In December 2020, spectators around the world fell in love with Regé-Jean Page, the interpreter of the Duke of Hastings in
The Chronicle of the Bridgertons
.
If the actor is conspicuous by his absence in season 2 of the show stamped Netflix, unveiled on Friday March 25, the succession seems assured.
Jonathan Bailey embodies Anthony Bridgerton, the seductive hero of this new series of episodes.
He appears there, in particular, dressed in a soaked white shirt, revealing his advantageous plastic.
A scene that is reminiscent of that of Colin Firth in the film
Pride and Prejudice
(1995).
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Off screen, this potential Mister Darcy nevertheless refuses to perceive himself as an object of fantasies.
“The actors who think they are sex symbols?
They are embarrassing, ”he says in the columns of the British edition of
GQ
.
It is useless, moreover, to compare him to Regé-Jean Page.
Asked by the
Sunday Times
about the famous scene in season 1 in which the actor licks his spoon, Jonathan Bailey eludes with humor: “I was worried, I wondered if I was going to have to do it too … with a knife ?"
“Like a Regency school”
After three decades of career, the one that Phoebe Waller-Bridge, her filming partner in
Crashing
(2017), describes as "a meteorite of humor, with an incredible amount of energy and cheerfulness", did not expect to such a spotlight.
In recent years, Jonathan Bailey has rarely held the top of the bill.
"I've never gone to an audition where someone said, 'That's the one!'" he confides in the columns of
GQ UK
.
I always entered through the back door.
He now officiates in one of the most watched series in the history of Netflix - it accumulated nearly 82 million viewers in 2020. And in this new season forms a fascinating duo with Simone Ashley (
Sex Education
), the interpreter of Kate Sharma, cheeky sister of the one he is courting.
A shoot during which the actor also developed new talents.
“The training was great, I rode horses, then I went to fencing, he recalls.
It was like a Regency school.
Read alsoSimone Ashley, heroine of
The Bridgerton Chronicle
season 2 and revelation of 2022
From beginnings to 6 years old
Despite the record audience of
The Bridgerton Chronicle
– and its approximately 996,000 Instagram subscribers – Jonathan Bailey does not aspire to fame.
The actor also spends his free time in a remote corner of Sussex, when he does not offer hikes in the Andalusian mountains or a paddle session in Cornwall.
"In twenty years, I don't want to be known, but to have a long career under my belt", he underlines in
GQ UK
.
That of the thirty-something began at an early age.
Born on April 25, 1988 in Benson, England, this youngest of four siblings - he has three older sisters - fell in love with dance at the age of 4, after seeing a stage adaptation of
Oliver Twist
with his parents. Stuart, a former DJ converted into the sale of honey, and Carole, an audioprosthetist.
On weekends, the young Jonathan performs on disco and pop classics, in front of his parents and his sisters, who have just returned from university.
His talent did not escape the Royal Shakespeare Company, which selected him at the age of 6 to play Tiny Tim in their stage adaptation of
A Christmas Carol.
.
As a teenager, Jonathan Bailey studied at Magdalen College in Oxford, before entering the Open University a few years later.
It was during this period that he came out to his family and friends.
In video, “The Bridgerton Chronicle”, season 2, the trailer
"I'd rather hold my boyfriend's hand"
On the set, the actor prefers to keep his sexual orientation silent.
The words addressed to one of his actor friends, at the beginning of his career, never left him.
"There are two things we don't want to know: if you're an alcoholic and if you're gay," he would have been told.
"Of course, I thought that to be happy, you had to be straight," Jonathan Bailey told
GQ
.
But the actor, tired of spending part of his life in silence, decides one day that it will be otherwise.
"I got to a point where I was like, 'Damn, I'd much rather hold my boyfriend's hand in public, be able to put my own picture on Tinder and not worry so much, than pick up the phone. a role", he continues.
In 2018, he came out publicly in the columns of the
Times
and
Attitude
.
The man who officiated in the
Leonardo
(2011),
Broadchurch
(2013) and
Chewing-gum
(2017) series, and played alongside Colin Firth in
The Day I Return
(2018), now enjoins “gay men to accept roles on coming out or falling in love with another man".
All with a view to “fighting shame and oppression”.
Advice that he himself put into practice.
He thus landed a role in the play
Cock
, the story of a man who identifies as gay but falls in love with a woman and questions his sexuality, directed by Marianne Eliott.
Jonathan Bailey will perform at the Ambassadors Theater in London, alongside Taron Egerton, until June 4.
The announced success of season 2 of
The Bridgerton Chronicle
should, meanwhile, propel it even further to the forefront.
Jonathan Bailey should therefore now enter through the front door.
