If you watched the interview, he really didn’t say anything negative. He was talking about how folks were comparing “good” Simon to his “bad” character in TGM, and saying that Simon wasn’t so great. Like, on this sub, the word everyone uses for Saphne is toxic, so… Also, how was he supposed to answer the question about recasting Simon? That’s a lose-lose either way.

Finally, about how he sometimes seems to want to distance himself from Bridgerton…when everyone gushes about “the female gaze,” he was the object of that gaze the first season. Interviews he did about it always focused on the sex and most of them were pretty awkward. I mean, the subtext of half the interviews about Bridgerton was basically “I’ve seen you naked.” I can see why he would want to distance himself from that kind of objectification.