Jonathan Bailey has mixed feelings about the upcoming release of Bridgerton's sophomore season. In a new GQ HYPE interview, the 33-year-old actor admits that "the idea that [Bridgerton] is coming out again is a bit of a rug pull," noting that the whole thing is "quite scary."
The nerves come from the success of the Netflix series' first season, which saw Bailey star as Lord Anthony Bridgerton. The show catapulted Bailey into fame basically overnight, turning him into a sex symbol, though that's a title he'd like to avoid.
"Any actor who thinks they're a sex symbol? Cringe," he says.
The star-making turn came when Anthony was in a supporting role, as the brother to Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) amid her love story with Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page). This time around, though, it's Bailey's character whose love story will play out.
In an interview with Glamour, Simone Ashley, who plays Kate Sharma, Bailey's onscreen love interest in season 2, teases what fans can expect from their "very enemies-to-lovers story."
"They have a lot of friction at the beginning because they resonate with whatever traits that annoy each other within themselves, and then that breeds chemistry," Ashley tells the outlet. "They’re both used to people walking away and being isolated, being left alone, being left with a lot of pressures and responsibilities, being slightly misunderstood."
She adds, "I think they met each other and it was like, 'It takes one to know one. I see a lot of me in you, and I’m not going to walk away from you.'"
Meanwhile, show creator Chris Van Dusen tells GQ Hype, "Going into the first season, I wanted to fully break Anthony, so that we could put him back together in the second."
For Bailey, as he went into season 2, he "started to think about [Anthony's] charm, what it means to be a rake, and how his anxiety and self-hatred plays into that."
The character, Bailey says, also forced him to "think about love a lot."
"You put your life experiences into [the work]," he explains. "What's most interesting is not necessarily having to talk about what that is, and keeping a sense of privacy."
While privacy in his off-screen life remains of paramount importance, Bailey, who identifies as queer, did open up to the mag about how, for some time, he "thought that in order to be happy I needed to be straight."
That feeling largely stemmed from something Bailey's actor friend was once told during pilot season.
"At the time he was told, 'There's two things we don't want to know: if you're an alcoholic or if you're gay,'" Bailey recalls. "All it takes is for one of those people in that position of power to say that, and it ripples through. So, yeah, of course I thought that. Of course I thought that in order to be happy I needed to be straight."
Eventually, though, Bailey "reached a point where I thought, 'F**k this, I'd much prefer to hold my boyfriend's hand in public or be able to put my own face picture on Tinder and not be so concerned about that than getting a part.'"
Bridgerton season 2 will debut March 25 on Netflix.
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