Luke Thompson Spills All on ‘Bridgerton,’ Benedict and Season 4

For Luke Thompson, the most challenging part of leading a Bridgerton series hasn’t been the shoot, the intimate scenes, the fan reaction, or any regency era-shaped restraint you can think of. What has had the Brit doing mental gymnastics — his words — is the press tour.

“This sounds glib, but the actual doing of the show has been really easy,” says Thompson, basking in the setting sun of season four, following Benedict Bridgerton and Sophie Baek’s Cinderella love story, the final parts of which released on Netflix Thursday. “When you’re so held by a production, and you’re dealing with some of the best people in streaming and in TV,” he adds, “you can afford to just let yourself go to it. I loved leading it.”

People had warned Thompson to be careful. They said that he might “disappear” at the helm as the second Bridgerton son, that taking the weight would be “this huge burden.” In the end, the experience has been anything but: “It’s a huge gift to be able to lead a show, and it’s an overused word, but I think a privilege. It’s like standing on top of a tall building. You see everything,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. Thompson is dialing in on the afternoon that Benedict’s fairytale draws to a close, and is as articulate as his reformed rake is dashing.

But this bit — the worldwide, back-to-back press duties — is the more difficult knot for Thompson, a Southampton-born actor with a soft spot for the stage, to untangle. “Press tours have now become…” he trails off, before regaining direction. “I think there’s something more going on. I think they are becoming bigger and bigger things that require more and more of actors. And for some actors, including me… People assume that actors like attention,” he muses, “or giving people all of themselves. People think of actors as exhibitionists, so having an actor on a press tour, [they think] you’re giving them what they want. But personally, press is a tricky thing to square in my head. I obviously want to promote the show. And I am really enjoying experiencing the response to the show, but fundamentally, I don’t particularly want to talk about myself,” he laughs.

He isn’t slating the process at all — he understands how valuable press is for the show and for its fans, but up to a certain point, Thompson feels his waxing lyrical on Bridgerton becomes a little reductive. “The show belongs to the audience,” he concludes. It also demands a constant weighing up of “trying to share what I’m happy sharing, and keeping things that I want to keep myself.” In short, psychologically, “it poses a bit of a challenge.”

This is also not to say that he hasn’t enjoyed the travel. Winding down his public appearances with co-star Yerin Ha (if you haven’t caught up, the season finale of the smash-hit Julia Quinn adaptation sees Benedict and Sophie thwarting villainous stepmother Araminta Gun by convincing Queen Charlotte, and the rest of the Ton, that Ha’s character is of nobility after all), Thompson has found the exploration of how different cultures “read themselves into Bridgerton” pretty thrilling.

“This is why I think Bridgerton is such a good show,” he says. “Lots of the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese countries love the telenovela aspect. We went to Romania and we spoke to a few Eastern European journalists, and they really love the fairytale element with Cinderella because of their own folklore. It’s very gratifying,” he adds about how much people have loved the show, “because you feel like your job has some sort of meaning.”

It’s that same sense of meaning that those before him were able to achieve — albeit all in their own ways. “I’m very proud of how the show, in a very subtle way, always enables the lead to deliver a different story. It’s not a show trying to be like, ‘Okay, how can we make it even sexier than the last one?’” — though that bathtub scene was pretty damn horny — “It actually just takes all the characters on their own merit. And that’s particularly true of Benedict,” he continues, calling his Bridgerton gentleman “an atypical romantic hero.”

“I don’t think they’ve made him go through a Bridgerton factory because that’s not what they do. And I can’t do a Regé-Jean Page impression or a Jonathan Bailey impression or a Luke Newton impression,” he says, referencing the last three leads, “I’m playing Benedict.” Although he has enjoyed subverting the character we’ve seen in previous installments by getting to play an edgier, more flawed version. He nods to that viral, teeth-clenching cliffhanger at the end of part one: “It’s not just the mistress moment. In part two, there are a few [times] where Benedict doesn’t come across in the most sympathetic light, and he says some things that maybe he might regret — but that’s interesting.”

It’s here that the star begins to really nerd out on Benedict’s psychology. “He’s developed this exterior that’s very amenable, [he] doesn’t feel like anything bothers him, yet clearly, in the middle of him, there is this side that is running away from something,” he says. “Even with the mistress offer, it’s sort of quite a neurotic thing to do. It’s like trying to compartmentalize your life, this reluctance to give someone everything. It’s quite refreshing because he has a very soft exterior, and then there’s actually this center that is a bit more controlling, which is a surprise.”

He actually likens Benedict’s journey to a Mr. Darcy trajectory “in reverse,” though says inspiration from the beloved men of literature was not something he particularly sought out: “Bridgerton is so much its own thing… I steer away a little bit from references. I’ve also had the advantage of being in the show for a few years, so I feel like I’ve got this whole hinterland of stuff that I can jump into.”

That said, being compared to the Romeos, Heathcliffs, and other adored period pin-ups also comes with the Bridgerton territory. Is it weird to think of yourself as a heartthrob? “I think being a heartthrob is probably 90 percent projection,” Thompson giggles. “I welcome it. I’m not being modest… I just understand that people want to project all sorts of things onto you. A lot of the reaction to Benedict has been super positive — some of it has been negative, you can find anything out there online, we all know that — but part of me is like, I don’t have a problem with that going on, I just don’t want to have to interact with it. Because I don’t think it’s my job to interact with it,” he says.

“As an actor, you want to live in people’s imaginations in any way. If you can live in people’s imaginations as a heartthrob, then great. It’s not about modesty or secrecy. It’s about wanting the mechanism that happens when people watch a show or project onto you, and wanting to protect that mechanism as much as possible.”

Some might argue it’s hard not to project when watching chemistry as sizzling as Thompson and Ha’s. One of his favorite days from the season four set, he tells THR, was shooting the gazebo scene at the masquerade ball. The crew had rebuilt the outdoor structure in a studio to save everyone from catching a cold, and the co-lead recalls how intimate it was. “We were just sort of whispering this scene to each other, and it was so quiet, I don’t know. I thought, ‘God, this is really lovely. This is a really magical atmosphere.’”

“There’s so many things I love about Yerin,” continues Thompson. “She’s so sophisticated and subtle. She combines that seriousness with not taking herself seriously at all. And those actors are gold dust — trust me. That combination of being wildly talented, but then, also, to feel like you can actually joke with them… You don’t come across that too often,” he adds with real earnestness.

It’s an environment where Thompson, Ha, Bailey, Newton, Simone Ashley, Ruth Gemmell, Claudia Jessie, Nicola Coughlan, and the rest of the now world-famous cast have really set up a home. In fact, he says, it’s a lot like “Hotel California”: that iconic Eagles hit with the line, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Thompson responds to whether he’ll return to future Bridgerton series: “Again and again. I feel like we’ll always be part of the Bridgerton family.” He also finds the two-year break between installments — something we agree is not dissimilar to Glastonbury Festival’s fallow period, where every five years organizers take a summer to let the land recover — rather cathartic.

On the specifics of which Bridgerton sibling the next season will follow, don’t look to Thompson for answers. “I don’t know,” he confesses. “I feel like there’ve been so many times in this show where I’ve had thoughts or feelings [about who it should be], and the people who are actually heading the show are so in control of it and know exactly what they need to do next. So I have complete faith that they’ll tee up the next one.”

What’s been especially rewarding for him this time around has been seeing the younger Bridgertons — Florence Hunt’s Hyacinth and Will Tilston’s Gregory — come into their own. “There’s a few scenes actually with Flo this season [where] I was like, ‘Oh, I can really see now what kind of woman Hyacinth is, and how she differs from Daphne, from Francesca, from Eloise. That’s so lovely to see… It could be any of them,” he says, before adding: “Maybe Flo and Will need to wait a little longer.”

But what’s next for Thompson? He’s just wrapped on the Andrew Scott-starring Elsinore, following Ian Charleson’s final weeks before his death from AIDS playing Hamlet at London’s National Theatre in the 1990s. Daniel Day-Lewis had abruptly pulled out mid-performance, forcing Charleson to step in and save the day. Thompson plays one of the performer’s close friends. “It’s such a beautiful subject for a film,” he tells THR. “Every time I tell the story, I get shivers.” The script, written by Pride‘s Stephen Beresford, is “a real love letter to theater.”

“It was a lovely counterpoint to the [Bridgerton] press tour,” says the Netflix treasure, who is prioritizing variation in his career from here. “What’s wonderful about Bridgerton is it’s such a strong flavor as a show,” he says. “People kept asking me, ‘When will you and Yerin do a romcom?’ And I was like, ‘We’ve done a romcom! We’ve just done it!’” he laughs. “I’d love to work with Yerin again, maybe in a play or something,” he adds, that theatre background surfacing once more. “But I’d just love to do something different. I can’t really explain it.”

This is one of Thompson’s last interviews as captain of the Bridgerton ship. He’ll be passing the baton to a co-star in the coming months — Jessie, perhaps, or Hannah Dodd’s Francesca —  and is filled, admittedly, with a mix of nostalgia and relief.

And we’re not talking about life after Bridgerton — the 37-year-old is in no hurry to hang up his cravat. But maybe there’s scope to discuss what else is out there. “Life in amongst Bridgerton?” he offers up, giggling again. For all the mental gymnastics he’s been doing over the course of this call, and over the course of his globe-trotting media blitz, one thing’s for sure: Luke Thompson’s stuck the landing.

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All episodes of Bridgerton season four are currently streaming on Netflix. Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter‘s season four coverage here.