Keeping up with Bridget Jones

Nearly 25 years after the first of the films about the ultimate singleton, Renée Zellweger discusses the resting place for her character's massive knickers

- HOLLIE RICHARDSON

MARK DARCY IS DEAD. Bridget Jones fans have been grieving since 2013, when Helen Fielding's third novel, Mad About the Boy, was published sans Bridget's hot human-rights lawyer husband. The outcry made front page news. People could not believe that romcom's favourite reindeer-jumperwearing dish, who proved that - ding dong! - nice men do kiss like that, was no more.

"Someone ran out of the pub shouting: 'You've murdered Colin Firth!"" Fielding says over a video call, tulips arranged on a huge wooden table in the background. "I just want to point out that he is fictional. Colin Firth is not dead." His reaction after being told over the phone? ""You've murdered the wrong one; it should have been Mrs Grant," grins Fielding. Grant plays Firth's love rival, the publishing scoundrel Daniel Cleaver. "They call each other Mrs Firth and Mrs Grant." But how did Renée Zellweger, who has played Bridget for nearly 25 years, feel? "Rotten!" she says, when we meet a few days after Fielding's call. "I was a crazy person mourning this fictional character. I was weeping. It was also for that shared experience with Colin: seeing him in his suit and beautiful coat, with his briefcase, looking dapper and very Mark Darcy.

This is the end... we won't get to do this any more." Today, the only blue thing about Zellweger as she nestles in a Claridge's hotel suite is her invitingly fluffy jumper, matched with hotel slippers. She is warm and softly spoken as she pours water for everybody, including her new co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leo Woodall. But she also has a mischievous laugh that can be heard right down the corridor. It erupts surprisingly frequently: when she notices that journalists are eating biscuits with her face on them ("I've never craved a cookie with my face on it before, but suddenly I do!"), and when Ejiofor explains that I am talking about children's toys and not sex toys ("I did pause").