I’ve not read the books so which characters appearances are different to how they were written in the books please?
In the books there's no racial diversity at all. Everyone is white. So any character that is Black, Asian, Indian, etc is different in appearance.
Which is fine and has made Bridgerton stand out and was explained as to how it worked in this fictional version of Regency England. But the rest of the changes they're doing make little to no sense.
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I just think it's a bit of a slap in the face to avid readers of the book because they'll be changing Francesca's journey that apparently a lot of people resonated with.
If fans also have to wait 2 years for the next series, I think interest will wane which is why we ended up with overkill on the promo for S3 to get people hyped up again after a 2 year wait since S2.
If they wanted to do a diverse story then maybe Shonda should have written her own story. I wonder if Julia Quinn felt strongarmed into this character change.
I personally think she was forced to write this or even had it written for her. She has producing credits for the show so she's invested beyond having created the source material. So it must be easier to strongarm her as you say, by saying that this will bring in more money or something.
It might totally be bias confirmation but most of the comments I've seen are negative and the few positive ones are from the media, which Netflix could have paid for, and people wanting to call others bigots for wanting a book adaptation to remain faithful.