Naturally, we’ve got to start with Bridget’s apartment. Ask any Londoner if this is a normal place to live and they’ll likely laugh in your face, but the setting feels suitably ‘London’ for the Bridget Jones films. The protagonist lives there throughout the first few films, and the flat serves as the setting for her babbling internal monologues, and visits from her on-again-off-again partners, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Borough Market is a bustling neighborhood in the city centre, home to one of the largest and oldest food markets in the city. Come on a Sunday for freshly baked pastries from Bread Ahead or The Ginger Pig’s iconic sausage rolls, or on a Friday evening when pub-goers spill into the streets, drinks in hand, feasting on wraps from Applebee’s Fishbox or Taiwanese buns from Bao.
After years of living in Borough Market, Bridget moves to Hampstead for Mad About The Boy. We spoke to filmmaker Michael Morris when the movie came out. “Hampstead is an important part of the movie: it has such a village, community feel, and I hope that people coming into the film who don’t know it see what a spectacular part of the city it is,” he said. The film also saw the cast and crew take to the streets of South Kensington. “South Ken has a different feel, with those white stucco houses. There’s a view at the beginning of the film, along a typical South Ken street with the white pillars and the V&A museum in the background, where we see Colin [Firth] for the first time,” Michael adds.
Notting Hill
Not too far from South Ken is the eternally charming streets of Notting Hill. With its postcard-perfect pastel-colored houses, cutesy cafés and neighborhood restaurants, it’s a sure-shot setting for a rom-com like Bridget Jones. In the latest film, Mad About The Boy, Bridget goes on a date with Roxster McDuff, played by Leo Woodall (of The White Lotus fame), to the well-loved Notting Hill institution, Electric Cinema, one of the UK’s oldest working theaters, and the country’s first black-owned cinema.
