Renée Zellweger: Bridget Jones ‘evolved’ past 1st film’s anti-gay slur: ‘It’s so different now’ (EXCLUSIVE)
"I love that relationship," adds star of Bridget's friendship with her gay friend Tom, adding: "The four of them together, they're just this unit"
Renée Zellweger has praised how her new film Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy has “evolved” beyond offensive language used in the first film.
In the original Bridget Jones’s Diary film, which was released in 2001, the titular main character uses an anti-gay slur to describe one of her best friends, Tom.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Attitude ahead of the fourth film’s release on Friday (14 February 2025), Renée called changing tides around language “a great thing”.
“People ask, have you seen things change?” – Renée Zellweger
“That’s an interesting point,” Renée said when Attitude reminded her of the word used in the first film.
“People ask about: ‘How do you think the film, the series, has evolved? Have you seen things change?’ Absolutely. The language. The humour. All of it.”
“It’s so different now,” added the star alongside co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leo Woodall. “And that’s a great thing.”
Addressing Bridget’s friendship with Tom (played in the films by James Callis) still going strong 25 years later, the star said: “Why wouldn’t it! I love that relationship.”
“It feels like the four of them together, they’re just this unit. They’d be incomplete without each any one of them.”
Directed by Michael Morris, the new film also stars Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson.
The Bridget Jones film series also includes 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy: the official synopsis
Pressured by her Urban Family — Shazzer, Jude and Tom, her work colleague Miranda, her mother, and her gynaecologist Dr. Rawlings (Oscar winner Emma Thompson) — to forge a new path toward life and love, Bridget goes back to work and even tries out the dating apps, where she’s soon pursued by a dreamy and enthusiastic younger man (White Lotus’s Leo Woodall). Now juggling work, home and romance, Bridget grapples with the judgment of the perfect mums at school, worries about Billy as he struggles with the absence of his father, and engages in a series of awkward interactions with her son’s rational-to-a-fault science teacher (Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor).