Speaker 1: I know some very vulgar phrases, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to share them on the podcast. But sometimes if you
Speaker 1: hear someone giggling quietly in the back corner of sets,
Speaker 1: it might be because I shared one of my secret
Speaker 1: phrases from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century got someone
Speaker 1: trying to guess what it meant. Welcome to Bridgerton the
Speaker 1: Official Podcast. I'm Gabby Collins, I'm Hannah Craith, I'm Annabelhood,
Speaker 1: I'm just Brownell. And we're here too. As Agua would say,
Speaker 1: salute you as we better do so. On this episode,
Speaker 1: we're just wrapping up the season, and one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things to do with you three was talk about
Speaker 1: all the research that you did, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I got to learn a whole lot more about the
Speaker 1: spirit behind Bridgerton and of course your daily process. So
Speaker 1: I thought it would be fun to just kind of
Speaker 1: talk about some of the lingo and all of the
Speaker 1: beautiful language that you used in Bridgerton with just some
Speaker 1: fun Regency slang that was used throughout the show. What
Speaker 1: was the best Regency insult? I don't know who wrote it,
Speaker 1: but the writer in season one it might have been
Speaker 1: Chris who wrote Rince Featherington saying to Philippa Dunderhead, I
Speaker 1: thought that was a pretty good one. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the Featherington's have some of the best lines, don't they sometimes. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Philippa Imprudence whenever they're on screen or even like behind
Speaker 1: the scenes are just a double act. They are hilarious.
Speaker 1: You know. One of my favorite kind of Regency slang phrases.
Speaker 1: It might even be in the scripts, maybe get it
Speaker 1: into feature scripts, and it's just blast your eyes and
Speaker 1: it just means, you know, a way of saying I
Speaker 1: hate you, go wait or something ruder. I like a
Speaker 1: good old old draft. We were all kind of struggling
Speaker 1: to BVS. Like, I know, if I could see this,
Speaker 1: I don't think we've dropped an F word at all.
Speaker 1: I would love to do once in a while. I
Speaker 1: don't actually think it's right for the show, but you're writing,
Speaker 1: it's just so a nice F word really communicates what
Speaker 1: you're trying to say. But also even religious oaths back then,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't say God, damn or damn you or
Speaker 1: anything like that. That was as bad as saying the
Speaker 1: F word today. So yeah, even even they were very
Speaker 1: guarded in their swear words. I think, yeah, well that
Speaker 1: you do find the F word you used quite a
Speaker 1: lot in lots of historical contexts. Kind of depends on
Speaker 1: which which sources you go to. You not in Jane
Speaker 1: Austen so much, admittedly, but in some other places. There's
Speaker 1: definitely a Bordier Richer terminology that we could draw and
Speaker 1: if we wanted to. But I think, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not We're not impolite in British to no, we we're
Speaker 1: not really sweary or rude. So the closest moment though
Speaker 1: that that happens is when Daphne punches Nigel. When I
Speaker 1: read that script, that was almost like a f you
Speaker 1: kind of like expression. It was like I'm here and
Speaker 1: I'm meant to behave in a particular way and then
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna deck him. And I always remember reading
Speaker 1: that bit like when I first got the script through
Speaker 1: before we started season one, and also talking about it
Speaker 1: in the rehearsal room with Phoebe, and just how much
Speaker 1: I liked it, Like, although it feels like a kind
Speaker 1: of break from convention, it also just captured something this
Speaker 1: kind of frustration and just this need to whack him.
Speaker 1: So that, you know, that was the kind of the
Speaker 1: closest to a slang moment in some ways, wasn't it,
Speaker 1: nabel didn't you mention? There was some sort of document
Speaker 1: like a list of customers or something like that. So
Speaker 1: the writers had this document that was done up that
Speaker 1: had a few of the rules for language in terms
Speaker 1: of the dialogue and stuff or shall verse will and
Speaker 1: things like that, not using contractions, can't they don't say,
Speaker 1: can't they they cannot or even I beg your pardon,
Speaker 1: swap for forgive me and it's not, don't it do
Speaker 1: not and things like that. And then in the depth
Speaker 1: of this very long document there's also rules for swing
Speaker 1: and rules for using the F word and things like that,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really funny. And we've we've not
Speaker 1: gone there. I just googled it myself trying to remember
Speaker 1: some of the swear words. Strumpet. That's a fun one.
Speaker 1: And it has me thinking about how funny your job is, Annabelle,
Speaker 1: as a researcher, just googling ways for us to be,
Speaker 1: you know, obscene. I remember when I was researcher on scandal,
Speaker 1: I often would like have to google how to build
Speaker 1: a bomb at an airport or something, and I thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm surely on you know, some kind of do not
Speaker 1: fly list now, So I hope there's some equivalent of
Speaker 1: that for you. How does anyone even know how these
Speaker 1: phrases evolve? How does one even begin to research these
Speaker 1: colloquialisms and slang? Hannah, can you tell us about some
Speaker 1: of the origins. If you're a historian and you want
Speaker 1: to go about it, you're in luck because in the
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century there are a lot of dictionaries. You
Speaker 1: have to emergence of dictionaries of slang, so compellations of
Speaker 1: colloquialisms of everyday language, as people became really interested in
Speaker 1: kind of trying to collate and collect how people spoke
Speaker 1: in an ordinary way, so you've got your kind of
Speaker 1: reference library that you can use. But then also novels
Speaker 1: from the time. I mean, Georget Hare was a sort
Speaker 1: of famous user and creator of regency slang, so she
Speaker 1: both researched the language very carefully, but also introduced some
Speaker 1: of her own phrases. But the Regency romance novels use
Speaker 1: a lot of regency language to give it a kind
Speaker 1: of feel of the period, and Georget just keeps on
Speaker 1: coming up. And would you say she's also known for
Speaker 1: creating a lot of the slang that we might recognize. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: because that was one of her kind of traits in
Speaker 1: her writing, and it carries through to regency romance novels today.
Speaker 1: As part of the genre is that language, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it comes, some of it from the regency,
Speaker 1: but also some of it from georget Hare herself, because
Speaker 1: she created phrases and planted them in her books because
Speaker 1: she got fed up with people copying her work, so
Speaker 1: she sort of constructed some of her own terms and
Speaker 1: phrases that had the regency sound to them, and then
Speaker 1: if they popped up in other people's work, she realized
Speaker 1: that she was being plagiarized. So there was a bit
Speaker 1: of wordplay going on. So if you've got some time
Speaker 1: on your hands, watched the Waiting for season two, you
Speaker 1: can read georget Hair and find out which are the
Speaker 1: real regency phrases and which are the ones of her
Speaker 1: own eventution, it will take a while. So there's this
Speaker 1: wonderful presenter here in English or Susie Dent who does
Speaker 1: dictionary corner and countdown, and I you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: great fan of Susie, and now I feel a little
Speaker 1: bit like Susi Dent. I'm having like a Susi Dent
Speaker 1: a moment when we talk about the origins of terms.
Speaker 1: So Susie, if you're listening, drop me a little message.
Speaker 1: I love you. Hannah's work corners it like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hannah's hisstory corner. But we can have the extra edition,
Speaker 1: which is for the you know, the later night audience.
Speaker 1: So I know some very vulgar phrases, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to share them on the podcast. I could put
Speaker 1: them into the chat and see if you can guess
Speaker 1: what they are. But sometimes if you hear someone giggling
Speaker 1: quietly in the back corner of sets, it might be
Speaker 1: because I shared one of my secret very course phrases
Speaker 1: from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, got someone trying
Speaker 1: to guess what it meant. But they are really they
Speaker 1: are really quite quite bad. So I didn't. I just
Speaker 1: I'm not going to share them. Sorry, you have to
Speaker 1: ask me in person. Oh, I'm going to come find
Speaker 1: you next time you're on set. Yeah, yeah, that's that'd
Speaker 1: be good. We'll be right back after a work from
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Welcome back, to the season finale of bridgeton
Speaker 1: the official podcast, I'm Garby Collins and I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: with Annabelle Hood, Jess Brownell, and doctor Hannah Gregg. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about some of the Regency slang and lingo,
Speaker 1: and we pulled some other favorites. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: quiz you and see how well you remember some of
Speaker 1: these pieces of Regency language that showed up either in
Speaker 1: our conversations or in the actual show. Do we get
Speaker 1: a prize at the end of this, so it's really
Speaker 1: no ifacking gabulous makes me do like pop quiz, don't
Speaker 1: I know? I have a thing for bob quizzes. I
Speaker 1: have a problem. What is a rake of a manhole?
Speaker 1: I'd say regency f boy, I would say a philanderer,
Speaker 1: a Philander kind of going polight there, Flander. Those are
Speaker 1: all right, all of the above, all of the above,
Speaker 1: Ding ding ding ding. What about by blow? I believe
Speaker 1: a bye blow is a child created from out of marriage.
Speaker 1: I think it can be in an illegitimate child. So
Speaker 1: I did have a quick check on that in the
Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary, which is one of my main resources
Speaker 1: for the origins of language, because it always shows first
Speaker 1: use of words, and by blow is actually something like
Speaker 1: we often talk about blow by blow now as a
Speaker 1: kind of blow by blow account, you know, step by
Speaker 1: step account, and it seems to have come from a
Speaker 1: sword of fighting reference. It's like blow by blow. And
Speaker 1: then a bye blow is a side swipe to attack
Speaker 1: someone from the side. And so this then links to
Speaker 1: the idea of illegitimacy and that they are born through
Speaker 1: a kind of side action, like a kind of slightly
Speaker 1: off off the path, so they're not a legitimate offspring.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's so juicy. We got a little bit
Speaker 1: of etemology, linguistics history. Moving on to dickt in the NAB.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that one is. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's like mental, like that crazy in the head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nab meant head at the time, to be dicked in.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that means crazy, but that is
Speaker 1: what it meant. I know for sure. What to become
Speaker 1: a tenant for a life means jackled for life like shackled.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's one that georget Haya created in
Speaker 1: her novels or whether it has a regency like a
Speaker 1: real agency root I'm going to go and find out
Speaker 1: later the cut direct, the cut direct. We have Violet
Speaker 1: bridgertin giving Lady Featherington the cut direct in season one
Speaker 1: after the whole callin Marina business goes down. I remember
Speaker 1: we were talking about it quite a lot in the
Speaker 1: room and how vicious that is, you know, to just
Speaker 1: be fought out ignored like that. And then that night
Speaker 1: I was on the lot where we were, you know,
Speaker 1: the studio lot where we were writing, and I was
Speaker 1: waiting for my car from Ballet and this man walked
Speaker 1: in for a screening and I asked him, Oh, what's screening?
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he ignored me, and
Speaker 1: he kept walking, and I thought, oh, I just got
Speaker 1: the cut direct. And I was kind of thrilled. It
Speaker 1: really hurt, though I understood that's a really good one. Jesse.
Speaker 1: You also mentioned before that you have a technique for
Speaker 1: blazing through writing while also maintaining whatever energy you've got
Speaker 1: while not knowing the right words. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: about that, Yes, yes, yes. Occasionally when we're writing the script,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about a scene in the room and
Speaker 1: we understand the emotional and the character context for the scene,
Speaker 1: but not the exact regency specifics. We might just put
Speaker 1: like Regency Regency or Annabelle TBD because we expect that
Speaker 1: you know, Annabelle or doctor Hannah will help us figure
Speaker 1: it out. I write the scene like it's a modern
Speaker 1: day scene, and I write, you know, the colloquialisms that
Speaker 1: are anachronistic, and then I just go back and I
Speaker 1: do a research pass on it or a Regency Regency
Speaker 1: pass on it. Basically it's too hard to get a
Speaker 1: perfect you know, in terms of the period the first
Speaker 1: time through. One of the things that makes the Bridgeton
Speaker 1: scripts so distinctive, I think it is probably not what
Speaker 1: the view is will hear because it's in this stage
Speaker 1: direction too, that kind of, you know, the way the
Speaker 1: world is brought to life by the Bridgeton script's very
Speaker 1: distinctive style of fighting stage directions. And I remember reading,
Speaker 1: you know, the season one scripts and sometimes just laughing
Speaker 1: out loud and just feeling like such warmth towards the
Speaker 1: writers because if all of the energy that was coming
Speaker 1: through those directions. And so there was one stage direction
Speaker 1: from season one where we must be going to the
Speaker 1: Hastings House and you write, mister Darcy can f right
Speaker 1: off because the house was so much so much grands
Speaker 1: are so much bigger, and I was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just absolutely right, that's like perfect. It's so beyond the
Speaker 1: world of the Darcy pride and prejudice sort of world.
Speaker 1: Mister Darcy can't f right off because this is another
Speaker 1: layer of kind of that should a glamor and wealth
Speaker 1: and excitement. I loved all of those bits, and that's
Speaker 1: from you know, Chris Vanders and start of that in
Speaker 1: the pilot, those action lines that have a lot of
Speaker 1: modern day sayings in them. But when I think about it,
Speaker 1: it really is a Shonda Rhimes thing too, you know,
Speaker 1: all the way back to Scandal, like those action lines,
Speaker 1: and that's Shonda's voice. It's rich with references and pop
Speaker 1: culture moments and you know, comparisons. So so yeah, we
Speaker 1: love to throw in you know, modern day slang. And
Speaker 1: actually there should be like an audiobook of it with
Speaker 1: either Chris or Betsy Bears reading out the stage directions
Speaker 1: as well, because there's just a wonderful character to it,
Speaker 1: its own character. Hasn't it really in there? And of
Speaker 1: course it is on screen when you see it, because
Speaker 1: it dictates how everyone approaches the script, which is the
Speaker 1: blueprint for the whole production. Yeah, Betsy Beers classically reads
Speaker 1: the stage directions that most of our readthroughs for many
Speaker 1: of our shows, and she just goes for it. It's
Speaker 1: so fun to listen to her read the stage directions
Speaker 1: because you know she'll be like and then Daphne comes
Speaker 1: in and she's feeling hot. Ab I don't know it's
Speaker 1: the words or the page for me as well. I
Speaker 1: just see you. I could just spend the lecture, theater
Speaker 1: and the library, and I always feels like a treat
Speaker 1: to see an actors speak words that I would recognize
Speaker 1: from a historical document. There's something kind of magical about it,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it just lives in my head. I'm probably
Speaker 1: a broken record at this point. But I grew up
Speaker 1: on Austin and I streamed those mini series and films
Speaker 1: into my eyeballs, and so season one when I showed up,
Speaker 1: and then to just walk into a ballroom and see
Speaker 1: everyone dressed in regency costumes and to see everything that
Speaker 1: Will the production design and did was just like this
Speaker 1: dream come true, even though I was not a part
Speaker 1: of it. I was not on camera or anything. I
Speaker 1: wasn't in costume. Just to see it all around me
Speaker 1: was amazing and even like today, it hasn't worn off
Speaker 1: just stepping on to set every day, so it's like
Speaker 1: a dream. And yes, seeing how just the amount of
Speaker 1: effort that goes into just a production design and like
Speaker 1: all the hard work that goes into into filming even
Speaker 1: just a minute of screen time, it's just so so
Speaker 1: many hours of work. That's what That's what blows me
Speaker 1: away every single day. I just want to say thank
Speaker 1: you to the three of you, and especially to you Gabby.
Speaker 1: You know, there's such a law between season one in
Speaker 1: season two, there's this big gap and to come back
Speaker 1: for this podcast and you know, try to put myself
Speaker 1: back in the writer's room in season one and think
Speaker 1: about all the decisions we made and you know, remember
Speaker 1: those like initial feelings of working on this show when
Speaker 1: it was just a spark and Chris Vanduzen and Shanda
Speaker 1: and Betsy's eye to talk about the beginning of it.
Speaker 1: When here we are, you know, a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: and it's doing as well as it's doing and being
Speaker 1: so well received, and you know, continuing now into seasons
Speaker 1: three and four, it's incredibly exciting and was just so
Speaker 1: wonderful to revisit the inception of it all. So thank
Speaker 1: you for the opportunity, Hannah, Annabelle Jess. Thank you. It's
Speaker 1: been such a great opportunity to get to meet you,
Speaker 1: to get to know you better, to go behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of Bridgerton, and it's just been really great listeners
Speaker 1: to just take you inside of Shanda Land. That has
Speaker 1: been great fun and we look forward to doing more
Speaker 1: of it. So just keep your ears to the feeds
Speaker 1: and we will get together again soon. So take care,
Speaker 1: be well and go back and watch Bridgeton again on Netflix.
Speaker 1: You know you want to. Thanks again for going behind
Speaker 1: the scenes with us. Until next time. Bridgeton the Official
Speaker 1: Podcast was executive produced by Lauren Homan, Sandy Bailey, Holly
Speaker 1: Fry and me Gabby Collins. Our producer is Chris Vanduson
Speaker 1: and our producer editor is Vincent to Johnny, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Bridgeton the Official Podcast is a production of Shondaland Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio,
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