Netflix’s biggest series has catapulted Jonathan Bailey to Hollywood heights, and has given him sex symbol status in the process.

Bridgerton has been Netflix’s ultimate success story, and Jonathan Bailey thinks sexuality is a big part of how it has captured people’s attentions. The show said he believes the show’s characters were created “to turn people on”.

Bailey appeared in the show’s first season in 2020 and stepped up into the lead role for the second season, alongside Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma. He will return when the third season begins airing on Netflix in May.

The 36-year-old actor explained in an interview with The Guardian that he “definitely wasn’t” seen as a heart-throb before he stepped into the Regency role. Such is the power of Chris Van Dusen’s sexy adaptation of Julia Quinn’s novels.

Simone Ashley and Jonathan Bailey in the second season of Bridgerton. (Netflix)
“It’s Bridgerton, I think,” he said. “These characters have been created to serve a purpose, to turn people on, I suppose.”

Bailey explained that sex was also very important to his work in the miniseries Fellow Travelers, in which he and Matt Bomer play gay men hiding their sexuality in the face of America’s era of McCarthyism. Bailey said it would be “weird not to give the full experience” of the characters by showing their sexuality.

He said: “If you’re going to explore the oppression – and these people lost their lives, their jobs, their families – then the other side of that is the extreme need for connection, but also the celebration of the sexual act that supposedly deems them “unacceptable”.”

Matt Bomer as Hawkins Fuller and Jonathan Bailey as Tim Laughlin in Fellow Travelers (Paramount+).
The upcoming third season of Bridgerton will focus more on Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington and her relationship with long-time crush Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton).

But even outside of Bridgerton, we’ll all be seeing a lot of Bailey this year. He is portraying one of the biggest roles in the two-part movie adaptation of Wicked, starring as Fiyero alongside Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

This is after he showed up in a Comic Relief skit based on The Traitors, portraying the second series’ winner Harry Clark. In his Guardian interview, Bailey explained that he’s a huge fan of the reality show.

“It’s just completely thrilling. It’s a personality test, isn’t it?” he said. “I was so frustrated with Jaz at the end. You see aspects of your own self in these people, for better or for worse. That’s why it’s so compelling.”

Jonathan Bailey played The Traitors winner Harry Clark in a Comic Relief skit. (BBC)
Presumably, we can consider Bailey to be among the first in line if Celebrity Traitors actually ends up happening. After all, we know he’s right at home in a palatial countryside house.