thinkinginlayers

After watching two interviews with Luke Thompson, I realized something:

I do not have to force myself to live with a goal.

According to these videos, he did not go through life with “becoming an actor” as his goal. Rather, he seems to have lived by following his interests—and eventually found himself becoming an actor.

His motivation was not, “I want to stand on that stage,” “I want attention,” or “I want to make use of my looks.”

He says that acting is simply what makes him feel most comfortable—what feels best to him. Luke Newton naturally adds that Thompson is not competitive, either.

His way of living seems perfectly natural to the people who work with him.

What did I have instead of goals?

Throughout my life, I have never been able to “create myself from the future”—to set a goal and work toward it.

I think many people move through life in this order:

This is where I want to be in three years.

Therefore, this is what I need to do now.

That has never been how I operate.

I have always been driven by things like:

This interests me.

Why is that?

I want to look more closely.

Then, before I know it, I find myself standing wherever those questions have led me.

It is not that I am incapable of setting goals.

The very idea of deciding who my future self should be, then forcing my present self to obey that decision, simply never suited the way I live.

I may indeed be someone who cannot hold on to goals.

But instead, I have had obsessions.

* I want to understand people.

* I want to understand structures.

* I want to understand the structures of human cognition.

* I want to remove bottlenecks.

* I want to understand the boundary between AI and human beings.

* And to do all of that, I can spend hours and hours talking with AI.

These are probably things many people would find exhausting.

I do them effortlessly—and enjoy every minute of it.

A different navigation system for life

Rather than placing an abstract goal somewhere outside myself, I have always preferred to pick up the things within reach, collect them, and study them.

That method suits me.

But in a society currently organized around capitalism, living this way inevitably creates friction.

When I was job-hunting, I had no idea where to place myself within categories such as “industry” or “occupation.”

I clearly remember telling another job seeker which companies I was applying to. The industries and roles were so wildly inconsistent that they looked genuinely alarmed.

Luckily, I found a company willing to recognize my aptitude and take me in.

But I still cannot understand managers who demand “heroic achievements,” and I have only recently realized how obvious it is that the company’s evaluation system has no room to recognize my actual abilities.

Finding work that makes use of this navigation system

In my current workplace, some tasks make me feel like a long-distance runner being forced to compete in a 100-meter sprint—only to be told:

You are not that impressive.

It is deeply frustrating.

Even after spending an entire day on those tasks, an instinctive resistance remains inside me:

This is not what I want to be doing.

And because of that, I cannot go to bed feeling satisfied or sleep peacefully at night.

At the same time, changing jobs feels like terrifying organizational roulette. I have no idea what kind of workplace I would end up in next.

So for now, I am steadily building a body of writing like this.

I have entered a phase in which I am constructing, with my own hands, a system of value that exists outside my company.

I still do not have a goal.

Well, if I absolutely had to name one, it would be this:

To maintain my current standard of living while acquiring enough wealth to experience as much of the world as I wish to receive.

That is what luxury means to me.

And my immediate goal is simply to finish this piece.

I want to go to bed with the satisfaction of knowing:

Today was not made up only of unwanted work at the office.

I also finished one piece of writing for myself.

So, good night.

Luke Thompson, a man of beautiful thoughts.

Happy birthday.

The Wicked: For Good disc is coming out next week(in my country,Japan), and of course I already pre-ordered it.

But I couldn’t wait, so I’ve been listening to the soundtrack on streaming — and I noticed something in the final part of “For Good.”

In that last section, Glinda carries the main melody, while Elphaba harmonizes with her.

And the way Elphaba harmonizes is incredibly emotional.

First, she sings above Glinda in falsetto, almost like a prayer.

Then she joins Glinda in unison, as if affirming the change they have both gone through.

And finally, she moves below Glinda, supporting her voice from underneath like the ground beneath her feet.

That feels especially meaningful because, by this point, Elphaba is no longer the center of the melody.

Glinda is.

Elphaba gives Glinda the spellbook, and when Glinda says she can’t read it, Elphaba simply tells her to study.

To me, this is not just about passing on a book.

Elphaba is handing Glinda something much bigger: the ability to live after her, to read, think, choose, and decide for herself.

Glinda has always lived as “the Glinda everyone wants.”

When she steps forward, people are happy.

When she smiles, the room becomes brighter.

When she exists as “the Good Witch,” people feel safe.

That is not a bad thing. It is part of her kindness, her survival strategy, and her way of connecting with the world.

But now Elphaba is gone. Fiyero is gone too.

There is no one beside her to expose the lies of the world, or to shake her into hearing her own true feelings.

So what Elphaba leaves behind is not only magic.

She leaves Glinda with the question:

Not “What do people want from you?”

But “What do you want to do?”

That is why Glinda singing the main melody feels so powerful.

She is expressing both the person she became because of Elphaba, and the person she will continue becoming because of her.

And Elphaba’s harmony supports that transformation: first from above, then beside her, then from below.

The two of them went through so much.

Friendship, conflict, love, jealousy, pain — everything collided between them.

But by the end, labels like friendship or romance almost feel too small.

They touched something essential in each other as human beings, and they changed each other forever.

They cannot stay together.

But they will remain irreplaceable to each other for the rest of their lives.

And that sacred relationship can be heard not only in the words, but in the music itself.

That is what makes musicals so rich: sometimes the arrangement, the harmony, and the placement of the voices tell the story just as deeply as the dialogue does.

I’m sure I’ll notice even more once I rewatch the film on disc.

This time, I want to talk about this video.

Around 3:45, the host asks Luke a very simple question:

“Is Benedict stupid?”

It is the kind of question that easily invites a binary answer.

Is he stupid, or not stupid?

Is he right, or wrong?

Should we defend him, or criticize him?

Questions like this often ask us to classify a character rather than understand them.

Human beings tend to struggle with uncertainty.

So when something feels confusing, we often want to sort it into clear categories: good or bad, smart or foolish, right or wrong.

But Luke does not step onto that battlefield.

Instead, he starts from the idea that we all have blind spots.

And I think this is what makes his answer so interesting.

By saying that everyone has things they cannot see about themselves, Luke does not simply defend Benedict.

He moves Benedict out of the defendant’s chair and turns the spotlight back on us.

It becomes less about judging Benedict from the outside, and more about recognizing a familiar human mechanism.

We all have blind spots.

You might look for your glasses while they are sitting on top of your head.

You might fail to notice a change in someone you see every day.

You might be the last person to recognize your own habit or weakness.

Of course that happens.

So when Luke says Benedict has a blind spot, it becomes easy to accept.

It no longer sounds like an excuse.

It sounds like an explanation.

He is not saying, “Benedict is innocent.”

He is saying, “This is how people can fail to see what is right in front of them.”

That is very different.

Luke also connects this to Benedict’s inability to reconcile fantasy and reality.

Benedict cannot quite place the idealized woman from his fantasy and the real person in front of him within the same frame.

In that sense, his mistake is not just a matter of personality or carelessness.

It is a cognitive structure.

And by explaining that structure, Luke converts criticism into understanding.

What I find especially brilliant is that he still ends with a joke: basically, “Well, yes, he is stupid.”

That balance is so good.

When you explain structures, the conversation can easily start to sound like a lecture.

But Luke brings the air back into the room.

He gives us the explanation, then returns to the humor.

I think that is a very intelligent way to speak.

In conclusion

Luke Thompson does not simply defend his character.

He brings the character back to our side.

By inserting the idea that everyone has blind spots, he places Benedict not as a special case, but as an extension of ordinary human cognition.

So the listener naturally shifts from the position of judging Benedict to the position of wondering, “Maybe I do the same thing, too.”

That way of speaking — not judging, but bringing the character onto the same side as us — is probably why Luke’s interviews feel so comfortable and convincing to listen to.

At this point, it almost feels like Luke is not just talking about the story.

He is talking about how human beings perceive the world.

And honestly, I think that perspective is useful far beyond this show.

It is something we can learn from in everyday life as well.

I keep writing about Luke’s comments, but somehow they are always about structure again.

The material never runs out.

I found another interview where Luke Thompson approaches Benedict entirely through structure rather than emotion, and I thought it was fascinating.

Related posts I’ve written before:

In Netflix’s official Bridgerton Season 4 podcast, Luke says:

“That whole family has been knit by the dad dying… Falling in love is a little door outside of that family unit… Benedict’s example of a loving relationship is his mom losing everything.”

Most viewers understand that Edmund’s death shaped the Bridgerton family, but Luke goes one step further.

He isn’t simply saying that Benedict has trauma.

He’s saying that the Bridgerton family itself is held together by shared grief.

That changes the meaning of romance entirely.

Falling in love is no longer just an emotional experience.

It means stepping outside the emotional safety of the family.

From a structural perspective, marriage has always been more than romance. Claude Lévi-Strauss described marriage as a system that connects one family to another. In Bridgerton, this social function still exists beneath the love story.

Every season follows two people falling in love, but it also carefully shows their families, upbringing, obligations, and social position. Love is not isolated from family—it transforms one’s place within it.

Luke’s interpretation also made me think differently about Edmund’s absence.

Perhaps the role normally associated with fatherhood is not simply protection, but helping children step confidently into the world beyond the family.

After Edmund’s death, Violet carries much of that responsibility. Yet the family also becomes united through shared grief.

That grief creates an extraordinary bond—but it cannot fully replace the confidence needed to leave home.

In that sense, each Bridgerton sibling’s love story is also a story about leaving the family while carrying it with them.

What I admire most about Luke Thompson is that he rarely explains Benedict only through feelings.

Instead, he talks about family, grief, social structure, and the role that love plays within those larger systems.

He seems to understand not only his character’s emotions, but the architecture of the story itself.

Spoilers for Bridgerton Season 2.

After watching Bridgerton Season 2 twice, I finally realized something.

Season 2 was not only Anthony and Kate’s love story.

Behind their main plot, there were six “collapse” storylines — and one hidden plot quietly preparing us for Season 3.

The obvious emotional center is, of course, Anthony and Kate. Their story is so intense that, on my first watch, I could barely process anything else. I simply kept watching through the pain, and by the end, all I could think was:

“Anthony and Kate… somehow made it…”

But on my second watch, I noticed how many other characters also reach a breaking point. Season 2 is, in many ways, a story about assumptions collapsing.

And each collapse sounds different.

1. Anthony and Kate: the collapse of the belief that duty can erase love

Anthony and Kate try to deny their feelings because of duty, responsibility, and family.

They are drawn to each other almost instinctively, but both try to treat love as something that can be controlled, suppressed, or made to disappear.

But they fail.

And that is exactly why their love can finally exist.

I think one reason their story feels so painful is because the “failure” of their goal becomes the fulfillment of their love. They cannot succeed at denying love. Their inability to complete the duty-based story they chose for themselves becomes the path to freedom.

2. Benedict: the collapse of his talent myth

Benedict believes he entered art school because of his talent.

Then, in the finale, he finds out that Anthony made a donation.

This breaks the story Benedict had been telling himself: “I am here because I am talented.”

And the timing is brutal. The model he had grown close to also knows the truth. No wonder Benedict looks so defeated.

On rewatch, it is interesting that Season 2 had quietly planted the idea that large financial decisions belong to the eldest son. But still, Anthony being involved in Benedict’s admission lands as a huge emotional blow.

Benedict does not simply lose confidence. He loses the story that made his confidence possible.

3. Eloise, part one: the collapse of her connection with Theo

Eloise takes so many hits in Season 2.

She does not fit into society. But unlike Benedict, she cannot move freely outside of it — because she is a woman.

Through her search for Lady Whistledown, she meets Theo, who works at the print shop. With him, Eloise feels alive. She finds someone she can actually talk to, someone who meets her intellectually.

But their connection is dangerous.

Eloise is not simply looking for romance. She is looking for a person who understands her, and for an intellectual space outside the suffocating world of Mayfair.

But the society she lives in cuts off that possibility.

4. Eloise, part two: the collapse of her trust in Penelope

Then comes the next hit.

Eloise discovers that her best friend, Penelope, is Lady Whistledown — the very person who has hurt her and her family through her writing.

What makes their confrontation so painful is that both of them are speaking from the truth, but from completely different wounds.

Eloise is talking about betrayal. She is talking about trust. She is saying, “You hurt me and my family.”

Penelope is talking about powerlessness. She is saying, “I had no other way to act. You only talked. I wrote.”

Both are right.

That is why it hurts.

Their friendship collapses not because one of them is simply wrong, but because their truths no longer fit together.

5. Penelope: the collapse of her hope for Colin

Penelope overhears Colin being asked whether he would ever court her.

His answer is essentially: absolutely not.

For Penelope, this destroys the hope she had carried for so long.

This moment clearly becomes one of the biggest bridges into Season 3.

6. Portia: the collapse of her possible future with Jack

Portia’s collapse is different.

She is not simply broken by outside forces. She chooses to break the future being offered to her.

Jack sees Portia’s ability and offers her a future in America. But Portia chooses her daughters instead. She chooses to raise and protect them herself.

So she throws Jack out on the night of the ball she herself arranged.

It is a collapse, but a strangely satisfying one.

Portia destroys that future by choice.

All of these collapses happen differently

Anthony and Kate are broken by the desire rising from inside them.

Benedict, Eloise, and Penelope are broken by events they cannot fully control.

Portia breaks something by her own decision.

That is what makes Season 2 so interesting. These are all collapses, but they do not sound the same. The show carefully gives each character a different kind of breaking point.

The hidden plot: Colin’s coming collapse of self-awareness

While all of this is happening, Colin appears to have his own storyline: Jack’s investment scheme.

But unlike the others, Colin does not really fail.

He exposes Jack’s scam by breaking the fake gemstone. He apologizes to Mondrich for doubting him and brings customers to his club. By the finale, Colin looks almost untouched by the chaos around him.

If anything, he looks successful.

But then, in that same finale, he destroys Penelope’s hope.

And the cruelest part is that he has no idea he has done it.

He does not understand how important he is to Penelope. He does not understand his own feelings either. He has been looking away from something inside himself, and that blindness leads to the line about never courting Penelope.

This moment hurts Penelope, but it also reveals the limits of Colin’s self-awareness.

Colin may be charming, kind, socially skilled, and even heroic in certain moments. But if he refuses to face what he truly wants, he can still hurt the person most important to him.

That is the hidden plot.

Colin does not collapse in Season 2.

He only thinks he is fine.

His real collapse — and his self-rediscovery — is waiting for Season 3.

The meaning of the final fireworks

When we look at the finale this way, the fireworks at the end become fascinating.

They are not only a celebration of Anthony and Kate’s release from suffering.

They also feel like a visual metaphor for all the assumptions exploding across the season.

Anthony and Kate’s duty-based story collapses.

Benedict’s talent myth collapses.

Eloise loses Theo and Penelope.

Penelope loses her hope for Colin.

Portia destroys the future Jack offers her.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, the fireworks almost seem to be warning Colin:

“You are next. You just do not know it yet.”

But Colin, of course, does not notice.

He believes he is fine.

This is about Luke Thompson.

First, I want you to watch this interview.

At around the three-minute mark, pay attention to Luke, sitting on the far right.

Excuse me, why are you removing lint during an interview?

My first reaction was something like:

“Wait.”

“Is that lint on his trousers?”

“Oh no.”

“He’s trying to remove it.”

🧹🧹🧹

“It’s stuck.”

“One more try.”

🧹🧹🧹

I know this is completely insignificant.

But somehow, this tiny moment became the starting point of my Luke Thompson observation project.

He seems like someone who naturally finishes processing what he notices

The more interviews I watch, the more I notice the same pattern.

Fans have talked a lot about the gentle way Luke looks at Yerin.

What interests me is that he doesn’t seem to be trying to be attentive.

It feels more natural than that.

Instead of:

“He carefully listens to people.”

It often looks closer to:

“When someone is speaking, he naturally looks at them.”

That distinction is small, but important.

The action doesn’t feel intentional or performative.

It feels automatic.

Someone speaks.

He listens.

And because he is listening, his attention moves toward them.

Almost without effort.

So… what does that have to do with the lint?

This is where things get interesting.

If my observation is correct, Luke seems to have a tendency to follow through on things that enter his awareness.

He notices something.

And then he deals with it.

Not dramatically.

Not obsessively.

Just naturally.

In this case:

“There is lint.”

“I can remove it now.”

🧹

Done.

No unnecessary internal conflict.

The importance of context

What fascinates me is that he is also extremely aware of the atmosphere around him.

This interview involved three actors.

Jonathan Bailey was the primary focus of the Season 2 press tour.

Luke was seated on the far edge.

The attention wasn’t centered on him.

Under those conditions, removing a tiny piece of lint doesn’t really disrupt anything.

If this had been a one-on-one interview, I doubt he would have done it.

Which suggests something else:

He notices things.

He reads the room.

And he adjusts naturally.

The decision probably wasn’t conscious.

That’s exactly what makes it interesting.

Most people might think:

“I’m in an interview.”

“I should ignore it.”

Luke seems closer to:

“There’s lint.”

“It’s fine to remove it.”

🧹

Done.

Why this reminds me of Benedict Bridgerton

This way of moving through the world feels surprisingly similar to Benedict.

Benedict is often observing.

Watching family dynamics.

Watching social dynamics.

Understanding the emotional temperature of a room.

Not by controlling it, but by existing comfortably inside it.

Luke’s interviews sometimes give me a similar impression.

He notices.

He processes.

He adapts.

Without making a performance out of any of it.

Of course, this is only one tiny observation.

I’ve probably seen just the tip of the iceberg.

Spoilers for Bridgerton Season 2.

After watching Bridgerton all the way through Season 4, I’ve started rewatching from Season 1.

And now, on my second time through Season 2, I found myself watching with one question in mind:

How do Anthony and Kate ever find a way to land?

The first time I watched Season 2, it was honestly so painful that I couldn’t stop halfway. I finished all eight episodes at dawn.

This time, I was able to watch a little more calmly, and one structural detail stood out to me.

Season 2 is so centered on Anthony’s marriage, and yet Anthony and Kate’s actual wedding is never shown.

That feels important.

Of course, after the failed wedding with Edwina, showing a “successful wedding” between Anthony and Kate might have felt too neat. Too obvious. Maybe even a little tacky.

But I think there is something more deliberate going on.

The answer, I think, is right after the broken wedding.

At the end of Episode 6, after Edwina calls Kate and Anthony into the chapel and tells them she will not marry Anthony, Lady Whistledown says:

Leave it to people to complicate matters with their ceremonies and their cakes.

Is it not wonder that anyone marries at all?

Indeed some may call a wedding the ultimate act of faith.

While others would venture that it is the ultimate act of fools.

Eagerly awaiting two words. “I do.”

Bride and groom declare intention alone, with no guarantee of happiness.

Marriage amounts to little more than human ritual.

We may not force the rooster or hen, yet we continue collect eggs.

Does that make us more complicated, or simply too stubborn to believe that we must orchestrate what nature has already ordained?

For me, the key phrase here is:

“what nature has already ordained.”

What existed between Anthony and Kate was not something that needed a wedding in order to become real.

They had already been drawn together by something that felt almost like a natural law.

The problem was not that their feelings were unclear.

The problem was that something already happening between them was being forced into a human-made form.

In Season 2, the wedding becomes a symbol of the social responsibility Anthony and Kate were trying to uphold — and the failure of that responsibility.

To put it another way, the feeling that had naturally occurred between Anthony and Kate was treated as if it did not exist, while “Anthony and Edwina’s marriage” was placed inside the correct human form.

And that form failed.

So Anthony and Kate’s love does not need to be proven by a ceremony.

In fact, because the attempt to prove love through ceremony had already collapsed, what mattered at the end was not seeing them at an altar.

What mattered was seeing them already beside each other.

Not “two people who got married,” but “two people who had already chosen each other.”

They took a long detour socially.

But the gravity of the story had been pulling them in the same direction from the very beginning.

By the end, Edwina has practically forced them to admit what had been obvious. Even the Queen seems to understand without being told.

So not showing the wedding was not simply an omission.

It was a choice.

The story did not need to show the institution.

It needed to show the state of being that already existed.

And that is why the final image of Anthony and Kate feels so satisfying to me.

It is not really saying, “We got married.”

It is saying:

At last, their bodies, hearts, and responsibilities are facing the same direction.

Season 2 may look like a story about weddings.

But maybe it is actually a story about a love that could never be proven by a wedding.

And honestly, this is why Season 2 is still my favorite.

It is not just about two people being attracted to each other.

It is about two people with the same wound, trying to survive life with the same strategy, breaking down in the same place.

Both of them believe:

My feelings can wait.

My family comes first.

If I endure this, everything will be fine.

Love is dangerous.

Duty is the correct choice.

They are allies in self-denial.

And while telling themselves, “We must protect this,” “Yes, our families need us,” “Then we will give up our feelings,” “Yes, we will,” they end up falling in love with each other anyway.

It is painful.

So painful that it keeps you awake until dawn.

And apparently, I will probably be watching Season 2 again in about a month, finding yet another structure I missed the last time.

When that happens, I suppose I’ll write another post.

In addition, I haven't read the original work, so I don't know if there is a description of the wedding of two people in the original work.

Everyone is understandably losing their minds over the Bridgerton brothers being adorable in that Netflix video.

And honestly, same.

But what really caught my attention was something Luke Thompson said.

“A show like Bridgerton is so confident in what it wants to be.”

“All you can do is sort of just trust it and relax into it.”

That feels like such a Luke Thompson way of thinking about acting.

Not, “How can I stand out in this scene?”

Not, “How can I make this character look impressive?”

But rather:

What does this world already know about itself?

What kind of rhythm does this scene need?

How can I enter that structure without disturbing it?

To me, that explains so much about Benedict Bridgerton.

Benedict is not usually the person forcing the story forward. He often enters a scene from the side, observes, adjusts himself to the atmosphere, and gently helps the room keep moving.

He does not always announce himself as important.

And that may be exactly why, once you start noticing him, you cannot stop looking for him.

On my first watch of Bridgerton, I honestly did not pay much attention to Benedict. He was just… there. The artistic second son. The charming one. The one who floated in and out of rooms with a glass in his hand and a slightly amused expression.

But after Season 4 made me look at him properly, I went back to Season 1 and Season 2 — and suddenly it became a “Where’s Benedict?” game.

And then I realized:

He had been doing this all along.

There is a scene in Season 2, episode 6, after Anthony’s wedding collapses.

Benedict does not know everything that has happened. Daphne understands Anthony much more clearly at that point. Benedict had even been sent away by Anthony just before the ceremony, when Anthony said he needed to speak to Daphne alone.

So Benedict is not the person with the full emotional explanation.

But he notices that something is wrong.

He reads the room.

For a moment, he goes along with the family conversation and lets the scene breathe. Then, almost as if he is closing the emotional bracket, he says something like:

Maybe Anthony should rest for now.

That is so Benedict.

He may not have all the information, but he understands the structure of the moment.

The room is unstable.

Anthony is not okay.

The family is trying to make sense of something too quickly.

Someone needs to let the scene stop.

And Benedict does.

This is why I think Luke Thompson’s acting often feels less like “self-expression” and more like “environmental response.”

He is not simply showing us Benedict’s feelings as an isolated individual.

He is constantly responding to the temperature of the room, the rhythm of the scene, the emotional pressure around him, and the larger structure of the world he is inside.

That may also be why Benedict can be so easy to miss at first.

Luke does not always perform importance in a loud way.

He trusts the world of Bridgerton enough to dissolve into it.

And because he dissolves into it so well, Benedict feels completely natural.

Almost too natural.

You do not always notice the acting because it does not ask you to notice it.

But then, once you realize what he is doing, the whole thing becomes fascinating.

There is another moment in that Netflix interview where the conversation turns to film work.

Someone mentions Dunkirk, and Luke says he was only there for one day.

Then he describes how terrifying it was: a huge sequence, hundreds of supporting artists, a situation where it was very important not to mess up — and yet, at the same time, nobody really cared about him.

What struck me was that he did not frame the experience as, “I was in a major film.”

He framed it through the structure of the scene.

The scale.

The pressure.

The role placement.

The strange feeling of being tiny inside something enormous, while still having to function correctly.

And then Jonathan Bailey responds by saying that must have been one of the most stressful things imaginable for Luke.

That reaction also feels meaningful.

Because Jonathan seems to understand that, for Luke, the stress is not necessarily about being seen.

It is about being correctly placed inside a structure.

That is the thread I keep seeing.

Luke Thompson seems to approach performance by asking:

What is this world?

What does this scene need?

What is the relationship between my presence and the whole?

And Benedict, as a character, often works the same way.

He notices what is happening around him before he fully knows what he himself wants.

He senses pressure.

He reads imbalance.

He steps in lightly.

He shifts the air.

That is why I do not think Benedict’s quietness means emptiness.

It is not absence.

It is attention.

And maybe that is the magic of Luke Thompson’s Benedict.

He does not always make you look at him.

He makes the scene feel right.

Then, once you realize he is doing that, you start looking at him anyway.

So now I am watching Benedict Bridgerton, but at the same time, I feel like I am watching Luke Thompson’s way of entering a structure.

And that is a problem.

This post contains major spoilers for Wicked: For Good and Bridgerton Season 2.

There are also some references to Fellow Travelers, though I try not to go too deeply into its ending.

I thought Jonathan Bailey was “the actor whose weddings don’t go well.” Then Luke Thompson gave me a new lens.

⸻

The video I’m talking about is the one where Luke Thompson and Yerin Ha play a “Who Am I?” game with Bridgerton cast cards.

It starts like a light promotional game, but somehow turns into something closer to a mini panel discussion.

After Luke draws Edwina Sharma’s card and eventually guesses correctly, this exchange happens:

Interviewer:

So, not Ariana Grande, but Jonathan Bailey does leave her at the aisle.

Are you a fan of that cinematic parallel like I am?

Luke:

Yeah, I mean, there are loads of parallels, I feel like.

Because also Johnny’s playing a prince, like, you know, Johnny’s playing a sort of…

Yerin:

Do you mean with Wicked?

Luke:

Yeah. Maybe he’s destined to only…

Yerin:

Leave…

Luke:

Like, that’s his niche. What a niche.

Yerin:

Oh, no…

Luke:

It’s like one of those things. I think some actors die a lot.

I haven’t died that much in my life as an actor.

Have you died a lot?

Yerin:

Can’t say my future character has. Can’t say that.

Luke:

Yeah, yeah. Is there one thing that you’ve done a lot in your characters?

Like, have you gotten married a lot, or have you…

Yerin:

Sad?

Luke:

Just very sad. Yeah, yeah. You’ve been very sad a lot.

I think I’ve actually done a lot of romance.

Yerin:

Lucky you.

Luke:

Yeah. It’s nice, really.

I’ve always had quite nice parts.

I think where you get to sort of fall for someone.

Yerin:

And Johnny’s done that, but then leaves them at the altar.

Luke:

And then left them for someone else.

⸻

When I watched this, it reminded me of something I had already thought about.

After seeing Wicked: For Good, I watched Bridgerton Season 2 and found myself thinking:

“Oh my God. Jonathan Bailey is playing another character whose wedding doesn’t properly work out.”

At that point, my understanding was basically:

“Jonathan Bailey, once again, living a life where the wedding does not successfully complete. lol”

That was the label I had.

Then I watched this video with Luke and Yerin.

At first, because my English listening was not fully catching up, I got excited and thought:

“Wait. Did Luke notice the same thing I did?”

And then, as I translated and understood the conversation more carefully, I realized how embarrassingly small my own observation had been.

I was not even a shrimp.

I was a tiny plankton.

Because Luke was not just making a surface-level joke about weddings failing.

He was looking at something much more abstract:

the recurring themes in an actor’s body of work.

That hit me very hard.

I had been looking at “a funny repeated plot point.”

Luke was looking at “a recurring pattern across an acting life.”

That difference in perspective gave me chills.

⸻

So I started looking at Jonathan Bailey’s roles again, using Luke’s observation as a starting point.

And what I began to see was this:

Jonathan Bailey does not simply play men who fall in love.

He repeatedly plays people whose lives are transformed by love.

Or maybe more precisely:

He plays people who physically embody the changes love creates.

A failed wedding is not just a failed wedding.

It means that the life plans of everyone standing in that room are being rewritten.

And Jonathan Bailey’s character is placed right at the center of that rewriting.

⸻

In Bridgerton Season 2, if you only look at the surface, Anthony Bridgerton is the man who does not marry Edwina at the altar.

But that is not really the core of his role.

Anthony is placed between:

“a life of duty” represented by Edwina,

and

“a life of love” represented by Kate.

Of course, in practice, he does not calmly “choose” love.

It is more like he is forced, by instinct and by feeling, to admit that love has already chosen him.

Anthony is a person whose life is transformed by love.

He begins as someone who puts duty above everything.

Then he meets Kate, learns what love does to him, and his entire way of living begins to change.

⸻

Now let’s look at Wicked.

Fiyero is placed between:

“a life of being loved by everyone and enjoying himself” represented by Glinda,

and

“a life of following his own convictions” represented by Elphaba.

At first, he is drawn to Glinda.

But as he spends time with Elphaba, he begins to resonate with the way she sees and thinks about the world.

There is a line in “As Long As You’re Mine” about seeing through different eyes.

That line feels very important here.

Fiyero is a person whose identity is transformed by love.

If he had never met Elphaba, he would not have become that version of himself.

Love changes his name, his social position, his body, and his future.

Everything is rewritten.

⸻

And then there is Fellow Travelers.

This feels like an entirely different level.

Tim is not just someone standing at a turning point.

Tim feels like a turning point itself.

At first glance, Tim appears to be the one whose life is changed by Hawk.

He is the one who gets hurt.

The one who waits.

The one who believes.

But if we step back and look at the whole story, the question becomes:

Who truly defines the course of Hawk’s life?

From that perspective, there is an enormous arrow pointing from Tim to Hawk.

Tim is changed by love, yes.

But at the same time, Tim also changes another person’s life.

And he does not do it by force.

He does not control Hawk.

He does not dominate him.

He simply keeps loving him.

Which is devastating.

So maybe Jonathan Bailey is not merely playing “people who love.”

Maybe he is playing people who carry, in their bodies, the transformation caused by love.

Anthony changes because he comes to know love.

Fiyero changes because he chooses love.

Tim changes himself, and changes someone else’s life, by continuing to love.

To put it another way:

Jonathan Bailey may be an actor who plays the irreversible moment when love changes a human life.

What is this?

Why is it so dramatic?

This tiny plankton was overwhelmed.

⸻

And I was only able to dig this far because of the perspective Luke gave me.

Originally, all I had was the label:

“the actor whose weddings do not go well.”

But by stumbling across this unexpectedly healing video of Luke and Yerin, I found a new door:

thinking about an actor’s recurring themes through the way another actor recognizes him.

That experience shook my curiosity in the best possible way.

Because of Luke, I feel like I gained a new lens for looking at actors and their work.

Luke’s perspective was, in a very real sense,

“got me seeing through different eyes.”

⸻

And now, naturally, my interest has started turning toward Luke himself.

In this conversation, Luke moves through several ideas very quickly:

Jonathan has trouble with weddings.

Some actors die a lot.

Some actors play very sad roles.

Luke himself has done a lot of romance.

He is not just talking about individual projects.

He is casually placing actors’ careers next to one another through the recurring patterns in the roles they inhabit.

Luke says he has done “a lot of romance,” but maybe, somewhere underneath that, he is also looking at romance as a genre of transformation.

A story where people change because they fall in love.

And maybe, even unconsciously, he is looking at Jonathan Bailey’s acting life on that level too.

That is why his perspective shocked me so much.

By the end of this, my interest had shifted.

I started out thinking about Jonathan Bailey.

But somehow, I ended up thinking about Luke Thompson.

How does he see things with that level of abstraction?

I have written a little about Luke’s acting before, in a post about Bridgerton.

But next, I want to think more directly about Luke Thompson himself:

an actor who says he has done “a lot of romance,”

and what that repeated romance might actually mean.

What surprised me wasn’t the contacts themselves.

The interviewer asked about the blue eyes, and I expected Jonathan to talk about appearance — how he looked, how different he felt, whether he liked the result.

Instead, he immediately started talking about vision.

He said the lenses restricted his sight. He compared it to looking at Jeff Goldblum through a greenhouse window.

In other words, he wasn’t talking about how he looked.

He was talking about how the world looked to him.

That immediately reminded me of a line from For Good:

“You’ve got me seeing through different eyes.”

At first I thought this was simply a clever reference to Fiyero’s blue eyes.

Now I’m not so sure.

Because Fiyero’s story isn’t really about changing his appearance.

It’s about changing the way he sees the world.

At the beginning of the story, Fiyero chooses comfort, pleasure, and distraction. He dances through life. He avoids difficult questions.

Then he meets Elphaba.

And suddenly he starts noticing things he never paid attention to before: injustice, power, conformity, the cost of choosing a side.

His world becomes larger.

So I found myself thinking about an interesting contradiction.

Jonathan’s vision became more restricted while wearing the lenses.

Fiyero’s vision became broader because of Elphaba.

Physically, one sees less.

Emotionally and intellectually, the other sees more.

And then I thought about the ending.

When Fiyero becomes the Scarecrow, he loses almost everything.

His position.

His identity.

Even his human body.

Yet one thing remains.

The perspective he gained through Elphaba.

That’s why the blue eyes suddenly feel different to me.

They’re not just a visual design choice.

They’re a symbol of transformation.

Not “how he looks.”

But “how he sees.”

And maybe that’s why Jonathan Bailey feels so perfect for the role.

In interviews, he often talks about perception, perspective, and meaning rather than appearance or results.

Even when asked about contact lenses, he somehow ends up talking about ways of seeing.

So I started this clip thinking about blue eyes.

I ended it thinking about perspective.

Which, honestly, feels very Wicked.

After watching Wicked: For Good, I realized the story was never really about good and evil.

By the end, I realized it was about something else entirely.

It was about position.

Not whether you are right.

Not whether you are popular.

But where you choose to stand when those two things stop being the same.

⸻

At first glance, Elphaba and Glinda seem like opposites.

Elphaba follows her convictions, even when it costs her everything.

Glinda adapts. She understands how the system works and learns how to survive within it.

The audience is often encouraged to pick a side.

But I don’t think the film is asking us to do that.

I think it is asking us to understand the cost of both.

Elphaba pays the price of conviction.

Glinda pays the price of belonging.

Neither choice is free.

⸻

What fascinated me most was Fiyero.

At the beginning of the story, he appears to value pleasure over meaning.

He dances through life.

He avoids seriousness.

He treats everything as temporary.

And yet, he is ultimately drawn toward Elphaba.

Not because she is beautiful.

Not because she is powerful.

But because she is willing to stand somewhere and remain there.

Even when the entire world moves against her.

⸻

There is a moment where Fiyero asks himself:

“Am I stupid, or deeply wise?”

That line stayed with me.

Because it isn’t really about intelligence.

It’s about choosing what kind of life you want to live.

A life that feels comfortable.

Or a life that feels true.

⸻

One thing I love about Wicked is that it refuses to simplify people.

The citizens of Oz want a villain.

Not because they want understanding.

Because they want certainty.

Certainty is easier.

A villain gives shape to confusion.

A villain turns complexity into a story.

A villain allows people to stop thinking.

Elphaba understands this.

And yet she accepts the role anyway.

Not because she believes she is evil.

But because she refuses to abandon herself in order to be loved.

⸻

Watching the film, I realized something uncomfortable about myself.

I naturally sympathize with Elphaba.

I struggle when people ignore what seems obviously true.

I struggle when appearance becomes more important than substance.

I struggle when systems reward conformity over honesty.

But the older I get, the more I appreciate Glinda too.

Because conviction without adaptation can become isolation.

And adaptation without conviction can become emptiness.

⸻

I don’t think the lesson of Wicked is to become Elphaba.

And I don’t think the lesson is to become Glinda.

I think the lesson is to understand why both exist.

To understand what each woman sacrifices.

And to ask yourself:

When the world demands a simpler version of you,

what are you willing to keep?

And what are you willing to lose?

⸻

The older I get, the less interested I become in asking:

“Who is right?”

And the more interested I become in asking:

“What does it cost to stand there?”

I originally thought I was analyzing Luke Thompson’s acting.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I was actually analyzing my own way of seeing the world.

After watching Bridgerton Season 4, I went back to Season 1.

What should have been a casual rewatch turned into frame-by-frame observation. I found myself pausing constantly whenever Benedict Bridgerton appeared on screen.

Not because of the plot.

Not even because of Benedict himself.

Because of what seemed to happen in the space between stimulus and response.

There is a moment in Season 1 when Colin asks Benedict a simple question.

Before answering, Benedict pauses for less than a second.

His eyebrows shift slightly.

The corners of his mouth drop.

Then he speaks.

It lasts perhaps 0.3 seconds.

Most viewers would never notice it.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

To me, it felt like I was watching a thought happen.

Not an emotion.

Not a performance designed to communicate information.

A thought.

That moment became the key to understanding why Luke Thompson’s acting affects me so deeply.

I have always been fascinated by people who process the world internally before reacting to it.

My own way of moving through life looks something like this:

External stimulus → internal processing → meaning-making → expression

I rarely react immediately.

I observe.

I structure.

I think.

Only then do I put something into words.

When I watch Luke Thompson, I often feel as though I can see that same process taking place.

His expressions do not seem designed to explain emotions.

Instead, they feel like traces left behind by an internal process that has already begun.

The reaction arrives only after something has been examined, digested, and understood.

The more interviews I watched, the stronger this impression became.

In one interview, Luke described acting as something he simply enjoys doing.

Something natural.

Something stress-free.

Many actors speak about ambition, goals, dreams, or achievement.

Luke seemed to be describing something else entirely.

Not pursuit.

Not striving.

Simply responding to what feels meaningful.

That struck me deeply.

Because I realized I wasn’t drawn to his acting alone.

I was drawn to a way of thinking.

A way of perceiving.

A way of existing in the world.

At some point, I stopped asking:

“Why do I like Luke Thompson?”

and started asking:

“What part of myself do I recognize in him?”

Perhaps that is why Benedict suddenly became impossible for me to ignore.

Not because I missed him the first time.

But because I wasn’t yet looking for the things that now matter most to me.

So here I am.

Rewatching Season 1.

Pausing every few seconds.

Studying expressions that last less than half a second.

And somehow enjoying Bridgerton more than ever.

I’ll be seeing Luke Thompson on stage in London this winter.

Until then, I suspect I’ll keep rewatching.

And thinking.

And probably overanalyzing everything.

But honestly?