Inside the cozy online space where ‘Bridgerton’ fans bond
The moment Shannon Liston’s three older kids were off to school on May 16, she planned on putting her 17-month-old baby down for a nap, and then starting an hours-long Netflix binge.
Donna Amper had the day off from work, so she started watching the moment the new season was released — at 3 a.m. EST.
Liston and Amper are both members of Bridgerton, a 700,000-member Facebook group focused on discussing the Netflix series that debuted in 2020.
Some women in the group planned on getting cozy in pajamas with the Duke of Hastings’ face on them; others would sip tea from floral mugs emblazoned with “Bridgerton” quotes and nibble on freshly baked (or bought) biscuits and crumpets meant to set Regency-era vibes.
Their viewing plans for the upcoming season are just one of the things members of Bridgerton, the group, have been discussing. For several hours a day, they have also been gently arguing about their favorite characters’ motivations, guessing the upcoming season’s song selections, and drawing comparisons between Julia Quinn’s original book series and the TV adaptation by Shonda Rhimes. For many of the women, the Bridgerton group has proved not just to be a space for fan musings but also a community where they have found friendship. Members say it’s a safe space where they can share their creative memes and observations, put forward questions and
swoon over their favorite characters — all without being judged by people who aren’t as obsessed with the ton as they are.
Set in a lavish, over-gardened corner of Mayfair, London, between 1813 and 1827, the television and book series follow the eight Bridgerton siblings as they search for true love while navigating high society. What makes the show different from the abundance of romance-driven period dramas on streaming services, fans say, are its over-the-top costumes, sultriness, strong matriarchs, and the racial and cultural diversity introduced by Rhimes. (The first season has a Black duke, and the second an Indian-origin
lead.)
For Liston, 38, a jewelry designer and single mother of four in Florida, the show serves as a “giddy escape from reality,” and the Facebook group serves as her social outlet. Liston lives “in the country, in the middle of nowhere,” and when she saw the group pop up on her Facebook feed, she thought it could be an avenue for friendship, she said.
“It’s been good seeing that everyone on the group is friendly, excited about the show, and sharing the escapism with me,” she said. “They don’t make anyone feel like an outsider for being a little silly about the show.”
Liston, who describes herself as an introvert, said
“it’s hard to find friends in your late 30s as a woman,” but the group has helped build camaraderie with other like-minded fans.
A subgroup formed from the larger Facebook group have jokingly fashioned themselves as the “Bridgerton Cougars.”
The Cougars are a handful of older women devoted to the show, said one of them, Sue Pearce, 70, who lives closer (than American fans) to the fictional home of the Bridgertons, in Hampshire, Britain.
When Pearce’s husband died two years ago, she canceled his sports subscriptions and got herself Netflix instead. That’s when she discovered “Bridgerton,” and in particular Luke
Newton, who plays Colin Bridgerton — an eligible bachelor looking for everlasting love this season.
“I love his gentleness as Colin Bridgerton,” said Pearce. “Luke Newton is also a very sexy young man and a genuinely good person.”
For Pearce, a retired document controller in an aerospace company, the larger group is “a big escape” from her daily routine.
“There are lots of people who post regularly and so we begin to recognize each other’s names and faces,” she said. “The group has given me additional friendships because we share a love of ‘Bridgerton’ and the actors.”
The show’s popularity only seems to be growing.
The first two seasons of the show have never left Netflix’s Most Popular list for television in English, a spokesperson told The Washington Post. The series was renewed for its third and fourth seasons in 2021. The first two seasons have both crept back into the weekly global Top 10 list of the most-watched shows for the week of May 6, in anticipation of the release of the first part of the third season.
Netflix doesn’t make cumulative viewership data available to the public.
Even if some people in the group of more than 700,000 are silent, many are not; each meme or musing shared with the group has to go through a volunteer moderator’s approval, and for Bridgerton, there are only three.
Amper, 51, a registered nurse who lives near the Poconos in Pennsylvania, is a superfan of the show and one of the moderators.
“It’s not always fun and cute,” she said. “Everybody has their own favorite character, and people can get passionate about them, and then post not-so-flattering things about characters that have turned on their favorites.”
Despite having to spend roughly two hours a day moderating posts or suspending members who get too heated while discussing Marina Thompson’s ethics or Lady Whistledown’s true intentions and start name-calling the actors who play them, Amper has not regretted a day in the past two years.
She treasures the sense of shared community the group fosters and the way a single post about the show can lead to a full-fledged conversation.