Page 12 - CSA Speaker Bulletin September 2017

Page 12 - CSA Speaker Bulletin September 2017 | CSA Celebrity Speakers

P. 12

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW:

HELEN FIELDING

Helen Fielding is a novelist one girl felt about trying to navigate Q.Did you feel it was
and screenwriter, best known life and her identity in the media age. important to you to
as the creator of the fictional If I’d known, then, that so many people write the screenplays
character Bridget Jones, which were going to read the diaries, I’d never for the film adaptations? Was
has become a megabrand have dared write them. But the fact there a danger that the essential
known globally around the that it became so popular did open my essence of Bridget Jones would
world, with her third book eyes to a huge global issue - especially be lost?
Bridget Jones: Mad About the for women. Bridget is a product of the
Boy achieving record-breaking media age where women especially Writing a screenplay is a very different
first day sales in the UK. are inundated with images of how we job from writing a novel. A screenplay
Bridget Jones is a brand which are supposed to look, and multiple is much shorter and tighter, and has to
has endured since 1996 to the roles that we feel we are supposed move along more efficiently. Things that
current day and shows no sign to be brilliant at. I think Bridget are explained at length in a novel are
of diminishing. Helen spoke to communicates with women in the same shown very quickly, visually, in a movie.
us recently about what inspired way I observe women communicating I much prefer writing novels, but it was
her to create the character and with each other. We don’t arrive for very important for me to stay involved
her motivation for re-inventing a glass of wine with our friends and with the movies in order to keep
her and keeping her relevant immediately say “Oh, oh look at me; Bridget’s character, and the meaning of
for today’s audiences. I’m so thin, beautiful and successful.” the stories true.
We share our insecurities, flaws and
Q.What do you think things that have gone wrong, process It is easy to get Bridget’s character
it is about Bridget them, laugh about them and support wrong - if you lose her kindness and
Jones that has each other. Bridget, without realising it resilience, then she begins to seem
made her books and films so herself, stands for the important human self-obsessed, if you lose the irony and
phenomenally successful? Do qualities: warmth, kindness, emotional layers of meaning then the whole thing
we identify with her or feel sorry honesty, resilience, the strength to seems like a simple romantic comedy -
for her? admit to being vulnerable, flawed and the search for a man. If you don’t want
therefore human, and the ability to her to seem self-pitying and sad, you
At heart Bridget Jones is about the laugh at yourself and your misfortunes, have to keep the humour and sense of
gap between how we all feel we’re pick yourself up, dust yourself off and fun. So it’s vital that I stay on the case
expected to be and how we actually keep going. and speak up to keep Bridget on track.
are. Because I originally started
writing Bridget’s diary anonymously, I love the fact that these qualities are Q.You approach life with
as a column in a newspaper, it freed celebrated through Bridget and that great humour, how
me up to be much more honest than I they are seen as more important than important is this as a
would otherwise have been, about how a fashionably large handbag and a communication tool for life?
bottom like two billiard balls.

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