Bossing Bridget Jones

Bury’s Kate O’Flynn finds herself on set giving Renée Zellweger a hard time. Roger Borrell finds out why.

KATE O’Flynn’s audition for a major part in the next Bridget Jones film is not going quite to script.

The former Bury Grammar School girl is going for the part of Alice Peabody, a new broom brought in to liven up a TV current affairs programme, where Bridget works as a news producer

‘Alice is there to shake things up and Bridget is very much her target,’ says Kate. ‘She’s a hipster, very confident, a bit of a ball breaker vaguely in the mould of Janet Street-Porter. The antithesis of what Bridget is all about.’

Kate decided to audition as a cool calculating ice-maiden. ‘That didn’t seem to work and the casting director suggested I tried the part in a northern accent. It just seemed to work - my Lancashire accent is one of the reasons I got the part.

‘Considering this is my biggest commercial film to date, the audition process was the least painful I’ve experienced. It probably lasted little more than 15 minutes and two weeks later I was told I had the part. Another two weeks and I was on set bossing Renée Zellweger about!’

The battle between Alice and Bridget is a key plot line of the film but if you want to know who prevails you’ll have to see Bridget Jones’s Baby which releases in this country on September 26. As well as Zellweger, it also stars Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent and Patrick Dempsey.