Bridgerton could be a diamond of the first water come Emmy night, if the Academy voters deign to recognize the show for any of its dozen nominations – including outstanding drama series. But before they do, The Dipp thought it best to catch up with showrunner and executive producer Chris Van Dusen to get a sense of how Season 1 came together, what we can expect in Season 2, and solve some lingering mysteries.

Here in part one of our discussion, we talk about watching Bridgerton take off, celebrating diversity on-screen, why Van Dusen is moving on from the show after Season 2, and he reveals what happened to the diamond necklace that Daphne got from the prince.

Enjoy!

What has it been like seeing everyone fall in love with Bridgerton, watching the show explode into a cultural phenomenon?

It’s been fascinating. I think we wrote what we wanted to see, and we weren’t really thinking, “Oh my God, this is going to be a water-cooler moment,” or, “This is going to be a hashtag,” or, “This is going to be a meme.” That’s not really how we approached story. We approached it, first of all, through character. Our most fun days were the ones where we got to come up with what we called our “thirsty” moments, like Simon licking the spoon, or Simon and Daphne touching hands, but it wasn’t really about the reaction we wanted to see as much as the story we were telling. You always hope that people will react, and definitely, once I saw the memes, the tweets, and the musical on TikTok, it was a little surreal.