Once You Learn Who Inspired Bridgerton's Featheringtons You Can't Unsee It
It all makes sense now.
Summary
- The Featheringtons are Bridgerton's second main family.
- They certainly stand out from the crowd and have that reality star vibe about them.
- This is because they are modeled after very real modern celebrities, as Nicola Coughlan revealed in her interviews.
In addition to the titular family, the Regency-era ton of the Netflix Bridgerverse is populated by numerous secondary characters. But there's one household that certainly stands out from the rest.
While the Featheringtons don't play much of a role in Julia Quinn's original book series, Portia, her late husband, three daughters, and occasional relatives have been major players in the Netflix show from day one.
They serve as a vivid contrast to the Bridgertons, a source of constant scandal and a convenient object of ridicule with their over-the-top, colorful dresses and unfortunate intrigues.
If these ladies lived in modern times, you could say they would be huge reality stars. Well, that's because when the showmakers created the scandalous family, they based it on very real celebrities.
Inspiration for the Featheringtons
The star of the upcoming Season 3, Nicola Coughlan, revealed back in 2021, after Bridgerton had become a huge hit on Netflix, that her character Penelope, her mother, and two sisters were inspired by the stars of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
‘The Featherington family were sort of based on the Kardashians, which our costume designer Ellen Mirojnick very much modelled us around,’ she said in a chat with Elle. ‘There was one very ambitious mum and her three daughters, who were all very different.’
The actress shared that she's always been a big fan of the Kardashian-Jenner show, and even credited each of the Featherington sisters with real-life inspiration.
‘I think Prudence and Phillipa are very Kourtney and Khloe cos they're besties, and Pen is a very successful business woman, also I remember Kim being like a very good detective too so there's that,’ Coughlan wrote on her now-deleted Twitter account (via Business Insider).
Undeniable Similarities
Once you realize that the cast and crew of Bridgerton were inspired by the Kardashians when they brought the Featheringtons to the silver screen, you can't unsee it. The resemblance is overwhelming.
Just like the Kardashians, the Featheringtons stand out from the crowd and are not afraid to use their notoriety (mostly driven by scandal and gossip) to their advantage. Of course, things aren't going so well for the fictional family, but that's certainly about to change.
Prudence and Philipa have a tight-knit friendship and exclude Pen, which mirrors the dynamics of the early seasons of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, when Khloe and Kourtney were quite rude to Kim. No wonder Nicola Coughlan has referred to her on-screen family as 'the Kardashians of Regency London' since day one.
Too bad the Netflix creators decided to cut the youngest Featherington daughter, Felicity, who was part of the books. She could be a Kylie of the Bridgerverse.
Sources: Elle, Business Insider.