Helen Fielding, BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY
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[0:44]Helen Fielding is the author of Bridget Jones's Diary, which now has a 25th anniversary
[0:50]edition coming out with even more Bridget, which you must get in it's hilarious.
[0:56]She's also the author of Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy, which is coming out as a movie.
[1:02]In addition, she wrote Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason, and Bridget Jones's Baby, The
[1:08]Diaries.
[1:09]She was part of the screenwriting team on the associated movies, and has two children
[1:13]and lives in London and Los Angeles.
[1:15]This was a huge dream to do because, my gosh, like everyone else in the world, I have
[1:21]been obsessed with Bridget Jones's Diary forever, I guess for 25 years, and, wow, to talk
[1:28]to Helen directly was a huge thrill, and she was just as charming, funny, and real as
[1:33]I had hoped.
[1:34]I hope you enjoy our episode.
[1:36]Welcome, Helen.
[1:37]I am so excited to have you here on Totally Booked With Zibi to talk about Bridget Jones's
[1:43]Diary and your new anniversary edition with even more Bridget.
[1:48]So thank you for that.
[1:49]We missed her.
[1:50]That was awesome.
[1:51]And it congrats.
[1:52]It's great to be here, and it's sort of unbelievable that people are still reading and
[1:57]talking about Bridget.
[1:58]After all this time, I had literally no idea.
[2:02]I thought writing it is a newspaper column anonymously when I was trying to be a serious
[2:09]literary journalist and novelist, and they asked me to write a column as myself because
[2:16]I was like a single girl in my 30s in London, and the newspapers were full of columns
[2:20]about single girls and their sex lives and things.
[2:24]I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, but I will make someone up and keep it anonymous.
[2:28]And I just, it was literally a way of paying the mortgage, and then everyone started to
[2:34]praise it.
[2:35]So I said, it's me.
[2:36]It's me.
[2:37]I'd known that all these years later, and so many people went to Reddit, I wouldn't have
[2:42]that right.
[2:43]Any of those things, that was the emotional honesty that perhaps made people relate to
[2:50]it.
[2:51]I just didn't think it would ever be exposed, really.
[2:54]And you write about this in the new section in the back of the book, which I loved learning
[2:59]about and hearing about the journey and how Bridget was just like someone in your office,
[3:03]right?
[3:04]Isn't that what you said?
[3:05]And you just liked that name or a friend of someone in your office, something like that?
[3:08]So, Ross, do you know, like newspapers are always on a deadline, they were like, okay,
[3:12]yes, do it.
[3:13]Quick Gina.
[3:14]They took a picture of the secretary in the office.
[3:16]It was very, very pretty, and sort of it was a lovely picture.
[3:21]So she got a lot of sort of hassle.
[3:24]It was pre-me too.
[3:26]And then I had a friend at work when I was working at the BBC, and she was always talking
[3:31]about her friend Bridget, who was always getting to trouble Bridget this and Bridget
[3:35]that.
[3:36]And then they were like, okay, well, what's the surname?
[3:39]So I just said, Jones, just, it was that casual.
[3:44]And then later, someone pointed out to me, of course, Henry Fielding and Tom Jones.
[3:49]So then I said yes, of course, it was the literary illusion that the book was in a terrible
[3:55]argument.
[3:56]And you said, also, when you were thinking about, you know, serious versus non-serious
[4:03]journalism, and you were like, my first novel was based, you know, we had this very serious
[4:08]premise and a journalist went to it where Africa or somewhere to volunteer, and you're like,
[4:13]you're like, but nobody read that.
[4:15]So thanks very much.
[4:17]It's like, you know, when Bridget came out, there's also so silly and trivial.
[4:22]And I'm like, people, I wrote one set in refugee camps.
[4:27]Yeah, refugee camps.
[4:28]I think that's a little bit of that book now, but I think, no, I think the thing is with Bridget,
[4:33]it's not.
[4:34]It was never intended as anything.
[4:36]It was, it was just a pretty honest little column, but exaggerated, obviously.
[4:43]I mean, and then it became more of a sort of as if it was a sociological statement,
[4:50]but it was just a piece of emotional honesty.
[4:52]So I think the interesting thing is the reaction to it.
[4:55]It's not the character herself.
[4:57]It's why the people respond to her is the interesting question.
[5:02]And why do you think?
[5:04]I think it is that people behind the curtains, into it's really, I mean, I was baffled
[5:11]by this.
[5:12]I just couldn't understand that I would go to Japan on the first book tour.
[5:16]These beautiful, slim, successful women relating to the anxieties and worries about weight
[5:24]and worries about being good enough that I was writing about.
[5:27]I came to the conclusion that it is at heart about the gap between how you feel you
[5:33]are supposed to be and how you really are.
[5:38]That's the thing with Bridget.
[5:40]It's the gap between intention.
[5:43]I am not going to sleep with him and what actually happens cut to she is in bed with him.
[5:48]And it's it's always that I think that's at the heart of it.
[5:53]It's that sort of kinetic thing that makes the joke.
[5:56]It still goes on in my life.
[5:59]You know, my every time I try and get above myself or more organized than I can be.
[6:04]For example, when my daughter was born, she was born by C-section and I thought, I'll
[6:11]get head of the game here.
[6:12]I'm going to do the birth announcement.
[6:15]You know, get the email ready and you know, this is the day she's been born, this is
[6:19]a name, do and instead of pressing save, I press send all so that everyone you've got
[6:29]this announcement and then I said, we were almost, so I'm really sorry.
[6:34]I haven't actually had a thing just that and then when I came back, I couldn't then
[6:41]send another one saying actually, I had to baby that, so that was that was just me getting
[6:47]a bit too organized beyond my capabilities, but it was really funny.
[6:52]So I think I find the way women relate to each other.
[6:56]I mean, I'm not a sociologist, but I find is what we do is we form little communities
[7:02]and we support each other by telling each other stories like that.
[7:07]We don't say, oh, I'm marvelous and I'm thin and successful and we say, oh my God, you'll
[7:12]never guess what, I just don't get me a glass of wine and then laugh and share that
[7:21]we're all kind of human and we've got things up, but we're still kind and nice and
[7:26]mean for the best and love each other and I think that's the way the bridge it works.
[7:33]It's reassuring that everyone's life is a bit of a mess behind the curtains, you know,
[7:38]we're not all perfect and that you can still, there's a ride, that's what, that's life
[7:46]that's people, you know.
[7:47]I think you're right, I think you get to the heart of what makes us who we are, right?
[7:52]How can any of us be perfect and you don't know, right?
[7:56]I find it's so crazy we walk down the street and nobody knows.
[8:00]They don't know what we're going through, where we are in our lives, like what's on our
[8:04]plates and yet you have to be like, yes, I'm fine, everything's great.
[8:08]How are you?
[8:09]Let me check out here, and of course that's not what it's like, but you have to, the
[8:14]way that you've captured it though, other people have tried, right, quote unquote, to do
[8:18]this, right?
[8:19]Other people want to be emotionally honest and vulnerable, but the humor, I think, also
[8:25]is what makes this so great because we could just beat ourselves up all day long about
[8:31]all the things, but instead you give us permission to laugh at ourselves, which I think
[8:37]we all need because it can feel so oppressive.
[8:39]Well, exactly, I mean, I think that, I think humor is a really good way of processing
[8:45]the world.
[8:46]It's because it's, because starting makes you happy to laugh and it's bonding, but basically
[8:54]all jokes come out of something which doesn't fit together, that's what makes a little
[9:01]atomic explosion that makes the joke, so comedy and tragedy are sort of the same thing.
[9:08]And so sometimes people say to me, get angry, Helen, you know, don't be all funny, and
[9:18]I don't choose to get angry, you know, obviously things happen to me like they happen
[9:23]to everybody, and as you live a longer life, you go through all sorts of things, but
[9:28]my choice is to deal with things by finding the funny side of it, and that is also the
[9:36]choice of my friends and the family that I grew up with, you know, I grew up in the north
[9:44]of England in a mill town where it was rather sooty, and the basic currency there was just
[9:53]laughing at things, you know, laughing together about things, having fun, fun was a thing.
[10:00]He was a concept.
[10:01]So I do actually think it's quite an intelligent way
[10:05]of processing the world, and much better than going like that.
[10:10]What has happened?
[10:10]Has anything happened lately since the childbirth?
[10:14]Like, what's something that happened yesterday?
[10:15]The ether was funny.
[10:17]What happened recently?
[10:18]Which was that, OK, this was in the summer.
[10:21]Because we were with climate change.
[10:23]There are extremes of climate.
[10:24]So the moment it's freezing here.
[10:26]But in the summer, it was boiling.
[10:27]And there's no air con.
[10:30]And I was somebody out in the back.
[10:33]The doorbell rang at the front.
[10:35]So I sort of wrapped a kind of towel around me
[10:39]and went to get the, you know, I was on package.
[10:42]But then the door shut behind me.
[10:44]So then I was stuck basically in my underwear
[10:48]and a towel with no shoes and no foam.
[10:52]And I couldn't get back in the house.
[10:55]I thought about going to the kid's school,
[10:57]and I thought, oh, no, no, no, like this.
[10:59]I can't ring anyone up.
[11:01]So I sort of loped around the corner to my friend's house
[11:05]rang the doorbell because I know she's got a spare key.
[11:08]But only her husband was in.
[11:10]So he said, come in, come in, come in.
[11:13]And he was having some problem that, you know,
[11:17]we always processed our problem.
[11:18]So he said, come sit out of the back.
[11:20]And then he was talking through this thing.
[11:24]And then there was a key in the door.
[11:26]And he was choose.
[11:27]And I thought, oh, no, good, how am I going to explain?
[11:31]I'm alone in the house with her husband in my underwear
[11:34]with a towel wrap round me in this sort of disheveled piece.
[11:40]And if there had been anyone else, except for good friends,
[11:43]you know, she would have obviously looked like
[11:46]I was having a family with a husband,
[11:48]but it never occurred to either of them,
[11:51]but you could see how that could happen.
[11:54]You could see how it all could happen.
[11:56]And that's the thing about jokes and bridges.
[11:58]Not like she's always falling over and landing in a puzzle.
[12:02]It's things that you can actually see how they happen.
[12:04]It's like when I made the blue soup in the first book,
[12:09]I was rushing.
[12:10]I got above myself.
[12:12]I was going to make this really fancy dinner.
[12:15]I wanted to make this to us for an explanation reasons
[12:18]because my friends knew it was all kind of like this.
[12:22]And it said, tie some leaks and things together with string.
[12:26]And now you only have blue string that sort of could be fine.
[12:30]And then poor cream in OK fine fine.
[12:33]And then looked to it.
[12:35]And I thought, oh, God, it's blue.
[12:37]And it wasn't like slapstick.
[12:41]There was reasons why that happened
[12:42]because I was making a wheel that needed string
[12:46]but I just never needed no string.
[12:50]Well, I feel like your brand of comedy and motor ability
[12:55]and all of it has never been more needed than now.
[12:59]And I know people probably feel this all the time.
[13:01]But it is just the antidote to all of the stress of the world
[13:06]which just continues to escalate.
[13:07]So I feel like people will cling to this forever
[13:11]because it is an escape that people so desperately need
[13:15]and has a unique way of getting us to where we need to be.
[13:19]I mean that, can you imagine what that means
[13:22]to arrive to hear that?
[13:23]Because I was, you know, I was a pretty struggling journalist
[13:28]when I wrote this and I'm living from check to check.
[13:31]And so many books were published in the world
[13:35]just so many books.
[13:38]And the idea that something I wrote is still being read
[13:44]is pretty amazing to me.
[13:47]And, you know, I've got an 18 year old daughter
[13:51]and the fact that her friends are now reading it.
[13:55]And if I go to a book event that there's those jensies
[14:00]that they're in England and they've got this
[14:02]frazzled English woman look, which I think is the British
[14:04]Jones look, they have like messy hair and a scarf
[14:07]that doesn't match the hat.
[14:09]And I just find that really, really moving
[14:13]that they're related to something that I wrote all that time
[14:17]will go.
[14:18]I loved what you were saying about how this continues
[14:21]to appeal to different age groups
[14:22]and as I was rereading it, I was like, oh,
[14:24]it's like completely holds up.
[14:26]I thought maybe what would this be like 25 years later?
[14:30]And I've read it actually several times over the years
[14:32]but it totally holds up.
[14:33]And all your new stuff at the end is hilarious.
[14:35]And then you think, well, of course, people are still reading it.
[14:38]People are, this is gonna sound so stupid.
[14:40]People are still people.
[14:41]Like, we still have all the same needs emotionally
[14:44]and those are not something that expire with time.
[14:47]No, I mean, I think the stuff that is quite shocking now
[14:53]is the workplace sexism.
[14:56]Right.
[14:57]You know, Mr. Tit's pervert.
[14:59]Right.
[15:00]And in Daniel, but that one's confusing because that,
[15:04]the Daniel thing is sort of reciprocal flirtation.
[15:10]And I don't know quite how you deal with that, really.
[15:13]Because they're both at it, you know, they're both doing it.
[15:17]Yeah.
[15:18]Not like he's hitting on her and she doesn't want him to.
[15:22]But Mr. Tit's pervert and all that stuff
[15:26]when I resaw the film after years and years and years,
[15:33]with my kids, I thought,
[15:36]what did I put up with what, you know,
[15:39]when I was in my 20s and worked at the BBC,
[15:43]that I didn't realize I had to put up with.
[15:45]You know, like, it was just part and parcel
[15:49]that, you know, some boss will put his arm around you
[15:52]and it would, his hand would creep a bit too far.
[15:56]And just this constant, constant stuff coming out you
[16:01]and we were just like, you know,
[16:05]it was just like something you had to navigate, really.
[16:11]So thank goodness for me too.
[16:14]But I think looking back at that book,
[16:16]it's of its time in that sense that it was in the 90s.
[16:21]And Bridget was just, I think I put it one point.
[16:25]She just had to accept that her boss was going to step really
[16:29]at her breasts and not knowing what her name was.
[16:32]And her uncle was going to sort of say inappropriate things
[16:38]to her and she didn't at that point know.
[16:44]I mean, Mr. Titsperva, I think it was actually called
[16:46]fits her, but would have been fired now.
[16:50]So that behavior in those comments and things.
[16:52]But she didn't know, she was just navigating it
[16:58]as we all were, you know.
[17:01]Have you thought about, I mean, I think we're generally
[17:04]the same age.
[17:05]I don't know.
[17:06]I have 17 year old twins and I don't know.
[17:08]I would very much like a Bridget for aging and now
[17:11]and all of this stuff.
[17:13]And I would love to read every day like a little snippet
[17:17]of what it's like for you navigating.
[17:20]Cause okay, we don't have to deal with the things
[17:22]in our 20s and 30s anymore, but there are of course
[17:25]more things that happen now that are depressing,
[17:29]but need that humor, humor is touched.
[17:33]Well, I did the book that's coming out as a film soon.
[17:38]Mad about the boy.
[17:39]I did write about Bridget being a single mom and a widow
[17:45]and sort of rediscovering love as an older woman.
[17:50]And that book started not as a Bridget book,
[17:53]but just because that was a story I was starting to tell.
[17:57]That's, you know, you sort of get carried away
[17:59]by the fairies with, with writing fiction.
[18:03]Because I took a conscious decision after Bridget first
[18:06]came out not to be an annual author like not
[18:09]to keep writing more and more Bridget books,
[18:10]but only to do it when a story I wanted to tell all.
[18:14]Sometimes it's just a story that you start writing
[18:17]without even knowing why.
[18:20]And I think, you know, just as the first in the first Bridget,
[18:26]Bridget was dealing with this suppressive stereotype
[18:28]of the single woman in her 30s who was still at that point,
[18:31]slightly mishap a sermon.
[18:33]There were sort of shelves and cobwebs and spinning wheels
[18:37]and the fear of dying alone and being found three weeks
[18:40]later, half eaten by an alsace and hovering around.
[18:46]But that was a very outdated thing.
[18:48]And fiction is always very slow to capture with reality.
[18:53]And that, that wasn't why me and my friends was single.
[19:00]It was, it was because the world's change,
[19:03]we have our own economic power and, you know,
[19:08]male female dynamics have changed.
[19:10]And there were lots of reasons for being single.
[19:14]And I think that Bridget, perhaps I hope
[19:19]went some way towards changing perceptions on that
[19:22]so that smoke marries don't feel like
[19:25]just walk up to someone and say, why aren't you married
[19:28]as if there's only one way to live.
[19:30]And I think that the, in Mad About the Boy,
[19:34]I was writing about the same sort of oppressive stereotypes
[19:39]about the older woman.
[19:40]I mean, there's one point in that book
[19:42]where she bridges, sees a flyer for the older 50s club,
[19:46]over 50s club.
[19:48]And it's offering bingo nights and coach trips
[19:51]to the seaside and sort of granny things.
[19:54]And she suddenly has this panning looks in the mirror
[19:56]and she grows a tight gray perm in her.
[20:00]universal and a shopping trolley and she looks like her own, and she's like,
[20:04]what am I now? What is my image at this age? And I think, again,
[20:12]the representation of older women in fiction is being slow to catch up with what
[20:19]women in their late 40s, 50s, 60s are actually like. There's still vibrant, they're still healthy.
[20:26]They don't have to be, there's no one way of aging, but what I see around me is not a
[20:35]our image of a cranny. It's fit, vibrant, sexy, women still living similar lives to before,
[20:45]but with more wisdom, with more understanding. And, you know, I think society will change
[20:51]all these expressions like oh, trout, oh, bitty, or, you know, being bossy or a diva, if you're
[21:01]successful at work. I love the thing Beyonce says, I'm not bossy, I'm the boss.
[21:08]Just to kind of own it, own what comes with being older, own women of great multitaskers.
[21:15]I don't like to generalize about the sexes, but by, I think, from what I see by our nature,
[21:21]we multitask, we have to juggle all these different aspects of our lives.
[21:27]And so we know a lot. And in the moment, as you say, it's a scary time. You know, there's
[21:35]everyone's lived through the pandemic. There's climate change. You know, my daughter just
[21:41]narrowly escaped the LA fires, there's wars, there's, you know, all sorts of
[21:47]these issues all over the world. It is scary. So if an older woman has the emotional intelligence
[22:02]to navigate those things and to have navigated them, that needs to be honored and older women
[22:10]need to be respected as they are in other cultures. And one of the things I love about the
[22:17]gensees is they do, they're very unagists, the gensees, they want you around, and they don't
[22:25]divide age groups that they hang on with. And they want to hear what we as older women know.
[22:33]And they also are very light-rich in that they're emotionally vulnerable and prepared to be
[22:37]honest about that. And they have all these little soothing rituals, whereas Bridget had a sort of
[22:43]vodka and ice cream. They have all these potions and keys and seed rituals that they
[22:50]found on TikTok. And it was in little, sort of, many years and face masks and things. But it's
[22:56]all the same thing of finding community and closeness in the way that Bridget did with her friends.
[23:03]You're absolutely right. I was reading a book recently. They were talking, it was about a younger
[23:07]woman in her 20s and an older woman who were off doing something. And I read the whole thing
[23:12]with this image of who the older woman was in my head. And I was thinking kind of like 70 or something
[23:17]like 60. I don't know, late 60s, 80s. I don't know. And then I came up later in the book and it was like,
[23:24]and then she was, you know, it said she was like 48. And I was like, what? Like 48. I was like,
[23:29]she's not old. Anyway, it's so, it's so low. So I found my children about to say about someone
[23:36]who he's old. And then they thought, yeah, all themselves. We'd probably like 35 or something, you know.
[23:44]Well, just before we go, there's the thing so amazing about this unintentional success of yours
[23:50]that you try to be serious. And this is of course the Bridget phenomenon represented even with
[23:55]the book, right? That you tried to try, you were trying to be so serious and well respected as a
[24:00]journalist. And the funny thing on the side is what ends up getting all the attention, right? So
[24:07]if you have advice, there's so many people out there. And it doesn't even have to be in the writing
[24:12]world, right? It could be anything in which people are just striving and trying and trying to be
[24:18]perhaps something that they, they can do, but it is not the most authentic to them. Like, what do,
[24:24]where do we go from there? What should, what should everybody do? I know we can't all, you know,
[24:29]write Bridget Jones's diary, but there are ways in everyone's life that they can internalize
[24:33]your philosophy. You mean in terms of work? Yeah, in terms of work. Yeah, I think it's really
[24:40]interesting. It was interesting to me that that came from left to field. But it also followed
[24:47]a lot of years of just slugging it out as a journalist and a writer. And like, my first novel
[24:54]was a sort of very cheap romance called Fires of Santa Barbara. And it was rejected by the publisher
[25:01]because neither my character nor my story was up to the high standards demanded by their reader.
[25:08]So I'd gone through a lot of hoops. I'd gone through a lot of work and practice. So I think
[25:13]there's something about hard work that is effective in that you're practicing, you're teaching
[25:24]yourself. And I think a lot of students, teenagers come out of college thinking, oh, I'd write
[25:33]a screenplay and it'll be made into a film. And I always say, actually, really don't do that,
[25:38]find your voice in small ways, really work and do it. However, whatever medium, YouTube,
[25:46]podcast, or if you're going to write a blog or write for a newspaper or an online thing,
[25:53]find your voice, find your humor, find what you want to say, and learn how to do that.
[26:02]And then write a book, don't write a screenplay, write a book, then you know what you mean,
[26:09]and so does everyone else. And you've created your characters and your world and you've made it
[26:16]work yourself. And then if it's good, someone will buy it. But I think generally sort of a sense of
[26:24]integrity and hard work is really important. But at the same time, there's no point just
[26:33]training at something that isn't giving you anything. Like if it's not working, the ability to
[26:41]switch paths like water is so valuable. And you suddenly find, you know when you're in a flow,
[26:49]you know when you, you found a path that's working. And if you listen to yourself, you know
[26:55]it's there. And you've got to have the tools, you've got to work, you've got to train yourself. But
[27:01]if you listen to what is actually making you happy and what's actually getting acceptance from
[27:08]other people and speaking to people, then you'll just know, do I sound like a hippie?
[27:14]No, not at all. I love it. I love it. And I love your calling attention to, you know, putting in
[27:21]the hours and all the work behind it. And that it's not just out of nowhere when things happen,
[27:27]right? There is a, a bedroom. There's a bedroom. And I think the more experience you have behind you
[27:36]when you do get a success, it's easier to deal with it. Because, you know, sometimes be careful what
[27:41]you wish for. It's not always, as we see from a lot of sort of music industry stars,
[27:49]when they get sudden fame, that's incredibly difficult to deal with. So, and a lot of young people
[27:55]just want to be famous, but think about that too, because that is, it's like getting a disease
[28:02]when you feel famous that if you're visually famous, if people stop noticing you, then that's
[28:10]bad too. You know, sort of, it's a real double-edged sword. So, I think in answer to your original
[28:19]question, just have, there's a book that I really love called women who run with the wolves.
[28:26]And it's about having the one of the things in it. It's about women's sort of instinctive side.
[28:33]And it talks about having the wolf silash, which is just that part of you that sees, that sees what
[28:40]actually going on. And I think women are really good at that. We've got great intuition. We need
[28:47]to listen to it and be sort of warriors and act on it when we act from what we see.
[28:56]God, I do sound like a hippie did it. I love it. Yes. I love it. She adds book to card.
[29:03]Well, Ellen, thank you so much. I am just honored you took the time to chat with me.
[29:12]And I am such a fan. And, you know, this is such a cultural touchstone. And you are a role model
[29:20]in terms of just being who you are and putting it out there. And I love it. And thank you.
[29:26]Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much. It's been a really great conversation.
[29:30]Thank you. Thank you. I hope your daughter is on the road now.
[29:36]Yes, I'm going to go be a wolf. I'll be a wolf today.
[29:39]So thank you. Yes, exactly. All right. Have a great day. Thanks so much for my thank you for listening
[29:47]to Totally Booked with Zibi, formerly momstone. I have time to read books. If you loved the show,
[29:53]tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so
[30:00]Oh, and buy the books.