Warning: this article contains spoilers for the first part of Bridgerton season 4.
Are you watching the latest season of Bridgerton and shouting at your television screen: “Benedict, why can’t you see that Sophie is literally the Lady in Silver?!” Well, Luke Thompson and series showrunner Jess Brownell have some theories.
The actor, who stars as the unsuspecting Bridgerton brother, tells Entertainment Weekly that he believes Benedict fails to realize that Sophie (Yerin Ha) is the mysterious dream girl that he’s been desperately searching for all season because he struggles to conflate fantasy of the Lady in Silver with reality of liking Sophie.
“It’s not really about literally whether or not he would have recognized [her],” Thompson says. “It’s interesting because I think it says something about Benedict, that he is… in some way, it’s his flaw, right? He’s a bit blind.”
Liam Daniel/Netflix
And, as a result, Benedict is unable — or perhaps unwilling — to truly see that the girl he’s been looking for from the masquerade ball is standing right in front of him.
“I mean, from a poetic point of view, it’s like Benedict can’t tie up fantasy and reality,” Thompson continues. “They’re two separate things and he wants them both separately so that he can just do both. The scary thing, I guess, is that falling in love is mixing both of those things. It’s the romance and it’s also being with someone for the long haul in the real world. His M.O. is his weakest spot, really.”
Still, Thompson admits that he doesn’t entirely know why Benedict hasn’t caught on to Sophie’s secret identity by the end of part one.
“It’s a really lovely moment, I think, because it’s sort of unexpected. You’re like, ‘Surely he can see!’ But then we’re all blind, do you know what I mean?” he says. “We all go and do things for years, or don’t think to do things for years, or aren’t aware of things for ages, and then suddenly the penny drops…. We all have blind spots, and there’s Benedict’s.”
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Brownell, meanwhile, believes that it doesn’t even register to Benedict that Sophie could be the Lady in Silver simply because of the class divide that exists between them. “In that day and age, there was just no way that a gentleman would expect a maid to have been at a ball,” she adds.
She acknowledges, though, that “it is a little absurd that he doesn’t recognize her,” especially since Sophie wore a silver mask that only covered the top half of her face at the masquerade ball.
“We talked about putting a giant face mask from chin to hair on her, but it just didn’t really make sense, practically speaking,” Brownell says. “But I think that class division and Benedict’s inability to recognize her is part of what we’re reckoning with in the back half [of the series with] his character.”
Liam Daniel/Netflix
She also pinpoints the “subtle” moment in which Benedict realizes that his feelings for Sophie overshadow his celebrity crush.
“In episode four, you have that moment where Benedict thinks it might be possible that Miss Hollis could be the Lady in Silver,” she says. “She has some similarities. But before he realizes that it’s in fact not her, you notice that Sophie walks in the room. And he’s so drawn to Sophie that he realizes in that moment that he actually doesn’t care if Miss Hollis is the Lady in Silver.”
Brownell adds that viewers will see Benedict become much more forthright with his feelings for Sophie in the second half of the series, which is slated to drop on Feb. 26.
“I think for us on the page, that is the moment where Benedict realizes, ‘I could have the Lady in Silver sitting in front of me right now, but that housemaid who’s just walked in to pour us tea? I care more about her,’” she says. “He still doesn’t make the grand, sweeping, romantic gesture that we want from him, of course, at the end of part one, but he’s getting there.”
The first part of Bridgerton season 4 is streaming now on Netflix.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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