helen fielding on
BRIDGET JONES

From an online chat April 2001 with author Helen Fielding about  the film "Bridget Jones's Diary."
Q: "Who do you think is sexier, Hugh Grant or ColinFirth?" 

Helen: I think that I've only been jealous of Bridget on two occasions. One
when she got 13 valentine's cards and I got one. And then when she got to
snog both Hugh and Colin. I think it's impossible to choose between them,
you'd really have to have both. 

From an online chat 13 March 2000 with author Helen Fielding about  "Bridget Jones's Diary," and the  sequel "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason." 
Q: Do you read your reviews and what do you think about critics who liked your first book better? 

Helen Fielding: I used to be a book reviewer myself so I don't worry too much about them. 

Q: What do you think about Renee Zellweger playing the roleof Bridget in the movie? Who would you pick? Are you involved in the movie's production? 

Helen Fielding: I had some initial involvement with the script. But authors traditionally turn into monsters when they turn their books into films so I thought I should gracefully retire a few months ago. I've never met Renee but I'm told she's very funny and learning to speak English with an English rather than Texas accent. I've seen many girls who would be very funny in the role including an air hostess who was unable to read the safety instructions on her flight because of uncontrollable fluster. We rechristened it Bridget Airlines. I see lots of Bridgets. 

Q: How long did it take you to write Bridget and where did you get your inspiration? 

Helen Fielding: Both the books are based on the original newspaper column and both of them in the end took me about two or three months to write. I always write best to a deadline, though I don't think my publishers were very happy that "The Edge of Reason" was 77 weeks late. I was very worried about typos until I heard that in Japan that the entire book was printed backwards so it couldn't be as bad as that. 

Q: Can we look forward to a new Helen Fielding novel any time soon? If so can you give us some inside info on it? 

Helen Fielding: I told myself I was going to stop writing for a while but I can't seem to help making notes. I've been spending quite a bit of time in L.A. and I find it very amusing. If you ask for the tiniest dessert they look at you as if you've asked for polar bear droppings and look at you and say, you know that contains dairy?! 

Q: Do you actually know anyone as -? quirky -- as Bridget? 

Helen Fielding: Well, apart from that air hostess and the girl I saw at the gym sitting on an exercise machine for quite a long time reading a magazine and not exercising at all, I think probably Bridget is in exaggerated version of a little bit which in is inside an awful lot of  women. 

Q: What's your favorite author and why? 

Helen Fielding: I like Jane Austen and I have shamelessly stolen parts of "Pride and Prejudice" for my books. I think she's very good at observing the tiny details of a woman's life. 

Q: Bridget Jones is a pretty funny character. Will you ever make up a new character for a new book, that is as funny, and as hapless as Bridget? 

 Helen Fielding: None of us can see into the future. I do have another funny older female character that I've been playing with but I don't know where things will go from now at the moment. I'm just recovering from the deadline crisis. [Me speculating: could it be the story published later that year in Hornby's antology Speaking with the Angel???] 

Q: Is there any difference between the UK edition of the new book and the one released in the U.S.? 

Helen Fielding: A few differences. The U.K. had a section about the death of Princess Diana and I think they took it out in America because it highlighted the fact that the book was 77 weeks late. Most of it is the same. There are only a few details that changed. And weirdly, in the first book, they did not change the word fags for cigarettes. This caused some confusion. 

Q: How old were you when you first started writing? Did you always want to be a writer? 

Helen Fielding: I was very young, I think about six and yet I always did want to be a writer. I had a lot of rejections along the way. The first novel I tried to write was for a rather down-market romantic novel company. They rejected "Fires of Zanzibar" because "neither the character nor the story are up to the high standards demanded by the Mills and Boon reader." 

Q: Do you feel that the role of women in modern fiction has become more openly expressive, or has fiction itself just simply gone in that direction? 

Helen Fielding: I think there have always been very perceptive female novelists like Jane Austen and George Elliott and Virginia Wolff but I think it's very good that these days there are a lot of funny books about women because I think women are instinctively very funny amongst themselves. 

Q: How many hours do you write a day? Are you on a schedule? 

Helen Fielding: It always takes me an hour and a half to settle down and stop going into the fridge and applying more makeup. And then if I am in deadline hell, which I usually am, I write very long days a minimum of six or sometimes 12 or 18 hours. The room is usually a pretty disgusting site -- and so am I. 

Q: Do you think the second book will be even more well-received than the first? Is it hard to have a UK book published here? 

Helen Fielding: It's always hard to write a sequel. Because the first one comes as a surprise and the second one has to match up to it. I was very nervous about writing it. I'm very pleased that so many people seem to have found it funny. About having a UK book published here: No, it's fantastic. I love being in America. It's very glamorous and exciting, except when you have to get up at five in the morning to fly to another city. 

Q: What technique do you use to develop your story line, characters, etc.? 

Helen Fielding: In terms of story line, I steal plots from Jane Austen. In terms of character, hmmm, I don't know but the characters seem  to become very real for me very quickly. I guess I base them not on individual people I know but a number of qualities from a number of different people in a new person. 

Q: Do you start with the end in mind and reverse-engineer the story line? 

Helen Fielding: Oh, god, I wish I did. It really isn't as organized as that at all. Both the books began as columns and when I write the columns I usually splurge down a load of material and find one line that makes me laugh, ditch the rest and start with that. 

Q: How has your life changed since the success of the book? Has the success been everything you thought it would be? How do your friends treat you now?

Helen Fielding: I spend a lot of time looking for hotel light switches
and trying to remember where I am. But really, it's great. Because it was a long flog to become a writer and it's quite a lonely job so it's really good fun going to readings and hearing people laugh. My friends and family treat me with, if anything, more ridicule than ever, which is very disappointing. 

Q: What's the biggest misconception about the Bridget character? 

Helen Fielding: That she is me. 

Q: If you could pick any actress to be Bridget, who would you choose? 

Helen Fielding: Well, I'm very insulted that nobody asked me. My acting career was previously blighted in this way when I was cast in the university review and one by one in rehearsal all my parts were taken away from me except that of Miss Guided, a mute
chambermaid. [Source: People.com]

From the Electronic Telegraph, 13 April 2000:

COLIN FIRTH and Hugh Grant, two of Britain's biggest screen pin-ups, are to play the men in the life of Bridget Jones, the neurotic thirty-something career girl, in the film version of Bridget Jones's Diary. Helen Fielding, the book's author, said yesterday that she was consumed with jealousy that her screen alter ego would have affairs with the actors. /.../ Filming Bridget Jones, with a budget up to £12 million, will begin in a few weeks' time in streets in west London and in a studio outside the capital. /.../

Firth set the female half of Britain on fire as the smouldering Darcy in the last BBC version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In the new film, he will play Mark Darcy, a top-notch lawyer famous for his diamond patterned golf sweaters and Bridget's most enduring but elusive love. /.../

It is perhaps a minor miracle that Grant has agreed to star in the film. In one diary entry there is a long chunk about his moment of madness in Hollywood. Bridget records her boss holding forth on the subject: "How does a man with a girlfriend with looks like Elizabeth Hurley have a blow job from a prostitute on a public highway and get away with it?" 

Fielding said of the two male stars yesterday: "I must admit to jealously violent thoughts towards Bridget since the announcement that she will be canoodling with both of them. It reminds me of the year that Bridget got 13 Valentine cards and I received one which I had strong reason to believe was from the paper boy." She said Grant was "hilariously wicked as well as sexy, charming and delicious". Fielding's Mark Darcy was based on Firth's television appearance. She said: "Mark Darcy is the nearest I came in the book to writing a character with a real life human being in mind, i.e. Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. So I'm completely thrilled he's agreed to do the part." She said he had all the "suppressed emotion and raw pulsating passion" the character needed./.../

Fielding, /.../says she is dying to make an anonymous appearance in the film. "I'm keen on the idea of turning up on set in enormous sunglasses and a gold lamé turban shrieking 'It should have been me!' and having to be led away and given a trinket."