“Our mother also has an obsession with great love stories,” Luke Thompson’s Benedict warns in season three of Bridgerton. But there is a method to this matchmaking matriarch’s madness. By season’s end, Ruth Gemmell’s Violet Bridgerton has married off two more of her eight children (she’s halfway to an empty nest!) and inched toward a second chance romance of her own.
“It’s a real privilege to play Violet because I’ve read all nine novels, and I know what kind of a linchpin she is,” the actor tells Vanity Fair days before the season’s second half premieres. “I’ve only ever played really shit mums or murderers, so it was quite nice to be someone of merit for a change. I wish I was like Violet. I’m nothing like her, other than the love for those children.”
Gemmell, who broke out opposite Colin Firth in 1997’s Nick Hornby adaptation, Fever Pitch, went on to play mean mommies in projects like Tracy Beaker: The Movie of Me and EastEnders. Though she has no children of her own in real life, Gemmell lights up when speaking about her onscreen offspring, whom she calls “a lovely bunch of kids”: “I absolutely love them. We have such a laugh.”
Each season, it is Violet Bridgerton who must guide the show’s central love story along—aiding Phoebe Dynevor’s Daphne in season one, Jonathan Bailey’s Anthony in season two, and now Luke Newton’s Colin. But at the start of the Netflix series’ third season, Violet is treading lightly. “Considering I messed up quite badly with Eloise last season, I’m very nervous about her,” says Gemmell. “And I’m nervous of not pushing Francesca enough because she’s the quiet one. So in some respects, she’s beside herself that she can meddle with Colin.”
And meddle Violet does. Gemmell’s favorite scenes of the season place her in the crosshairs with Newton’s Colin as he comes to terms with his romantic feelings for Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope, who has been a perennial presence in the Bridgerton household thanks to her close friendship with Eloise (Claudia Jessie). “With all her children, she knows them better than they do, and just waits for them to catch up,” Gemmell explains. “For example, in the books she’s always pushing her sons to go and dance with the wallflower Penelope. And in that ball when he’s supposedly asking about what I wish for Francesca and [there is] the realization that the object of his desire is Penelope, it’s lovely for Violet to realize, Right, we’re there now. I just need to navigate a little bit more.”
In the season’s third episode, Colin asks Violet if friendship can ever bloom into something more; a few eagle-eyed fans have noticed that a barely visible Violet is standing in the background as Colin then approaches Penelope from across the ballroom. That episode’s director, Andrew Ahn, later revealed that Gemmell “wanted to be there because it was important for her character,” calling her a “generous” and “dedicated” actor. “It was important, even if you don’t really see me, that she’s clocking everything that he does,” says Gemmell, “so that she can prompt and push him in the right direction until he wakes up and realizes it himself. Those are the things written between the lines—and they’re important to me.”
In the following episode, a hungover Colin—hell-bent on messing up his own romantic future—briefly snaps at his mother. “I do not blame you for putting on armor lately,” she tells him, “but you must be careful that the armor does not rust and set so that you might never be able to take it off.” She then gently points out that should Colin choose to stay home, he may miss Penelope’s proposal from another suitor. “I really relished being the cross mum who thought he was being a bit of an idiot,” says Gemmell. “I clearly quite enjoy taking my children down a peg or two.”
Violet also notes similarities between Colin and Penelope’s love story and the one she shared with her children’s late father, Edmund. With that in mind, which one of the Bridgerton children does Violet see the most of herself in? “Oh God, that’s…blimey,” Gemmell begins. “I’m often asked the question of, who’s your favorite? Going back to the books, she misses the one who isn’t there. So they can all be an irritant and a balm to her all at the same time. But who is most like her? This is a really rubbish answer, but probably all of them in a very different way. That’s a real cop-out, isn’t it?”
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