Ruth Gemmell on the Joy and Grief of Violet Bridgerton
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As much as Bridgerton’s second season is an enemies-to-lovers slow-burn romance, it's also a story about family—of devoted sisters, men with daddy issues, and strong matriarchs, like Violet Bridgerton, the head of the brood at the heart of the show.
Played by actress Ruth Gemmell, the Dowager Viscountess begins this new set of episodes by pondering the love life of her eldest son Anthony (played by Jonathan Bailey). “If you remember the end of the last season, Anthony announces that he has an intention to find a wife. And so, when I understand that, I am over the moon. I think this is a wonderful idea until I realize that he has no intention of involving love in any of the decisions,” she says, recapping the start of this season from her character’s perspective. “That is a duty for him, and about his reputation and the reputation of the family and nothing more. And I think she's quite crestfallen about that, really.”
Violet sets out to change his mind, and to convince him to pursue a love match—something she wants for all of her children. “She knows that she's very lucky because she had a loving marriage herself,” Gemmell says, “and because she did, she knows it's possible.”
While Gemmell, whom viewers may recognize from roles on EastEnders, Home Fires, and in the 1997 film Fever Pitch, was initially drawn to Bridgerton because of its period setting—"I do always love getting into a corset"—she’s not a cynic when it comes to the show’s love stories. When speaking about matters of the heart, she’s a romantic, but a realistic one.
“I think love is important. I think respect is important, and I think without those, it's a very difficult world. I'm also not naive to believe that they're easily obtained or that that road is not paved with difficulties, because it can be and has been, and most of us have been heartbroken. But we have more options at our fingertips than perhaps Violet would've or her children, so it's a different world. But I believe in love, definitely,” she tells T&C over Zoom. “It would be really wrong, really, if I'm pedaling love and didn't believe a word of it.”
This season reveals Violet’s own tragic love story with flashbacks to her late husband Edmund’s shocking death. In the aftermath of his fatal bee sting, she is overcome with grief, incapable of managing a household or caring for her children, even wanting to die in childbirth so as not to live without Edmund.
“I'm always drawn to the side of a character that is vulnerable or in pain. That sounds dreadful, but I am. I find them really interesting to play. And I suppose also, because as much as we talk about things like love being a universal subject, grief is as well. I can't think of anyone I know who hasn't experienced grief and the complexities that go with that. The stages of grief are important to me, so I take them quite seriously,” she says.
Eventually, Violet finds a way to move through her pain, but her son Anthony, who is forced to immediately take on the title and duties of Viscount after witnessing his father’s passing, can’t find a path forward emotionally—at least not until he opens his heart to Kate Sharma so many years later.
“Anthony suddenly takes on this mantle of being the head of the household way, way before he was ready, and also very suddenly. That is quite a traumatic, shocking moment for him,” Gemmell explains.
“Violet has other children that she has to live for,” but Anthony is emotionally stunted for years, she continues. “It takes him falling in love to have a brutally honest conversation with his mother [about how he was affected by not only his father’s death, but also his mother’s grief] for not only her to realize, but for him to realize the enormity of it. That's exactly what I love about the complexities of human frailty, your cause and effect and the implications that every decision you make, intentional or unintentional, has a consequence.”
The Bridgertons’ story is tinged with sadness this season, but there is also so much joy, especially when the family is all together onscreen. “Those are my favorite scenes. I absolutely adore those kids. They are like my own in a way,” she says. “They're talented; they're beautiful; they're funny; they're generous; they're just lovely.”
In particular, Gemmell had been looking forward to the seventh episode of the season, “Harmony,” when, after Violet throws a ball and no one shows up, the Bridgertons and the Sharmas share a lively dance.
“I've been dying to dance. I really wanted to do it at a ball. Jack [Murphy, the show’s choreographer] is fantastic. He really runs set beautifully. It's a joy to work with him. And it was really, really good fun. The difficulty for me is that I thought I'd be so much better than I was. I was going the wrong way. I was a disaster. It's quite heavily cut, I think,” she says, laughing. “It was fun—and I was also exhausted.”
Bridgerton is set to return for at least two more seasons, and a prequel, which will center on a young Queen Charlotte, Lady Danbury, and Lady Violet, is also in the works, but Gemmell is tight-lipped about both projects. That said, she does have one goal for her future on the series: “To learn to dance properly.”
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