Bridgerton author Julia Quinn: ‘Sex scenes have to serve a purpose’

{"text":[[{"start":6.936,"text":"It is a perfect summer day, 25C, cloudless blue sky, and Puget Sound is gleaming in the distance. I am in a buzzy seafood restaurant on the top floor of Pike Place Market, Seattle’s landmark fish and farmers’ market, and it is packed."}],[{"start":23.4,"text":"Across the table from me, Julia Quinn is talking about sex scenes. The novelist whose books were behind the phenomenally successful Netflix series Bridgerton, about eight siblings from an aristocratic British family seeking love in the 19th century, has three decades of experience in manoeuvring her characters from hello to happily-ever-after. She is also a clear-eyed realist when it comes to the steamy encounters that keep her audience coming back for more."}],[{"start":49.98,"text":"“For me, sex scenes have to serve a purpose in the book other than just being there,” she explains. “If you can take the scene out and the book holds up just fine, then to me at least it’s not romance, it’s erotica.”"}],[{"start":62.125,"text":"Once dismissed as trivial and trashy, romance fiction has surged in popularity in recent years, inspiring numerous sub-genres, including erotic romance and romantasy, each with their own fan base and clear set of rules."}],[{"start":76,"text":"It is also big business. Sales of romance novels — defined by their central love plot and happily-ever-after ending — started rising in 2008, in the wake of the economic crisis, then soared during the Covid pandemic. They now far outsell “serious” literary fiction and other genres such as mysteries and thrillers."}],[{"start":94.927,"text":"In the UK, annual revenue tripled from between £20mn-£25mn before 2020 to £69mn in 2024 and has largely held on to those gains. US romance sales, which are tracked by volume, reached 51mn last year, having doubled over the previous four years. In 2025, five of the top 10 US fiction authors including Emily Henry and Rebecca Yarros wrote romance, and one out of every 17 print books sold was a romance."}],[{"start":123.008,"text":"“We are why poets get paid,” Quinn says. “We’re the reason that publishers can afford to take risks.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":128.288,"text":"As the publishing industry grapples with competition from AI and self-publishing, as well as reports of a dramatic decline in sustained reading, overall book sales are down so far this year. But analysts are hoping romance will ride to the rescue, with several potential blockbusters due in the autumn. In March, Bloomsbury’s shares shot up 17 per cent when it announced two new romantasy books by Sarah J Maas."}],[{"start":153.52,"text":"Hollywood has also hitched a ride on the romance bandwagon, thanks in large part to Bridgerton. Star producer Shonda Rhimes stumbled on one of Quinn’s books while on vacation and sold the idea to Netflix. The first Bridgerton series, which landed on Christmas Day 2020, pulled in 113mn views in three months, making it one of Netflix’s all-time top 10 most viewed shows, and other producers rushed to bottle the same lightning. Recent streaming hits Heated Rivalry, Off Campus and People We Meet on Vacation are all based on romance novels, as was the blockbuster film It Ends with Us."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":190.223,"text":"Quinn has profited hugely. Her 29 novels, which include the Smythe-Smith and Bevelstoke series, as well as Bridgerton prequels, are mostly set in Regency England, one of the most popular periods for romantic fiction. Collectively, they have sold more than 20mn copies in the US alone and have been translated into 43 languages. Shortly after the Bridgerton TV show was launched, all eight of those books — one for each alphabetised sibling, from Anthony to Hyacinth — hit The New York Times bestseller list simultaneously."}],[{"start":222.76,"text":"We are eating at Matt’s in the Market, a Seattle institution, because Quinn loves to show off the city that she fell in love with in 2002 after multiple moves around the US for her husband’s medical training: “After about two weeks, we thought: this is home.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":223.26,"text":"Matt’s in the Market"}],[{"start":237.56,"text":"First and Pike, 94 Pike Street, Top Floor, Suite 32, Seattle, WA 98101"}],[{"start":238.06,"text":"Italian grinder sandwich with chicken chowder $30"}],[{"start":238.56,"text":"White prawn sandwich $27"}],[{"start":239.06,"text":"Side salad $12"}],[{"start":239.56,"text":"Salted caramel gelato x2 $24"}],[{"start":240.06,"text":"Blueberry lemonade $14"}],[{"start":240.56,"text":"Small coffee $6"}],[{"start":261.88,"text":"Total inc tax and service $124.94"}],[{"start":264.14,"text":"The restaurant is an unpretentious place, and Quinn, a down-to-earth 56-year-old, wearing a simple black dress and slip-on sandals, fits right in. She tells me to call her Julie, because outside the pages of her novels she uses her legal name of Julie Cotler Pottinger."}],[{"start":281.824,"text":"We consider the cocktail menu and Quinn notices that Matt’s offers a shrub, a fruit-based non-alcoholic drink that dates back several centuries. Today’s version is blackberry and blueberry. I am almost tempted, until she explains that shrubs are also known as “drinking vinegars” and warns that her husband thinks they are “disgusting”. I opt for blueberry lemonade instead."}],[{"start":303.216,"text":"Raised mostly on the East Coast, Quinn attended boarding school in Connecticut and then took her first trip abroad when she won a scholarship and spent six months studying in Gloucestershire in the UK. Quinn’s fascination with romance novels really took hold while she was studying at Harvard. But the books, sold as mass-market paperbacks and derided as “bodice rippers” for their busty sexualised cover illustrations, were considered so déclassé that the bookstores in Harvard Square declined to stock them. She ended up riding the subway to another part of Cambridge to get her hands on them."}],[{"start":336.529,"text":"“You felt you had to hide it,” she says. “Romance novels are primarily written by women for women and they are about emotions. Society devalues the feminine . . . We have been taught that great literature is the great white male quest.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":350.04,"text":"As befits a romance author, Quinn met her future husband during freshman year in college. But her career path was more twisted. After earning an art history degree, she decided to enter medical school. But that meant she had to spend a couple of years taking the science prerequisites she had missed. Part-time classes and a job as a telephone fundraiser for charities, including Planned Parenthood, meant she had a lot of leftover mental energy that she channelled into writing."}],[{"start":374.356,"text":"She sold her first two novels, Splendid and Dancing at Midnight, in 1994, in the same month she got into medical school, so she deferred her entry to write and sell a third book in the same series. Even then she had doubts: “All my friends were getting advanced degrees and I thought, ‘I’m not qualified to do anything. What do I do if this writing thing doesn’t work out?’” So she started Yale medical school after all, only to drop out after two months."}],[{"start":400.581,"text":"The waiter comes back to take our order. Quinn opts for the special sandwich, described as an Italian grinder, and a side of chicken chowder. I choose the white prawn sandwich and a side salad."}],[{"start":411.565,"text":"Once committed to writing, she became doggedly businesslike, publishing a book or two each year while raising her two children, building a devoted following and tracking her sales via spreadsheet."}],[{"start":422.833,"text":"All her books take place in and around the UK’s Regency period during the early 1800s when King George III was suffering from mental illness and his son, later George IV, ruled as prince regent. The interconnected sequence is addictive. Little sisters grow up and minor characters from prior books blossom into love interests, while prequels reach back to tell the love stories of parents and distant relatives."}],[{"start":446.798,"text":"Quinn has never been tempted to try other periods. “It’s kind of this sweet spot in history where it is far enough in the past where we can really romanticise it and it allows for plots we couldn’t have now,” she says. At the same time, people from the Regency period are modern enough that their thoughts on religion and romantic love are close enough to ours for her characters not to feel too anachronistic."}],[{"start":468.82,"text":"In 2001, her 11th book, An Offer from a Gentleman — a retelling of Cinderella with Benedict Bridgerton as Prince Charming — became her first to hit the bestseller list. A few years later, she bounced her publishers, HarperCollins, into releasing her work as one of their first original ebooks, because they were afraid she would make money without them if she was allowed to go it alone."}],[{"start":490.136,"text":"This year Quinn capitalised on her success by starting JQ Editions, a publishing imprint and historical romance subscription box, to bring out special decorative editions of her favourite novels by other authors, as well as a bonus edition of one of her books."}],[{"start":506.88,"text":"The waiter arrives with our food. Quinn’s sandwich is filled with Italian cold cuts, ham, salami and coppa. “My mom is from eastern Connecticut and a grinder is what they call a club sandwich,” she says. “This tastes a lot like my childhood.” My prawn sandwich is overflowing with fried seafood and too intimidating to pick up. I tackle it with a fork."}],[{"start":529.6,"text":"Conversation turns to the common criticisms of romance fiction as trite and nutritionless, the written equivalent of cotton candy."}],[{"start":536.714,"text":"“It’s no more formulaic than a mystery novel,” she says, adding that the negativity around romantic fiction points to a hang-up we have about reading. “There’s something about our society that people think that reading has to be hard, or at the very least it has to be improving in some way . . . You go to the movies for fun. Reading can also be for fun.”"}],[{"start":556.251,"text":"I know what she means. Like many longtime fans of romantic fiction, I used to downplay my love of the genre, buying mostly ebooks so that no one would know what I was reading."}],[{"start":566.265,"text":"But attitudes have shifted in recent years. People have become more comfortable with acknowledging female desire and talking about sex. The pandemic-era lockdowns also supercharged interest in escapism, whether through reading or other hobbies. Now, when I confess to acquaintances my addiction to romance novels, men still tend to be surprised, but at least some women nod in agreement."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":590.2,"text":"Technological change has also played a role. Fan fiction websites and self-publishing have helped new authors grab attention while showing conventional publishers just how broad and lucrative the market can be."}],[{"start":600.982,"text":"For her part, Quinn highlights the rise of BookTok, a subsection of TikTok where readers, writers and publishers share reviews, recommendations and jokes. Being able to coalesce helps fans face down the condescension together. “When I was in college, there was nobody I had to discuss books with . . . Now you can go on Instagram or TikTok and you have this community,” she says."}],[{"start":623.56,"text":"She is more conflicted about the growing impact of AI, which some in the publishing industry fear will undermine the value of human writing and pose a particular threat to genre fiction that relies on distinct formulas and tropes. “I honestly don’t know what will happen. When I hear people who are so certain, one way or the other, I am both sceptical and jealous, because I really don’t know what’s coming.”"}],[{"start":646.16,"text":"Over salted caramel gelato, we talk about Quinn’s regular trips to the UK to see Bridgerton being filmed at Shepperton Studios in Surrey and on location around London and Bath. Her next visit will be later this month for season 5, based on When He Was Wicked (2004), which Quinn describes as “my hottest book ever”. A widowed Francesca Bridgerton learns to love again when her husband’s cousin tempts her into having vividly described sex all over a Scottish castle."}],[{"start":675.143,"text":"The latest season, due for release in 2027, is shaping up to be the most controversial yet. From the start, Rhimes’s imaginary version of 19th-century Britain outraged some by including Black and Asian characters as well as gay and bisexual love scenes. This time, Rhimes has flipped the gender of Francesca’s lover and plans to centre the season on a lesbian romance."}],[{"start":698.654,"text":"When Quinn sold the rights to the books to Rhimes’s production company, she gave up creative control, but the producers do consult her and she supports Rhimes’s choices, especially the decision to create a more diverse society. “I thought it was absolutely brilliant,” she says. “I never said my books are a history lesson.”"}],[{"start":717.84,"text":"Quinn may make her living by marrying women off, but she is no conservative tradwife. Since the TV series supercharged her book sales, she has used her global fame to advocate for progressive causes that matter to her, including gender equality and fighting censorship."}],[{"start":733.46,"text":"She is particularly enraged by efforts to pull books by queer and non-white authors, and those that include references to non-traditional families, from library shelves. “Never in human history have the people banning the books turned out to be the good guys.”"}],[{"start":752.63,"text":"She served as US national ambassador for the non-profit EveryLibrary in 2023-24 and gave talks around the country. She still makes a point of donating $5,000 from each library speaking fee to the organisation. “Basically, people would come for Bridgerton and it was kind of a bait-and-switch because they would have to listen to me talk about book bans for the first 10 minutes,” she says."}],[{"start":769.44,"text":"She scrolls through her phone to find the text of HR 7661, a congressional bill that would make it easier to remove books from public and school libraries: “The criteria are just insane. One of them is lascivious dancing . . . All of my books could get banned.”"}],[{"start":785.68,"text":"Quinn is also on the board of Landesa, a global charity that advocates for land rights for longtime residents. She sees this issue as a matter of gender equality. “They say, if you give a woman a fish, you feed her for a day. If you teach her how to fish, you feed her for life. Landesa wants the woman to own the pond.” She adds that there is “a little bit of a link [to her books] because in Regency times it was very, very difficult for women to own property”."}],[{"start":810.315,"text":"The waiter clears the dessert dishes and I pay the bill. Quinn needs to get going because she has house guests touring Seattle and she wants to be home when they return. I squeeze in a few more questions."}],[{"start":821.093,"text":"She tells me she wants to find different ways to tell stories. She really enjoyed her work on Queen Charlotte, a Bridgerton spin-off that aired in 2023. Rhimes wrote the scripts first and Quinn turned them into a novel, rather than the other way round."}],[{"start":835.594,"text":"Finally, I have to ask: after a lifetime spent writing about the trials and tribulations of 1800s nobility, has she ever wished she lived back then?"}],[{"start":845.564,"text":"“Not at all. I like my healthcare and vaccines too much to go live in the 19th century,” she says, adding: “And I’d like to vote, too.”"}],[{"start":846.064,"text":"​Brooke Masters is the FT’s US managing editor"}],[{"start":857.32,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":872.88,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785544649_6696.mp3"}