Warning: Light spoilers for Bridgerton season 3. There’s a moment in Bridgerton’s third season premiere episode when Cressida Cowper caught me a little off-guard. She’s struck up an unexpected bond with Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie), who had a falling out with Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) at the conclusion of season two, though it’s clear Eloise still cares and mourns for the friendship she’s lost.
Eloise asks if Cressida has considered that the reason she hasn’t found a husband yet is because, quite frankly, she’s a bully. Cressida’s harsh face softens in self-reflection. “It has been difficult to find a husband,” she says, pausing, “it has been more difficult still to find a friend.” Despite all the horrid things she’s done, you feel sorry for Cressida at this moment. Jessica Madsen, who’s embodied the character for three seasons, admits to StyleCaster that “it’s a really vulnerable moment for her.”
Gone are the days when a villain could be evil for evil’s sake. As our understanding of the nuances of human conflict has evolved, audiences too demand an explanation for bad behavior, even if they can’t identify with it personally.
“I’ve never seen Cressida as the villain because I’ve met people in my life who are the quote-unquote mean girls,” Madsen says, “and I’ve always known there’s more to it. You see that very much this season; why Cressida is the way she is and just her house itself, you can see the generations before. They look absolutely terrifying.” (Indeed, the interiors of the Cowper household feel more like an unfriendly museum than a home; cold, dark, and impersonal.)
You see that very much this season; why Cressida is the way she is and just her house itself, you can see the generations before. They look absolutely terrifying. Jessica Madsen
Cressida and her rival Penelope have more in common than the characters might realize. They’re both third-year debutants who have yet to find a suitor and through their desperation, try to regain power in a way that disparages others—Penelope through Lady Whistledown and Cressida through, well, being Cressida.
Madsen considers that theory. “Now that you say that, that’s probably a reason why they gravitate towards and have disdain for each other,” she observes. “Nic and I have talked about how they were probably friends when they were younger—[their mothers] Lady Featherington and Lady Calper have a friendship and I imagine Pen and Cressida would’ve been around each other but they became envious of each other for different reasons.”
A third-year debutante may as well be a spinster—or a nun—as far as the ton is concerned. So why hasn’t Cressida managed to find a suitor? Madsen admits it’s “make or break” but she’s “cloaked in a lot of what her mother and father want. It’s only really with Eloise that she unarms herself and actually finds a real connection. She can’t do that with a man.”
In Julia Quinn’s books, from which the show has diverged on several important plot points, Cressida does eventually find a husband in Lord Twombley (whom we haven’t met in the show), but he passes away and leaves her a widow; a fate some fans on Reddit think she deserves, but Madsen has hopes for a redemption arc.
“We’ve seen her break down, and I don’t mean break down in the sense of falling to pieces, but we’ve seen her open up and I think once you open, you’re receptive to change,” she says. “I hope that by the end of the season, people don’t forget the beginning.”
