Stars talk next steps for ‘Bridgerton’s’ Benedict and Sophie

Benedict, the character he plays, will shift from someone who doesn’t “give too much of himself away” to a man who is more than conflicted.

When the heat is turned up, “the cracks start to show,” he says.

Already, we know he found someone at a masked ball who seemed like a possible match. But after a search for the mysterious woman, he regroups and helps a maid who has been thrown out of her family home. That maid — played by Yerin Ha — just so happens to be the woman he pursued.

“What’s lovely about Benedict and Sophie is that from the first time they meet it’s all about what you share and what you hide,” Thompson says. “There’s this constant game between them that never really ends.”

Thompson says fans of the Netflix series approach him “with a little light in their eyes. What they’re seeing, when they see you, is the show. And it’s just wonderful to be a part of something that has that effect on people. It’s the best part of the job.”

While he was part of the series when it began, Thompson never felt he was marking time.

“I’ve been given stuff to do for three seasons, so it didn’t feel like I was sort of waiting for my turn,” he says. “‘Bridgerton’ works because it regenerates and allows each couple to do be different. I can’t do a Jonathan Bailey or a Rege-Jean Page impression or a Luke Newton impression. I can only be me.”

Ha, who doesn’t have Thompson’s tenure on “Bridgerton,” says she relied on Julia Quinn’s novels to understand Sophie.

“I treated that like my Bible,” she says. “Once the scripts came in, it was very much about just being present.”

A veteran of science-fiction films (including “Dune: Prophecy” and “Halo”), Ha says genre doesn’t change the acting goals.

“It’s always about playing the truth of the character and the truth of the scene,” Ha says. “I don’t think of them as different things. I think of it all as very similar.”

The Sophie/Benedict storyline is like a love triangle, Thompson says.

“I love the fact that they meet at this ball and then they meet again but he doesn’t realize it’s the same person … and he sort of ends up in a love triangle,” he says. “There’s real complexity in how they handle the truth and who they are, but also how they hide.”

Ha agrees: “I really love how much a person can change you for the better and bring out the sides that you don’t realize you have or are lying dormant inside you. I find that really romantic when someone shifts your perspective in life.”

Thompson says commitment can be a loss of freedom or the deepest form of freedom.

“The longer it lasts, the more it becomes a bit of a case, really. Making that commitment is a real form of freedom,” he says. “In order to experience that, Benedict has to go through that tunnel of experiencing the death of someone close to him and that instigates this thing in him.”