Hugh Grant hasn’t seen Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy yet, but just reading the script got him emotional.
While the actor, 64, promoted his thriller Heretic during his Wednesday, Nov. 13 appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show with Julia Cunninghamhe said he teared up when he first read the screenplay for the fourth Bridget Jones movie with Renée Zellweger.
“I haven’t seen it, but I, obviously, I know the script and I’m a harsh judge of script, and it was really good. Really moving as well as funny, because it’s based on Helen Fielding…. This last book is based on her own experience of losing her husband and bringing up her kids alone,” Grant said, when asked what he is able to share about the movie.
“It’s got a huge amount of heart. It made me cry. Have I made it sound too dumb? It’s also extremely funny.”
Grant portrays Daniel Cleaver, one of Zellweger’s character’s love interests throughout the Bridget Jones franchise. He costarred in the 2001 original and 2004 sequel The Edge of Reasonbut Daniel is presumed dead throughout 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby after a plane crash.
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“That was when she has a baby, and it had a great setup that she’s pregnant and doesn’t know whether it’s Darcy’s baby or Daniel’s baby,” Grant said, when asked why he did not appear in the third movie.
Grant added, “That was marvelous. But I could never work out how Daniel would handle either being a father or not being a father. Couldn’t make him work. And we went through agony months and months and in the end I said, ‘I think I’d better sit this one out.’ So I did. And they made a wonderful film anyway.”
Alamy
The recently released trailer for Mad About the Boy revealed to audiences that Colin Firth’s series favorite Mark Darcy has died, leaving Bridget a widow. While the end of Bridget Jones’s Baby revealed that Daniel was found alive, Grant joked that “officially, Colin and I are both dead” in the new installment. “You just occasionally cut to two dead bodies,” he joked.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is on Peacock Feb. 13.
