Every Remaining Question About Bridgerton S2, Answered

Where’s Francesca?

What’s the deal with Sir Philip?

And what really happened on that gazebo?

Showrunner Chris Van Dusen answers that and more.

Bridgerton season 2 has been out for a few weeks, but you wouldn’t know it from the way the internet is behaving. TikTok and Reddit sleuths are still fervently breaking down every scene with the same intensity as Eloise on the hunt for Lady Whistledown’s identity.

Some of the biggest debates include: Where is Francesca, the seemingly forgotten Bridgerton sibling who’s been mostly absent from seasons 1 and 2? Which clues most reveal that season 3 will be about Colin, Benedict, or both? And how much should we read into the inclusion of Sir Philip, Eloise’s love interest from the books? Also, what exactly happened between Anthony and Kate in that gazebo?

With so much to discuss, we called up showrunner Chris Van Dusen to ask every lingering question that remains about Bridgerton season 2.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

Glamour: I need to know: Where is Francesca?

Chris Van Dusen: I personally love that character, and I love working with [actor] Ruby Stokes. We unfortunately lost Ruby midway through filming due to another project. Francesca was actually written into the season much more than you see her in the final edit. We tried really hard to make it work, but we just couldn’t. So after exhausting a bunch of other options, we unfortunately had to take Francesca out of some of the scripts due to reasons that were really beyond our control.

So she’ll come around next season, hopefully?

I hope so. Francesca is definitely a Bridgerton. She has her own love story in book six, so it was always my goal and my intention to focus on one Bridgerton sibling per season and to definitely tell the stories of all those brothers and sisters at some point.

In the writers’ room, was there a discussion of what she was up to off-screen?

In season 1 we had her go to Bath with her aunt, for her piano forte. To us, Francesca was always around and a part of those scenes in season 2. Much like the Duke, just because you didn’t see them doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

On the subject of scenes getting cut, when I interviewed intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot, she said some sexy moments were cut—that you filmed extra for both seasons. Could you share what those scenes might have included and why they were cut?

I can tell you 100% that no sex scenes were cut from the season. They’re all there. All the scripted sex scenes ended up in the cut of the season.

With this season being so much more about the slow burn, how did you find that balance? It’s a fine line between delayed gratification and delaying things too much.

This season we were following different characters and a different story. I think our approach to the intimacy on the show remained very much the same, and that’s by us using these intimate scenes to tell a story and to push story forward. That’s exactly what we did in season 2. We weren’t telling a story similar to Daphne and Simon, an awakening of a character. This season these characters were a little older, a little wiser.