Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey defends season two’s lack of sex scenes
While the first season of Bridgerton was all about steam, season two leans into some classic yearning
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When the Shonda Rhimes-produced regency series Bridgerton premiered on Netflix, many viewers couldn’t stop talking about the spicy sex scenes between the season’s diamond Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and the rakish Simon (Regé-Jean Page). The tweets about the Wildest Dreams montage alone were enough to send the Ton into a frenzy, emphasizing how steamy the series was willing to get.
With the release of the show’s second season, those audience expectations of an abundance of bodice-ripping were extinguished. Good ol’ classic yearning became the focus for the new season’s romance between Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) and new arrival Miss Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley). Yet, the Viscount himself justifies the moments of heavy breathing and fiery looks in a new interview with USA Today.
“What you lose in sex scenes you gain in a deeper human understanding, which hopefully enriches the world so that the future intimacy scenes won’t be the heavy feature, and (you) won’t have to lean on them as much,” Bailey says. “It’s right to surprise an audience and keep them on their toes a bit.”
“It would have been wrong for Kate and Anthony to have got physical any sooner than they did,” argues Bailey. “And I think the payoff is really earned.”
Throughout much of the eight-episode season, Anthony and Kate’s enemies-to- lovers arc is built up via spitting banter as they try everything to deny their feelings for one another. Yet (spoiler alert!), the steam begins to rise once those jabs twist into heavy gazes and angsty closet whisperings, eventually whistling into their passionate confessional in a garden during the penultimate episode.
Series creator Chris Van Dusen also acknowledges that every sex scene in Bridgerton has a purpose. “We never do a sex scene for the sake of doing a sex scene, and we never will,” says Dusen. “All of the intimate scenes have a larger purpose. That was true for Season 1. It’s definitely true for Season 2.”
It’s anyone’s guess if the tone skews more towards thirst or yearning for the eventual third season, it will likely depend on which Bridgerton sibling gets to be chosen as the central figure. Either way, the upcoming prequel series about a young Queen Charlotte and her friend Lady Danbury will likely give us a Hot Girl Ball Season that we deserve.