the luckiest people to be able to work with Chris. Chris led a team of amazing artists, actors, organizers, producers to help build the world of Bridgert and in talking

with Chris and the cast and crew. Y'all, my appreciation for this production has deepened. You think you love Bridgerton until you hear about the show behind the show. It was big. It's a very very big set. We really did build a costume house, built all the fireplaces, we built a ball, built all the windows, and then we built a water rig into it. The whole set stood in a tank that we built as well. There were seventy five hundred pieces of costume. Me. Okay, it was

a lot. Yeah, it was big. Rome or in the case of Bridgerton, Grosvenor Square wasn't built in a day. It was built in one hundred forty days. But this podcast, it's not about counting yards of fabric, cans of paint, or hours spent on set. My co hosts and I are peeling back the layers of work that made Bridgerton

reson eight with so many audiences millions of households. We're going to hear from some of the cast members, production design team, choreographer Jack Murphy, composer and sickening pianists Chris Bowers, Ellen Murrasnik and John Glazer who give us costume life, and even Shonda Rhymes, I'm basically escorting you through a ball of TV and streaming Badassrie. Okay. I think what

drew me in was the books. They're so incredibly well written and plotted at such a pace that I don't know if you see in other romance novels, you know, the twists and turns come so quickly. I thought it would just be like so drawn out and glances and talking about feelings and stuff, and I thought it'd be cheesy. But I think the fact that the show moves so quickly and that the plot goes places you don't expect

it to go is really refreshing. I also got really pulled in by doing the research for the show about the period and realizing how different but similar it was to today. But it's always human stories that connectors, isn't it. And you know, as a historian, when I work on productions, I'm all I always remember that it's the stories of the characters that carry us through, and history is about that.

History is about emotion, about motivation, about the choices you make in the past, and that's the essence of a good story. And I always think it's incredibly exciting as a historian to be able to see a world that's

set in the past come to life. I find it magical to see something on a script where I know people have thought over every single word and changed and written it and rewritten it, and then it comes to life in the production and you see all the camera crews working and all of the kids, and I love all of that stuff. And then suddenly it's all on screen, and you know screen it. It's also slightly different because then you get the music and the editing and you

can suddenly see what everyone was aiming for. It's just incredible to see this thing come to life at the ends. And history is in our imagination, isn't it. And that's why I became a historian, because it lives in your imagination, but television and film thinks that's life. All right, everyone, We're going to wrap it up right here. I hope you enjoyed this little Get to Noah's session. Next week, the behind the scenes ball really begins. So get ready,

we're going in. We're going to talk about locations and the setting of this fantastical world. Until then, like subscribe and share. I'm Gabrielle Collins. Our editor is Chandler May's. Our producers are Chris Van Dusen and Lauren Homan. Thanks for listening. Bridgeton. The official podcast is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your favorite shows.