Obviously, actors have all kinds of working experiences that most other people will never go through, but one of the weirder aspects must be acting out either things they'd never do in real life, or things they'd be unlikely to do in front of loads of people. This, of course, includes getting naked and pretending to have sex, which some of the stars of Bridgerton now definitely know a lot about. Season 1 star Regé-Jean Page recently spoke about trying to warn his family about his nude scenes, and how they reacted after watching the actor get steamy in some of the sexiest sex scenes.
As you may recall (because you totally haven't been rewatching the Bridgerton sexytimes for months now, or anything), with much of the focus of Bridgerton Season 1 on Regé-Jean Page's Simon, The Duke of Hastings and Phoebe Dynevor's Daphne Bridgerton falling in love, the two actors ended up getting horizontal (and vertical...and diagonal) several times on the Regency-set romance. They also doffed their clothing here and there, and Page just revealed that he made an effort to warn his folks about his nakedness, and talked about how they responded to all of it.
During The Hollywood Reporter's Drama Actor Roundtable, Page was asked if they were "sufficiently prepared," and said:
No one was sufficiently prepared. I wasn’t sufficiently prepared, and I was there. (Laughs.) I think people were grateful for the intensity of the romantic aspects of Bridgerton; I’m not sure how grateful I was to watch it for myself. It was overwhelming. But I think people were looking to be overwhelmed. My family doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by my backside, specifically, too often, but they’ll take it on this occasion because everyone seems to be terribly happy.
I don't know Regé-Jean Page or his family, but, even so, this tracks, doesn't it? I cannot imagine what it would be like to decide, sort of in a vacuum, that doing nudity is just fine for a particular instance in a specific role, and then realizing that everyone is going to actually see you naked, including your family. And, in the case of what we saw Page do on Bridgerton, it wasn't a bunch of random Simon's-just-gotten-out-of-the-bath nudity, but a fair amount of The-Duke-is-banging-his-wife-now nudity, which has to add a whole different level of weirdness to it, especially for his relatives.
Certainly, one of the things people were shocked by, but also entirely pleased with, is what Regé-Jean Page referred to as "the intensity of the romantic aspects" of Bridgerton. Period pieces, particularly romances, don't usually show such a racy view of what people got up to in the olden times. Regency romances tend to be very chaste, no-bare-butt affairs, and this is one of the many reasons the mega-hit rocked viewers' socks off, whether they were Taylor Swift fans or not.
As Page mentioned, though, while it sounds like his family was, indeed, taken aback by his bottom, they seem to be just as happy that it made an impact on the millions upon millions of Bridgerton fans worldwide, and that's really the best reaction that he could have hoped for.
Regé-Jean Page won't be a member of the Bridgerton Season 2 cast, but there are tons of new players already announced, and a new main couple in the form of Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma, so you can bet it will be worth the watch. We don't know when, exactly, the series will return just yet, but you can check out our guide to 2021 summer TV and investigate all of the upcoming romantic TV shows in the meantime!
