Bridgerton’s Claudia Jessie on playing a teen at 32, and Eloise’s sex life

In December 2020, all of our lives were about to change. For Claudia Jessie, 32, that was less about the impending pandemic, and more to do with her starring in a little show called Bridgerton. Streamed in 82 million households, it was about to become Netflix’s most watched show of all time (until it was this year usurped by Squid Game).

Now, over two years later, Jessie is back on screen, reprising her role as Eloise Bridgerton, the rebellious middle child of the Bridgerton clan.

The first season followed Daphne Bridgerton through her first social season and marriage to the divine Duke of Hastings, with Eloise offering withering observations from the sidelines. In the second, Jessie’s character has grown, with her coming out in society and expected to strive for an equally advantageous marriage. Only unlike her sister, Eloise is a feminist rebel who firmly rejects social norms, including marriage. In the hands of an actress less gifted than Jessie, a character as obstinate as Eloise might have been irritating, but it's testament to Jessie's warmth that Eloise has become a firm fan favourite.

Jessie grew up with her mother on a houseboat in Birmingham. She was home-schooled and, a far cry from her privileged Bridgerton character, grew up in and out of poverty, with bailiffs knocking on the door. But when she was spotted as a teenager by the Birmingham School of Acting’s Hannah Phillips, a career on screen came calling, with Jessie landing roles as Amelia Sedley in the ITV adaptation of fellow period drama Vanity Fair and sycophantic DC Jodie Taylor in Line of Duty. But nothing compares to the kind of fame that comes with playing a major role in 2020’s biggest TV show.

Describing a newly famous darling of the screen as “down to earth” or “relatable” is a desperate cliché, but talking to Claudia Jessie makes it genuinely impossible not to do so. And not just because she still lives on a houseboat in Birmingham. I ask Jessie how much life has changed. “I have maintained a very modest life on my boat in Birmingham with my family and friends and my boyfriend and my dog. And that’s how I want it to be,” she says, simply.

It was, presumably, I ask her, a very strange time to become very famous, at the start of the pandemic, and even stranger to shoot the second series under tight Covid regulations. “Because of the pandemic I don’t think I really grasped how big the show was until it came to being back on set for season two. Once I got to set, I just felt so relieved to be back and have a job. But I was dead nervous. There was a part of me that felt a bit like me playing Eloise was a bit of a fluke and maybe I don't know how to do it again.”

In the grand tradition of American casting, both the show’s most important teenagers, Eloise Bridgerton and Penelope Featherington, are played by people who are very much not in their teens. Jessie is 32 and Coughlan is 35. I ask Jessie how she feels about this. Initially she laughs, telling me “It reminds me of watching Dawson’s Creek, watching actors who were nearly 40 standing by their lockers, being like, 'what's going on with my teenage life?'”

Ultimately, Jessie says it was about finding how to play her in a way that felt natural. “I’m a 32-year-old woman with a very deep register, so I sort of had to figure out what makes her really youthful. And I guess what I came up with was the fact that she speaks incredibly quickly, and you can see that the thoughts that come in, they come straight out. And other than that I put it down to the fact that Nicola and I both have a lot of cheek.”

Some Bridgerton fans have developed a theory that Jessie’s character Eloise is a lesbian, or an emblem of asexuality. I ask Jessie how she feels about this. She considers the question. “I do find it interesting that people sense a queer spirit with Eloise, and I think it's just because she's a bit brilliant – and a maverick. But I do find it interesting that because she is a female character who doesn't aspire to marriage, the assumption is that she is queer.”

Would she like to see Eloise have a love story of her own, then? She seems enthusiastic about the idea. “I would. People seem to have an idea that because she’s a feminist we shouldn't give her a romance storyline, and I don't think that's right. I think what's more intriguing, what's more beautiful to watch on screen is to see how Eloise does relationships. I'm not a hugely traditional person, but I am very much a believer in love and in monogamy. And I think it would be interesting and gorgeous to be able to see how Eloise navigates all of that, to show that autonomy doesn't have to mean an absence of love or partnership.”

When Jessie talks about Eloise it’s clear that, despite the fact that Bridgerton is the loveliest, silliest of television, she treats her character with the utmost respect. She seems very aware that for people all over the world, Eloise is a meaningful representation of what it is not to fit in.

Jessie hasn’t stumbled upon any of the internet discourse about Eloise herself, since she’s made the increasingly popular celebrity decision to stay off social media. Though in her case it has nothing to do with avoiding getting famous, and everything to do with protecting her own mental health. “I haven't been on social media since a very young age. It was very clear to me then when I was a teenager that I didn't want to be a part of that world and that was way before anything had happened in my career.”

I ask why she doesn’t at least have a private Instagram account for friends, if not an entire social media marketing team behind her. She explains: “I'm really aware of how little it takes for me to not feel happy about myself. In the industry I work in, so much importance is placed on what someone looks like, what they're wearing, where they go, who they hang out with and stuff. And those sorts of things really make me feel deeply uncomfortable and anxious.”

Caution around mental health is an especially relevant priority for Jessie, who has been candid about living with periods of mental illness, specifically a condition called depersonalisation, which describes the feeling of observing yourself outside of your own body.

She tells me that she had no idea what was happening to her until a friend sent her a link to an article about depersonalisation. “My friend Louise text me saying, ‘it sounds like depersonalisation.” And then I Googled it, and I was like, ‘f______ hell, this is amazing.” That's why I talk about that openly, because realising that my experience had a name. That was the most visceral, biggest experience I’ve ever had.’

That’s not to say that it was easy to conquer, though. “I had depersonalisation for a year. Solidly for six months. And then on and off for another six months. During that I had to learn to talk about my mental health. The first person I spoke to was my mum. And then we used to go walking. We used to go for a walk and talk, and she would just promise me that we would just keep walking until I felt even, like, 5 per cent better, and we just kept going. Sometimes I'd be like, ‘no I'm still not okay, and we just keep walking’. She was amazing.”

Unlike with many Hollywood stars, Jessie’s reflections on her mental health are not wrapped up in a big bow to prove how real she is. She’s just genuinely candid. I’m so taken with her story that I feel rather bad as she comes to the end of her sentence and I realise I need to ask her about the amount of shagging in the new series Bridgerton (which is chaste to the extent that you could happily watch it with your parents.) Was she pleased or disappointed that she was invited to keep her clothes on?

She seems amused by the question. “I didn’t get the script and think ‘Where’s my bloody sex scene?’ But I’m not anti doing one, either. What I do know that if the time comes for me to have a sex scene, it will be dealt with beautifully and professionally. The idea that people used to do this without an intimacy coordinator does feel wild though. I’ve got a real life and a boyfriend who I love with my whole life. A sex scene has to be a choreographed stunt. But overall, I’m neither here nor there about it. I think I’m going to have a bit of a run up before Eloise gets there, anyway.”

And the fact that there’s much less sex in season two? Jessie is wry. “Look, it’s TV world, and that was season one. You’ve got to get the audience hooked. And series one did that by being delicious and lovely. But ultimately it was a different story. It was about the education of Daphne Bridgerton, who didn’t even know what self-pleasure was or how babies were made. Those sex scenes were integral to her storyline. But series two is about Antony and he’s not exactly virtuous. It’s not about discovering sex, it’s about the push and pull of relationships, and about whether characters should be together.”

So, what’s next for the jobbing actress turned overnight star? She’s currently talking to me from Australia, where she is filming her next project, a drama titled Bali 2002, set during the Bali bombings.

A very different story from Bridgerton. And after that? People must be lining up to offer her work? “I’ll take whatever comes up in the future. I just feel so lucky to be doing this right now.”

Bridgerton season two streams on Netflix from March 25