Bridgerton season 4's leading couple talk about their Cinderella story and steamy river scene: "It was cold in the water, though"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

It is, surely, what every young actor dreams of. Not just a lead role in a beloved period drama, but an exit from a lake in a sodden shirt with a smitten belle looking on bashfully from behind a tree. Enter Luke Thompson, star of Bridgerton series four. This is your Mr Darcy moment.

“I just felt really excited to dive into it,” says Thompson, with a wry half-smile at his own pun, clearly very pleased to be taking the lead in finding love this series having played Benedict Bridgerton since the start of the drama.

“I kept saying, ‘You look like Mr Darcy’ to him,” chimes in Yerin Ha who plays Sophie Baek, the below-stairs Cinderella to Thompson’s Prince Charming (and hands him a towel when he emerges from his swim). “In truth, I was a little bit jealous – I wouldn’t have minded a dip myself. It was a beautiful September day when we filmed it.”

“It was cold in the water, though,” says Thompson. “We probably did it five or six times. The tricky bits were when I thought I was about to lose consciousness and then they’d say reset, go again, and there wasn’t time for me to get out and get dry.”

If Bridgerton’s homage to the BBC’s classic Pride and Prejudice is a little corny, it’s an element of the period drama that, Thompson says, the fans both love and require. “There are a lot of romance novel tropes in the show, whether it’s getting out of the water or it’s love at first sight at the masquerade ball.”

And that is the central storyline in this season of the world’s favourite amped-up Regency fairy tale. Based on Julia Quinn’s novel An Offer from a Gentleman, Benedict Bridgerton is the bohemian second son who refuses to settle down despite protracted pleas to do so from matriarch Lady Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell, see overleaf). Until, that is, he is poleaxed by the sight of a mysterious Lady in Silver at Lady Violet’s masquerade ball – where everyone wears flimsy masks that completely conceal their identity.

With the reluctant help of his sister Eloise (Claudia Jessie), Benedict sets out to uncover the identity of the mysterious stranger. What he doesn’t realise is that the object of his affections is not a part of the Ton or the Marriage Mart at all. In fact, she’s a resourceful maid called Sophie Baek, who soon also crosses his path.

And so, Benedict has to wrestle with his affection for his fantasy Lady in Silver alongside this intriguing housemaid, unaware that they are one and the same person.

What all this unrequited love really required, first and foremost, was chemistry between Thompson and newly cast Ha. They first met on that hotbed of romance, a Zoom call.

“You might think it’s tricky to have chemistry on Zoom,” says Thompson, “but it turns out you can! I found doing the readthrough that you can just feel… something. It felt quite enigmatic, our connection, like there was quite a lot to unpack. And that’s what you want.”

Next stop on the path to true on-screen love was dinner at writer Jess Brownell’s house. “We had a bit of wine, some tacos…” laughs Ha. “It was only two weeks before prep began so we just chatted.”

“And then we just jumped right in!” laughs Thompson, delighted at the chance to drop another Darcy swimming pun. Ha, a plain-talking Aussie, looks suitably unamused.

But Thompson, who is Rada-trained and likes to read Dostoevsky, wins her round: “As soon as I had the audition with Yerin – and this will look terrible because it sounds glib – I knew it was going to work.”

Work it does, with Benedict starting out very much as a latter-day Prince Harry with Sophie, like Meghan, his star-crossed lover from the wrong side of the tracks.

I put it to Thompson and Ha that they are playing a version of the Sussexes and they both burst out laughing. “Personally that’s not something that I’ve thought about,” says Thompson.

“People will see whatever they want to see,” flat bats Ha. “Ultimately, this is just a story about seeing who you are on the inside. What drew me to Sophie was her moral compass: she doesn’t change who she is for anybody else. It’s a real push-and-pull game, because he’s of a noble class and Sophie’s of a lower class.

“What’s beautiful about their relationship is that they see each other for who they are, and they start to question society’s standards. Why should that matter?” Ha prefers the Cinderella analogy. There’s a missing shoe and Sophie even has two wicked stepsisters, Rosamund and Posy (Michelle Mao and Isabella Wei), who with their mother, Araminta Gun (Katie Leung), make Sophie’s life a misery.

Both characters, however, are outsiders, with Benedict experimenting with his sexuality in the demimonde while Sophie navigates her way through the prejudices of the Ton. And this Thompson and Ha understand perfectly. Ha’s grandparents were actors in South Korea and, though she was born in Sydney, she studied in Korea for three years before going to Nida [The National Institute of Dramatic Art] back in Australia.

Thompson was born in England but grew up in France, then moved back over when he was 20. “And then I had the even stranger experience of being like, ‘Well, this is where I was born, but I don’t have any of the cultural references.’ I think there are parallels between us.”

The parallels are that both of them are used to concealing identities and wearing masks. “You’re both at home and not at home in a character,” says Thompson. “You’re yourself and not yourself.” Perfect, then, for a pairing that begins in disguise at a masquerade ball.

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Bridgerton seasons 1-3 are available to watch on Netflix now. Season 4 will arrive on Thursday 29th January 2026. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media.

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