Hugh Grant Reveals He Was Brought to Tears by ‘Bridget Jones 4’ Script

On a new episode of Radio Andy’s “The Jess Cagle Show with Julia Cunningham,” actor Hugh Grant — a self-proclaimed “harsh judge of scripts” — declared the fourth “Bridget Jones” movie script to be “really good.”

“[It’s] really moving as well as funny, because it’s based on — you know Helen Fielding who wrote the ‘Bridget’ books, this last book is based on her own experience of losing her husband and bringing up her kids alone. So it’s got a huge amount of heart. It made me cry,” Hugh told Jess and Julia. “Have I made it sound too dark? It’s also extremely funny.”

According to the official trailer, in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” (out February 13 on Peacock), Bridget (Renée Zellweger) is alone once again, widowed four years ago, when Mark (Colin Firth) was killed on a humanitarian mission in the Sudan. She’s now a single mother to nine-year-old Billy and four-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).

Hugh also explained how he came to the decision not to be in the third film, “Bridget Jones’s Baby” (2016).

“That was when [Bridget] has a baby, and it had a great setup that she’s pregnant and doesn’t know whether it’s Darcy’s baby or Daniel’s baby. That was marvelous,” Hugh said. “But I could never work out how Daniel would handle either being the father or not being a father. Couldn’t make him work. And we went through agonies, months and months, and in the end, I said, ‘I think I’d better sit this one out.’ So I did. And they made a wonderful film anyway.”

“The Jess Cagle Show with Julia Cunningham” airs weekdays at 2pm ET on Radio Andy (Ch. 102). Full episodes are available to stream anytime on the SiriusXM app.