Regé-Jean Page Had the Most Interesting Way of Preparing for his ‘Bridgerton’ Role
Thanks to his portrayal of Simon Bassett in Netflix’s newest hit, Bridgerton, more people are obsessed with Regé-Jean Page than ever before. The actor somehow managed to play a character who was equal parts sexy, sweet, stubborn, and wounded with great success. Since the Duke of Hastings lives a life that is drastically different from Page’s in many ways, fans are impressed with the transformation. But just how was Page able to play the role with such conviction?
Unlike some other actors, Page doesn’t enjoy talking about his creative process much. According to the For the People alum talking about his process takes away from some of the magic of storytelling. Fortunately, the Bridgerton star recently treated fans to a little insight into how he prepared for Simon. In an interview with Who What Wear the actor admitted that he started with the books that Bridgerton is based on, but didn’t rely on them heavily.
Regé-Jean Page isn’t a fan of sharing his his acting process
“I’ve always loathed to let people behind the curtain, ” Page confessed. “The whole magic of this industry is that you get to see the trick but you don’t want to know how the magician does it. Obviously, I started with the book. The source material is always a very beautiful resource, but I tried to get that out of the way as early as possible. As soon as I knew I got the job, I read the book so that I could very quickly forget the book.”
From there, Page’s process took a slightly unorthodox, but infinitely more interesting, turn. According to the actor, he had numerous conversation with Bridgerton‘s wardrobe department. According to Page, there’s a lot to be learned from a character by learning about what kind of clothes they are confined to.
How the actor prepared for his role in ‘Bridgerton’
“And then I had loads and loads of conversations with the wardrobe department, which was really cool and in-depth about what the clothes say about the people and why they are wearing them,” Page shared. “We talked a lot about Simon being in Byron-ic collars because he is this Byron-ic type of hero.”
The Bridgerton actor continued on to share that he really got into learning about the details of his costume. ‘We talked about all of these things, what the patterns on the costumes would be, and what we could bring in to get this sense of travel and outsiderness. That translates in the clothes and from the clothes then comes back to developing the character.”
Page reveals why he finds a character’s shoes so important
Page was particularly interested in learning about Simon’s shoes. But this part of his character preparation wasn’t unique to Simon, rather is something that he does for each of the roles he’s tasked to play. “It’s a bit of a cliché, but it starts with the shoes,” Page confessed. “You walk out in someone else’s shoes, and I like to do that quite literally. The first thing I do on a job is ask for the shoes or the boots so I can walk around them at home while I’m working and build from the ground up.”
Page certainly had a unique way of preparing for his role in Bridgerton. While we’re sure he didn’t share all of the things he did to create such a rich character, we appreciate him pulling back the curtain a bit and letting us in on the magic.
