The fights between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in the Bridget Jones movies were always equal parts dramatic and ridiculous, and it turns out that was the case behind the scenes too.
Hugh recently sat down for a video interview with Vanity Fair, in which he revisited some of his most iconic roles.
Among them was Daniel Cleaver, a character he played in the first two Bridget Jones movies, who wound up coming to blows with Colin’s Mark Darcy in both films.
“The big fight was to stop stuntmen getting involved,” Hugh claimed. “They always want to come in and choreograph the whole thing and say, ‘mate, it’d be great if you swing a right hook and his head’ll go back’.
“I just thought, ‘yeah, in action films, cowboy films, whatever, that’s great, but these are two middle-class Englishmen, and they don’t fight like that’. I’ve seen them fight, and it’s shit.
“So, we managed to ban the stuntman. I think the last thing he contributed was probably the dustbin lid, and after that, it’s just me and Colin messing about.”
However, Hugh recalled that by the time they got round to shooting the sequel, they didn’t find their scuffles quite so easy to shoot.
“On the next film, we had another of these fights, and we’d got older and we both put our backs out,” he revealed, adding that a chiropractor “had to be summoned to the set” to sort the pair out.
And, of course, he couldn’t resist another playful pop at his “frenemy”, referring to him as “very weak” and “virtually a piece of shellfish”, meaning there “wasn’t really a problem” when it came to fighting him.
While Hugh chose not to be part of the third Bridget Jones film, apparently not seeing a place for his character in the story that been planned, he is returning for the fourth, which is due to hit UK cinemas next year.
The Bafta winner also took a moment to open up about how his character has changed in the two decades since Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, saying: “He’s considerably older, 24 years older or something, and I did worry that the same ‘hello… nice little skirt, Jones’ is great, but it’s borderline tragic for a man in his early 60s.
“So, we invented a whole interim story in which he did get together with some woman, and he did have a kid, and then they’re estranged, of course, because he shags her sister. And he hasn’t seen his son for 10 years, and it just made him a bit more [layered].
“I think if he’d just been walking up King’s Road chatting up girls for 24 years, it would have been hard to endure him.”
That same Vanity Fair interview was also where he gave a rather blunt takedown of one of his most iconic rom-com characters.
Watch the full thing for yourself below:
