Young has not had much time to soak up the post-release glory since the episodes were aired in March. He has been on what he describes as a ‘Covid-19/Greek sabbatical’, and has yet to experience the true effect of his newfound fame (having contracted the virus during the week of Bridgerton’s release, post-recovery he flew to Greece for a well-deserved holiday). ‘I got a few “are you the guy from TV” while away,’ he says, ‘but nothing too extreme’. This may change in England, considering he’s the dashing new arrival to one of the nation’s most watched shows.
Compared to his character, Young is engaging and warm. Without giving too much away, the ambitious Featherington suffers somewhat of a downward spiral towards the end of Season 2, a fate which Young was ignorant of before filming. The character of Lord Jack Featherington doesn’t appear in Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books, meaning Young could not read up on the unexpected evolution of his character. ‘It was easy to be charming initially,’ he says, charmingly, ‘it helped to be like that when I didn’t know what Jack was going to become…’
Rupert Young
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Bridgerton is one of those productions that you would assume was just as fun to make, as it is to watch. Young tells me that he could not have wished for a ‘better entrance to a production’. ‘Without sounding too twee,’ he shares, ‘it felt like one big family on set. It’s just such a relaxed happy atmosphere and so much fun. I couldn’t really believe that what we had had so much fun making, is now in front of me, on Netflix’.
Young has previously featured in BBC hit Merlin, Shameless and the 2020 film, The Secret Garden. His greatest achievement to date may lie in threate however, after he was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical for Dear Evan Hansen.
It is unclear whether Young will return as Jack Featherington for the next instalment of Bridgerton, given the dramatic outcome of season 2 – although we wait in eager anticipation to discover the Lord’s fate.
