As the director of the third and fourth episodes of the third season of “Bridgerton,” Ahn had to make Penelope and Colin’s carriage moment jump off the screen.
Getting to direct two episodes of the third season of Bridgerton was the biggest job of Andrew Ahn’s career — and that was before he learned was going to helm two of the juiciest episodes in the entire season. Ahn directed episodes three and four (“Forces of Nature” and “Old Friends,” respectively), which, as the closers to the first part of season three (part two premieres Thursday, June 13, on Netflix), include a massive ball scene, Colin’s coming to the rescue of Penelope when she’s endangered by a runaway hot-air balloon, and of course, the moment I, you, and all the others fans had been waiting for: Colin and Penelope’s intense — very intense — carriage scene.
Ahn was hardly unqualified for the task. The Korean American Los Angeles native had directed TV before (Max’s Generation and CBS’ MacGyver reboot) and saw his very first feature film, Spa Night, win a Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance for its star, Joe Seo, at Sundance, as well as Independent Spirit’s John Cassavetes Award. Fire Island, Ahn’s 2022 rom-com starring Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, and Margaret Cho, earned critical acclaim and more award nominations, including a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. So, yeah, Andrew Ahn didn’t get the chance to direct the two biggest episodes of the biggest show of the year by accident — he earned it, for sure. Yet even he will admit that when the time came to yell, “Action!,” on the Bridgerton set, he felt a teeny bit of nerves. For a minute, anyway.
“It was a little daunting,” he tells Shondaland from Vancouver, Canada, where he is shooting an undisclosed movie. “This is the biggest thing that I’ve done: the biggest budget, the most actors, the largest crew. So, I was a little overwhelmed. Yet at the end of the day, my job as a director is to be a storyteller. And it was just about me getting to work with these wonderful craftspeople, the cinematographer, production designer, costume designers, hair and makeup, and the insanely talented actors to bring these characters to life. Once I grounded myself, I was like, ‘Wait, this is all story and character. I know how to do this!’”
That confidence showed, as evidenced by Bridgerton’s thunderous buzz all over social media and eye-popping ratings. Directing those important episodes took technical skill, lots of planning, and a steady hand, to be sure, and also a reverence for the material season-three showrunner Jess Brownell created, knowing just how much the story — and that moment when Colin and Penelope finally, ahem, come together in the carriage — meant for fans. It certainly helped that he’s a fan himself.
“What I love about the show,” Ahn says, “is that it really centers love and romantic relationships. But it doesn’t shy away from family relationships, sibling dynamics, and their drama, which for me is really fun. And makes it feel really relatable.”
Ahn’s best-known works address those themes, which is part of why he felt so comfortable with the material. Fire Island, a queer-themed rom-com inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, paints a portrait of friends who are like family on a hedonistic vacation that gets complicated by romance and class issues — topics all too familiar to a Bridgerton or Featherington.
Likewise, his breakout short film, Dol (First Birthday), was a semi-autobiographical short about a young Korean American man coming out; Ahn actually used the film to come out to his parents in real life. Though there’s no shortage of family drama in the ton, his specific episodes of Bridgerton were among the most complicated ever for the series — beginning with that hot-air balloon sequence, the first large-scale stunt sequence in the show’s history.
“It was a very cool sequence,” he says. “We storyboarded that; every shot was planned. We had three cameras. We were at that location for more than a week, just trying to make this feel special, make it feel exciting, have Colin be a hero, and have Pen caught in between [Colin and Lord Debling]. That danger is a lot of fun to do.”
Even though it may not have been as physically demanding, the final scene of episode four — that big moment that essentially closes the first part of season three — when Colin and Pen take their relationship to the next level, required just as much planning and communication.
Each episode of Bridgerton takes about 30 days to film, and for the carriage sequence, the team spent days setting it up and preparing everyone for the intimacy depicted by actors Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton. “We knew how important it was, and we really took the prep seriously,” Ahn says. “One of the first things my cinematographer and I did was, during preproduction, set up the carriage and have stand-in actors checking angles.” He says producers carefully broke the scene up into parts, choreographing the moment Colin goes from sitting opposite Penelope to getting down on his knees, professing his desire, to “find the rhythm of the scene.” The payoff is a scene in which the tension between Pen and Colin, as they become closer in proximity, gets thicker, more kinetic, and so hot that it virtually oozes off the screen.
Naturally, an intimacy coordinator worked closely with Coughlan and Newton. “We had a lot of conversations about what the ramp-up to eroticism would be,” Ahn says. “Luke and Nicola brought a lot of ideas about the kind of connection that these characters would have. And I think it was a very safe, consensual, respectfully done scene. I think they really trusted each other, and that really showed in how hot the scene is.”
Indeed. And even though little in Bridgerton is explicit, that’s by design — even when it comes to the nuances of the relationships, experiences, and the way we see ourselves. Ahn says his identity as a queer Korean American definitely infuses what we see on-screen. “I sometimes see myself as an outsider, right? And I think as an audience, we’re kind of always interested in how an outsider finds their sense of self. I think I have a lot of sensitivity towards underdogs, wanting to see them win, and I love that Bridgerton has that and casts actors of color and queer actors. I’m excited for even more of that in future episodes and seasons.”
