Warning, gentle reader: spoilers ahead for Bridgerton season four, as well as plot points from the novels.
Three days before Bridgerton season four debuted, author Julia Quinn was grappling with how to balance her professional projects with the state of the world. “You get to the point where you have to say something,” Quinn, whose eight interlocking books serve as the inspiration for the hit streaming series Bridgerton, tells Vanity Fair. “You can’t let this moment pass.” Faced with the prospect of promoting the show’s latest installment, plus her new subscription book box, Quinn knew she couldn’t plug her upcoming projects without declaring her opposition to “a government who’s killing people and abducting children” amid the contentious ICE presence in Minnesota.
“If you get to a point where it feels like talking about anything but that is in poor taste, then that’s what you have to talk about,” Quinn says, speaking from Spotify’s New York office (her entire Bridgerton series is available as audiobooks on Spotify). A few days earlier, Quinn posted a video to Instagram that echoed the sentiment. “I don’t care anymore if you don’t want to hear my political opinions,” she said in the clip posted January 24. “You can leave.” Quinn began writing historical romance as a senior art history major at Harvard University. Since then, she’s published more than 35 historical romance novels that have been translated into 41 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, and she’s secured a spot on the New York Times bestseller list 19 times.
Quinn, who serves as a consultant on the Shonda Rhimes–produced show, revels in positive fan responses like memes and fan edits on TikTok. But in the current political climate, and with millions of eyes on her romantic fantasy world, Quinn has found it hard to pick up the pen after her most recently published book, Queen Charlotte (coauthored with Rhimes), which was released in May 2023. As Quinn tells Vanity Fair, there’s a reason she’s shifted her focus lately: “Honestly, that felt more important than writing books.”
Vanity Fair: With the popularity of Bridgerton, Heated Rivalry, and romantasy books, it feels like smut is having a pop culture resurgence. Why are we gravitating toward this genre right now?
Julia Quinn: I haven’t watched Heated Rivalry yet. I was trying to find the right time to binge it because I’ve heard enough to know that I’m not going to be okay with watching just one episode. I’ve been saving it, but I’m super excited for it. I don’t usually like the word smut, but I do understand other people wanting to own it.
Is there a reason you don’t love the word?
Maybe this comes from having started in the 1990s, when, even though romance novels were the biggest moneymaker in publishing, we were still very much looked down upon. I would never be talking to somebody from Vanity Fair then. People would be telling you, “Aren’t your books just about sex?” Well, no, they’re not. They’re actually about relationships, of which sex is a really important part.
