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Bridget Jones, Britain’s best-loved and most hapless romcom heroine, stands in a creased miniskirt and gaping cardie in the centre of London, clutching her diary and a pen. Alcohol units: 0, cigarettes: 0, calories: 0, weight: 31 stone – and, according to the actor Sally Phillips, “no intention of losing any of it”.
Phillips was in Leicester Square on Monday morning to unveil a life-size bronze of the comedy character, alongside Helen Fielding – who first cooked her up in a newspaper column 30 years ago, and whose novels have now been translated into more than 40 languages – and Renée Zellweger, star of the four Bridget Jones films (with a combined box office of $900m (£683m)).
The statue joins the likes of Paddington, Harry Potter and Charlie Chaplin as part of Westminster council’s Scenes in the Square scheme to further cement the location’s credentials as a cinema hub. It is home to four multiplexes and the setting of most of London’s red-carpet premieres.
A pink carpet was laid in honour of bronze Bridget, who had been planted in a bed of plastic fuchsia flowers and draped with a purple silk sheet that required considerable tugging when time came for the big reveal – an on-brand snag for a character famed for her bumbling news reports.
“It seems really cute,” was Zellweger’s verdict. “I mean, it’s really so weird, but it’s really cute.” Seeing herself immortalised in this way was “not something you expect to happen”, she said, especially while alive. Her ambitions when making the first film 24 years ago had been more modest: “I was just hoping I wouldn’t get fired.”
That the statue clutches stationery rather than her traditional accoutrements of cigarette and chardonnay was “fine”, said Phillips. “She’s not very drunk in the fourth film. She works without wine because the fuck-ups are not just alcohol related.”
But while the statue’s slimline figure also seemed inspired by the most recent film – in which a widowed Bridget no longer binges on vodka and ice-cream but juggles single motherhood and two new suitors – her wardrobe hails from an earlier age. “She’s Mad About the Boy-era weight with Bridget Jones’s Diary-era clothes,” said Phillips carefully. “Very, very strongly put,” nodded Fielding.
Also not on display were Bridget’s famed “mummy knickers” to smooth her silhouette – unnecessary, said a representative from the 3D Eye studio responsible for the artwork, as “sculpting in clay probably works in a similar way to sculpting pants”.
“Her stomach is as flat as a pancake,” said Fielding, impressed, although she did later concede there seemed to be “a little bit sort of hanging over” the beltline – an effect enhanced by the artistic decision to leave her three bottom buttons undone and the cardigan apparently parted to reveal a triangle of torso.
Might fans be tempted to rub her tummy for luck? “How sweet is that,” said Zellweger of the idea. “I never imagined it. I love it so much! Maybe we should all go rub her belly?” And her feelings on the exposed midriff? “Well, it’s very real.”
Also in attendance was Eric Fellner, co-chair of Working Title, the production company behind the movies. “Portraiture is difficult enough,” he said. “But doing it in 3D is even more challenging. They’ve got the attitude nicely, which is what’s most important.”
Fielding said that while sculptures are not what she seeks out first on her travels – “that’s bars” – she did take some statue selfies with Jilly Cooper in September, when both novelists were at Chatsworth for an event hosted by Queen Camilla.
“We walked around all the statues deciding whether we liked the naked men or the dogs best. Jilly liked the dogs and I preferred the men. But we liked both of them really.”
Fielding said she hoped people might bring packets of chocolate and Silk Cut to lie at Bridget’s feet in pilgrimage, echoing the scene in her novel in which her heroine lays flowers at the gates to Kensington Palace after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
The popularity of her character, she said, was down to “the gap between how we all feel we’re expected to be and how we actually are. Bridget doesn’t have a superpower. She can’t fly like Mary Poppins. She can’t do wizardry. She’s certainly not a bear.
“But those very British qualities of kindness, support for your friends, of community, and the ability to laugh at all your imperfections – the perfection of imperfection – makes her relatable to people.”
Her continued appeal, especially with people who weren’t born when she first appeared, Fielding credited to an escalating crisis of confidence among the young. “When I first wrote Bridget, we were just being hit by mass media Photoshopping magazines: really skinny 90s girls in adverts. But Gen Z have got it a hundred-thousand times worse because they’re not just seeing that at a distance. They’re seeing their friends filtered. There’s this massive culture of presenting a fake version of your life.
“But they also feel guilty about worrying about their bodies because of body positivity. So imagine being Bridget and feeling bad about your body and feeling bad about feeling bad.”
At a literary festival in Magaluf recently, an influencer told Fielding that “Bridget helped her not feel weird and bad or guilty about herself. In Japan, these tiny beautiful women come up and say they identify with her. A lot of different people feel that she comforts them just by being human.”
The fourth film in the series was released in February; its stars, Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor, as well as director Mark Morris, were also present at the unveiling, where Morris said he hoped a fifth film might follow.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy took £46m in the UK and remains the second highest-grossing film of the year, but went straight to streaming in the US – to Morris and Fellner’s disappointment. “It’s deemed that, in America, anything that isn’t a big cinematic event ends up on streaming,” said Fellner. “We disagree and think that good stories really work in a communal shared experience.”
Fellner was keen to flag comparisons between Fielding and another female author whose most famous creation is immortalised in Leicester Square: JK Rowling.
“Creativity from one individual can become this massive thing on a global scale,” he said. “Politicians like to look at industry as hard things but creativity is an industry in its own right, and you need to get more young people from all walks of life able to come up with ideas like Joanne [Rowling] and Helen. The more intellectual property that’s created the better it is for this country.”
Fielding said she expected Keir Stamer would take a keen interest in the morning’s events, given that he is often taken to be the inspiration for dashing and morally unimpeachable human rights lawyer Mark Darcy (played by Colin Firth). “I’m sure his attention will be focused on this matter,” she said, adding her hope that the prime minister would be reminded to “take the arts seriously and invest in it”.
She also urged that funding overall be fairly distributed, rather than concentrated in the capital. “I’m from Leeds,” she said. “And all the humour in Bridget is based on northern comedy; on the joke of bringing fancy things down to earth. There’s so much creative talent and humour up north, but honestly, if I speak at the Yorkshire Children’s Charity or something, I’m shocked.”
Fielding likened present-day northern England to the environments she’d witnessed working for Comic Relief 40 years ago, “I feel like I’m back in east Africa in the 80s: kids with no shoes, families without food. The north-south divide in Britain is much bigger than in most westernised countries.”
In Leicester Square, the crowds began to disperse, the pink carpet appeared a touch more muddy, and the sight of a small metal woman with a winsome face and uncertain buttoning began to feel like more of a fixture.
“I think we know it’s not Nelson’s column,” said Fielding. “It may not be there in three centuries. But nevertheless it is quite a lovely thing that Bridget means something in this country.”
