Welcome to the Ton! Meet the 3 New Actors Joining ‘Bridgerton’ Season 3

Another Bridgerton romance! Following Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate Sharma’s (Simone Ashley) epic slow burn romance, fans have questioned if Benedict Bridgerton’s (Luke Thompson) journey to find love would be put on hold.

The season 2 finale, which was released in March 2022, ended with Anthony and Kate finally accepting their strong feelings for one another. After the older Sharma sister accepted his proposal, the couple happily enjoyed the next chapter in their lives — which included another iconic game of Pall Mall.

According to the Julia Quinn books that inspired that hit Netflix series, the second eldest Bridgerton brother would be up next. Ahead of the season 2 premiere, Thompson opened up about the pros that come with shifting the focus every season.

“I think the advantage of having a series where you switch the leads like that every season is brilliant because it gives it a whole new breath of fresh air. We’ve got a whole new family in there. Even just the feel of the show — it goes somewhere different, which is so fun to share,” he told The Wrap in March 2022.

The U.K. native noted that he didn’t ask too much about his character’s story line before filming his scenes.

“You don’t have too much of an inkling and actually, in a strange kind of way, as an actor, you don’t really want too much of an inkling because if you do, if you know exactly where you’re going, you can end up doing an awful lot of signposting and explaining your journey through things rather than actually just living it,” he explained at the time. “I think actually, in a strange kind of way, as in life, we don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. It’s sort of better to not know too much.”

During season 2, viewers got to see Benedict helping out his older brother amid Anthony’s struggles with his love life.

“When you’re siblings, I guess you’re sort of made of the same stuff. You have huge similarities, which simultaneously makes you a really good person to confide in, but also sort of the worst person because you’re too similar,” The Club alum added about the siblings. “And so actually, I think what’s lovely about their relationship is that in all of those scenes, you sort of feel like the needling and this sort of teasing is actually their sort of way of understanding each other and themselves.”

Benedict, for his part, found himself confused when it came to his identity as an artist after being accepted into the Royal Academy. The second season ended with Benedict discovering that Anthony paid for him to join the school — which called their future dynamic into question.

“It’s really fun to play because it’s very complex,” Thompson said about the ups and downs between the duo. “It’s very difficult to get hold of and it is not a straightforward relationship. And that also makes it a lot of fun to watch, I think, because they don’t let each other off the hook.”

That same month, executive producer Shonda Rhimes hinted that there may be a story shakeup. “There’s 8 Bridgerton siblings so there are eight books. We are definitely planning on following each one of their romantic stories,” she shared during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “We are not necessarily going in order. But we are going to be seeing each of the siblings and their story.”

In May 2022, Nicola Coughlan confirmed that the romance in the fourth novel between Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington will be the focus of season 3. At the time, new showrunner Jess Brownell, who is taking over for Chris Van Dusen, broke down the reason behind the decision.

“I really feel like it’s Colin and Penelope’s time. Because we’ve been watching both of these actors on our screens since Season 1, we’ve already invested in them a little bit. We know who they are as people,” she told Variety that same month. “I feel like, especially in the last season, there are these moments of tension between them where it’s like, Colin walks up to the line of almost realizing that Penelope has feelings for him but doesn’t quite get there. Instead of treading water on that dynamic, we wanted to push it into their season. It really felt like the perfect moment to tee it up.”

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