Bridgerton: Phoebe Dynevor (Daphne), Claudia Jessie (Eloise) & These Characters Were Being Planned As Lady Whistledown!
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Bridgerton, a Netflix series, is currently making a lot of noise on Netflix. It is being termed as the royal version of the famous Blake Lively and Penn Badgley series, Gossip Girl. But this time, the gossipmonger remains ‘Lady Whistledown.’ If you haven’t witnessed the show yet, you may want to stop right here because everything ahead consists of SPOILERS!
Just like the Gossip Girl, we see newspapers by Lady Whistledown that lets out big and personal revelations. A constant question remains about the identity of who the person behind the newspaper is. We even see Claudia Jessie (Eloise) conduct her little investigation in order to find the same.
The last episode of Bridgerton reveals the identity of the mystery character. It is none other than the Nicola Coughlan (Penelope Featherington) who is the mastermind. But did you know the makers did not plan it since the beginning? A lot more characters were in the run for Lady Whistledown.
The makers of Bridgerton revealed that they explored ‘all avenues.’ Starting from Lady Violet (Ruth Gemmell), Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Eloise (Claudia Jessie) too! In fact, the creators even had a lot of fun thinking what if it would be Brimsley (the Queen’s assistant).
However, they stuck true to the novel (Duke & I) and decided to go ahead with Nicola Coughlan aka Penelope. She was the apt choice given the fact that she had all access to gossips, and was the closest to Featherington, as well as, the Bridgertons as well. Just all the aspects Eloise considered while trying to figure out the possibilities.
But why did the creators decide to reveal the identity in Season 1, unlike Gossip Girl? “I think it was time, honestly. Lady Whistledown is such an interesting device to be able to use in the show… In the writers’ room, we always talked about there being two tracks to the approach of Penelope and Lady Whistledown. One track, whenever Penelope is onscreen for fans of the books and those that are familiar with Penelope being Lady Whistledown from the books. We needed to make those scenes still fun and still interesting for those book fans [while still] learning and gleaning something new for Penelope and about Lady Whistledown,” said creator Chris Van Dusen to Entertainment Tonight.
