Meet the Charmingly Awkward New ‘Bridgerton’ Star

Kerensa Cadenas
·6 min read
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Dearest readers: It’s Bridgerton Week at IndieWire. We’re celebrating the new season by diving deep on one of the best romance shows on TV.

Three seasons into “Bridgerton,” fans of the Regency drama are used to the sweeping romances filled with everything hot and heavy — banter, drama, and above all else sex. Every season has had its “diamond”—Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) in Season 1, Edwina (Charithra Chandran) in Season 2, Francesca (Hannah Dodd) in Season 3. While Francesca might be of diamond status in the courting process of the season, her brother Colin’s (Luke Newton) long-anticipated romance with Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) might more closely follow the beats of what the “Bridgerton” audience has become accustomed to.

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Francesca’s road to romance remains something unlike what viewers have seen before on “Bridgerton” precisely because of her lack of interest in anything romantic or playing the typical heroine. When we first meet Francesca, Dodd, who took over the role from Ruby Stokes, couldn’t be more uninterested in making her debut. While everyone is snooping about as she’s getting ready, she’s already playing the piano — her one true love. What she’s playing encapsulates her thoughts about the whole shebang (Mozart’s “Funeral March”).

She’s quiet and demure and loves her space unlike her noisy, charismatic family. New showrunner Jess Brownell was integral to putting together Francesca’s arc this season and thought that what author Julia Quinn put on the page was the perfect foil. “You have this character who shares the Bridgerton strong point of view and rich inner world,” Brownell said. “But unlike her siblings, Francesca isn’t as able to express herself. She’s much more introverted, much more reticent, and it provides a really interesting challenge for Violet, who is so used to all of her children being incredibly vocal about who they are and what they want. So with a character like Francesca for Violet and for the audience, it’s a new challenge.”

For Dodd, she was going into working with a tight-knit cast and also playing a Bridgerton sibling that was the antithesis of the rest of them, so she joined forces with Brownell to talk through what she needed to bring to Francesca. “She’s described in the books as different to her siblings and kind of the odd one out. She doesn’t have the confidence that they have and their sort of natural ability to hold a room and be the center of attention. Then I had a good few conversations with Jess when I first joined, about the qualities that she really wanted to emphasize. This is a girl who has been brought up in a very privileged household and has known these siblings for her entire life. So she can have confidence and a slightly different energy when she’s with them to when she’s in a new environment and when she’s speaking to men for the first time,” Dodd said.

The first four episodes of Season 3 show Francesca’s continued push and pull with her mother Violet about her romantic options during her courting season. And it also gives the audience a new viewpoint of the whole hubbub itself. Francesca grimaces her way through teas and balls, even going so far as going upstairs during one to play the piano, only for it to backfire by having Queen Charlotte walk in to declare her independent act “sparkling.”

Both Violet and Queen Charlotte’s increased attention on Francesca lead them to introduce her to Lord Samadani (David Mumeni) a handsome man who loves a big family. Francesca’s disinterest is polite at least. If Colin and Penelope have been a slow burn, when Francesca finally meets John Stirling (Victor Alli) it might be the slowest of them all: When they first meet, they simply just stand in silence together.

While viewers are used to burning passion, it was important for Brownell to give something else as well this season. “There’s a lot of emphasis placed on passionate love. Love is exciting and thrilling, but there are other kinds of love that are just as valid and meaningful and deep. And so to explore a relationship for Francesca that is based much more on companionship, friendship, common interests, respect and attraction, but perhaps not in a thunderbolt from the sky kind of way is really meaningful. And I think it’s nice to hold space for that,” she said.

Dodd jokes that Alli could have “chemistry with a spoon” and their, thus far, chaste romance is not indicative of their offscreen dynamic which she describes as “giggling constantly.” But she does think the slow burn of Francesca and John has helped to develop their own chemistry in creating the relationship. “Our writers have done such a gorgeous job at creating this story. I love the scene where they first meet because I think it just sums them both up and just what it is that she’s craving,” Dodd noted. “In that space, it gives her the ability to work out how she feels. And he kind of facilitates that for her. We kind of talked about it as much as they’re just meeting, we were jumping straight to what you see in older couples and it’s that compatibility and that comfort and that ability to just sit in silence and not need to say something to each other that you see in people who have been together for years.”

Brownell mentions that a reference that she brought up to the two was that of Mr. Darcy, the romantic hero from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” who’s bent popular culture to his will. But it’s Darcy’s “coldness” that’s actually “shyness” that they wanted Alli to harness in playing John. They got to have some liberties with the romance in the writers room since John’s courtship with Francesca isn’t a part of the original novel. So when it came to John’s grand gesture to Francesca, which is much different than Colin’s to Penelope, they wanted to make sure it was just as meaningful but felt like that pairing. “We talked a lot in the writer’s room about love languages and how John is an acts of service guy or a gifts guy rather than a words or physical touch guy. And I think Francesca probably has a similar love language. So when he presents her with that music, again, it’s a silent gesture that speaks a thousand words,” Brownell said.

That gesture sets up the pair for the second half of Season 3 episodes that’ll be released in June. As with most “Bridgerton” romances, Francesca and John won’t evade their own set of dramas — even if they don’t create them themselves. Brownell teased that Violet and Queen Charlotte’s continued meddling may make an impact. For Dodd, however, she’s excited for people to see what Francesca’s capable of. “Francesca’s really trying to work out what it is that she wants. In the second part, it’s how much strength and courage can she access to go after that, [and] how much does she grow as a person.”

“Bridgerton” Season 3 Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.

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