The scene is also propelled by something of a surprising needle drop. “You know, that was my choice,” says showrunner Jess Brownell. “I didn’t pick a lot of the songs, but I weirdly picked the Pitbull song. I never thought I would pick a Pitbull song for a sexy moment, but the build of it just works perfectly.”
Mr. Worldwide’s 2011 hit, “Give Me Everything,” was not written in the script, but chosen after music supervisor Justin Kamps sent Brownell playlists of Vitamin String Quartet renditions of popular songs. “The second I heard it, I thought, This is a really sexy adaptation of the song,” says Brownell. “It’s a tricky balance because you hope that people aren’t taken out of the scene by going like, ‘Wait a second, it’s Pitbull?!’”
Say what you will about the track, which blasted from a DJ booth at Bridgerton’s recent New York premiere, a prop carriage parked nearby—but the lyrics actually evoke a passage in Romancing Mister Bridgerton. Pitbull sings, “I’ma make you feel so good, tonight, / Cause we might not get tomorrow,” which sounds strangely similar to Penelope’s internal monologue: “Tomorrow would be awful, knowing that he would find some other woman with whom to laugh and joke and even marry,” Quinn writes. “But today…. Today was hers. And by God, she was going to make this a kiss to remember.”
When the carriage transporting them home comes to an abrupt halt, Colin is the one who utters the frustrated line Penelope gets in the book: “Can’t we just ask the driver to keep going?” After sharing a laugh and another kiss, he gets a determined look on his face, then hops out of the carriage, extending his hand, and asking: “For God’s sake, Penelope Featherington, are you going to marry me or not?”
“That’s one of Nic’s favorite moments,” says Newton. “She always says that to me, whenever we’ve watched it, ‘I love that [moment] when you decide [to propose].’ One of my favorite things about the proposal is the way that it’s written, because it just represents their relationship. He’s done the declaration of love, he’s been open and honest about it. And then the comedy of it is just brilliant.”
Penelope is confused, then elated. “It makes me so sad for her that she thinks he’s just getting out of the carriage and walking away,” says Coughlan. “Because she’s just so used to stuff going wrong. And you’re like, It’s not going wrong this time. It’s not going wrong!”
At least, not yet. Unlike in the book, where Colin confronts Penelope in the carriage after learning she’s Lady Whistledown, on the show he has proposed without knowledge of her secret identity. “For us, it felt early in the season for that to be a reveal,” says Brownell. “But we wanted to honor the spirit of the scene, which is a moment where Colin starts seeing Penelope in a new light and it leads to an intimate moment.”
Viewers don’t hear Penelope’s answer to Colin’s proposal; the screen cuts to black before a monthslong wait for the next batch of episodes. “People are going to have our heads,” says Coughlan. “It’s only a couple of weeks. They’ll live.” Plus, it seems like there will be more spicy moments to come—including one which apparently required Newton to learn how to untie a corset and may have resulted in some broken furniture. But until then, the carriage scene remains the hot and heavy pinnacle of Bridgerton’s third season.