‘Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page Corrects Common Misconception About Iconic Scene

Regé-Jean Page is reminding Bridgerton fans of what really happens during his iconic love scene with costar Phoebe Dynevor. While Page’s Duke of Hastings is often credited by fans with originating the line “I burn for you,” in a dramatic declaration to Daphne Bridgerton, Page revealed there are some mass false memories in a new interview for Variety’s Making a Scene.

“I do not say, ‘I burn for you.’ It’s not my line. That’s Daphne’s line,” Page reminded fans. “It’s not a thing. It’s the Mandela Effect.” He joked of the mass misremembering of what really happened during the scene, “Everyone clearly was feeling very burned for, which I’ll take as a compliment.” While Page did repeat Dynevor’s famous line while hosting Saturday Night Live in February, Dynevor herself admitted to Variety that he didn’t see that part of the scene becoming so iconic when first flipping through the script. “You have no idea what lines people are going to care about,” she admitted. “That was surprising to me. It wasn’t like I saw ‘I burn for you’ in the script and was like, ‘This is what people are going to talk about.’”

Page’s Bridgerton stint became extra revered by fans when he announced he wouldn’t be returning for Season 2 of the Netflix series, which will instead focus on Jonathan Bailey’s Anthony Bridgerton and his epic love story. He told Variety in April that he never intended to do a second season of the show, going back to early conversations he had with Shondaland producers. “It’s a one-season arc. It’s going to have a beginning, middle, end – give us a year,” Page recalled them telling him. “[I thought] ‘That’s interesting,’ because then it felt like a limited series. I get to come in, I get to contribute my bit and then the Bridgerton family rolls on.”

Shonda Rhimes told Vanity Fair soon after that she didn’t expect the massive backlash that would come her way after Page was revealed not to be returning. “I was really shocked because usually, that happens when I’ve killed off somebody that’s been around for a while,” she joked of her tendency to kill off fan-favorite characters on shows like Grey’s Anatomy. “Like, we didn’t kill him, he’s still alive! [Regé-Jean] is a powerful, amazing actor and that meant we did our job — every season, our job is finding the right people and putting together this incredible, world-shifting romance.”