Night after night of glittering soirees, wreathed with flowers, lanterns and glistening silks. Waiters laden with flutes of champagne and bespoke cocktails, tables groaning with finger foods and other dainties. A string quartet playing instrumental versions of pop songs on repeat. Hundreds of luminous social climbers dripping in lace and feathers, all desperately jostling to see and be seen.
Yes, this is exactly how I envision my funeral – but it’s also a decent description of a recent weekend I spent in the town of Bowral, New South Wales, where Netflix staged a PR stunt in honour of the upcoming third season of Bridgerton. The entire town was transformed into an homage to the steamy regency romance over one extremely fancy week.
Fans in regency garb promenaded down Bowral’s streets; much like in Bridgerton, the commitment to historical accuracy ranged from loose to non-existent. The beautiful and expansive Milton Park Country House was transformed into a regency estate, which Netflix packed with celebrities, journalists and influencers for an elaborate screening event. (You may not know this, but it is rare for press junkets to be bookended by several balls.)
The show’s stars, Nicola Coughlan, who plays Penelope Featherington, and Luke Newton, who plays Colin Bridgerton, also popped up all over town: walking red carpets, mingling with fans, posing for photos in a hot air balloon and gushing over babies in bonnets. Every time Coughlan appeared, she seemed to be wearing a different couture gown. One night, she turned up in a decidedly glamorous black beaded number that, she later told me, weighs 17kg.
“It was a costume Richard Quinn – I’d seen it on the runway a year-and-a-half ago. I was obsessed with it and was like, ‘I want to wear that dress so bad. Someone’s definitely gonna wear it before I get the chance to,’” she said. “It was the heaviest dress I’ve ever worn – but you have to suffer for your art.”
I thought maybe I would. But while trapping a bunch of influencers and celebrities in an old and possibly haunted house then filling them with cocktails sounds like a great Agatha Christie murder mystery, or perhaps a specific level of Dante’s hell, I swiftly warmed to the whole thing. In a way, it was the closest we can get to the regency era in 2024. Beautiful influencers and minor celebrities dressed to the nines in various incarnations of period garb: these people were the modern incarnation of the Ton themselves, TikTok clout replacing birthright and blue blood. But I couldn’t work out what my role there was. Was I part of the Ton? Was I there to find a husband? Or was I doomed to have a romance with the open bar the whole time?
Bridgerton is an adaptation of extremely popular romance books of the same name, renowned for its costumes, deeply satisfying romances and steamy sex scenes. The third season revolves around a new “social season”, where all the ladies and gentlemen of the Ton must attend balls and parties and promenades in order to attract the attention of a viable partner. In a way, Bridgerton in Bowral had a similarly practical goal: rather than encouraging marriages, Netflix was using the sentimental trappings of the Regency era to convince everyone to watch their show – a plot conspired by publicist types rather than scheming socialites.
While the influencers definitely did physically resemble the beautiful and effete court dandies of the time, I discovered that the resemblance ended there, as nobody seemed to work harder than these people. One night, I left a gaggle of content creators drinking and carousing after midnight, expecting to find them at midday in dark sunglasses. Instead, I discovered they were up at the crack of dawn for our next event, immaculately dressed and made up and seemingly immune to something as pedestrian as a hangover. Many of them had even stayed up for hours editing their videos.
This was the biggest revelation of Netflix’s elaborate shindig; I went from polite scepticism about influencers to fully impressed – and then utterly exhausted. Some of them have more followers than there are people in Australia.
For my part, I spent most of my time indulging in some Bridgerton role-play: mainly, spreading gossip. At one point I heard rumours of a haunting in the estate, until I eventually came full circle and realised I had been the one to start that rumour. Another journalist told me, in all seriousness, that one of the influencers had allegedly asked for paramedics after breaking a nail, which is exactly the slightly cruel gossip you expect in high society. At one point I thought one of the couple accounts – beautiful content creators whose whole schtick is their perfect relationship – were breaking up, but it turns out that it was just a video prank. I still spent my week sipping cocktails, watching beautiful people and repeating all this to anyone who would listen.
Eventually, I realised: I was the one responsible for the majority of the gossip. Finally, I knew what my role in Bridgerton in Bowral was: dearest readers, I am Lady Whistledown.
Bridgerton season 3 starts on 16 May on Netflix
Patrick Lenton travelled to Bowral courtesy of Netflix
