Kris Bowers is the man behind the music of Netlfix’s Bridgerton. It’s a job for which he was well prepared with a love for romantic comedies. He has been inspired by the merger of strong emotional music and romance with while taking inspiration from classic and more current music to create a unique sound. He also reveals his secret career as a hand double in the Oscar-winning Best Picture Green Book.
Awards Daily: I read that you were into romantic comedies before you did Bridgerton. How did that inspire your work in Bridgerton, and had you read the books before you did the show?
Kris Bowers: I didn’t read the books before. In fact, I didn’t know about them before getting the job. I feel like knowing what we want to feel in some of those great films like Sleepless in Seattle, The Notebook, or When Harry Met Sally–I feel like these love stories, by the end of them, you’re so involved in this relationship, so invested in these characters, it is emotional to watch them. To watch them go through these ups and downs, just knowing what that intimacy feels like from watching so many great examples of it in other films, probably was a big influence on me going for what you want to feel in the show. To feel the ups and downs of these relationships–knowing what it should feel like when a couple has a moment of romantic connection, when there’s difficulty in their romantic relationship, knowing how other stories have executed that journey really well, and wanting to emulate that here has helped.
AD: Going into season two of Bridgerton, did anything change in how you approached your work compared to season one?
Kris Bowers: I think the biggest change was probably the fact that they were new characters and new themes that had to be created. Even though the sound didn’t change or the approach to the score didn’t change, having a completely new storyline made it so I needed to create new thematic material, and in seeing old characters with a new perspective, we needed to have new scores as well. An example is now knowing that Penelope is Lady Whistledown, she has two themes. There’s a unique theme for Lady Whistledown since we figured we couldn’t use the theme for Penelope when she is acting like Lady Whistledown, so we gave her a new theme for those moments. I think the only other thing I would say is I was really inspired by the use of pop music/contemporary music for harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic inspiration in writing the scores and seeing how much that connected last season. Then this season I was even more interested in leaning further into that sound. Whereas last year, I was still finding moments to flex my classical writing ability, but in the second season I felt a little less afraid of leaning into pop sensibilities.
AD: Are you responsible for any of the covers of modern songs turned into classical dance numbers for balls?
Kris Bowers: I am actually. Last year I only did one cover, a piece called Strange by Celeste, and that was actually the moment where Simon and Daphne consummate their marriage. This season there are two covers that I did in episode one. There is a cover of Madonna’s Material Girl then there’s a cover of a Bollywood classic Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Then a lot of the ball scenes this year like the ball in episode one, there are a couple of cues that sound like pop songs that are scored. There is a cue called Accidentally Eavesdropping where we see Kate go out to the garden and overhear Anthony’s conversation that sounds like a pop song. Then there is the moment where Anthony and Edwina first dance. That is another moment where I was thinking more pop in terms of melody, harmony, and form for the score that’s playing.
AD: I greatly enjoyed hearing those moments in the show. Do you think you’ll be doing more in the next season?
Kris Bowers: Yeah, I hope so. It is such an interesting process because really every year it’s depending on what they are looking for creatively within the story. There were a couple of covers I even tried doing last season that didn’t end up making it. Oftentimes Chris (Van Dusen), Betsy (Beers), and Tom (Verica) know exactly what they are looking for in terms of what they want for the story, and they will be looking for a song that hits that right on the head or hammers it home. So trying to find the right song and then the right arrangement for that song is an involved process, but I try to be involved in as much as possible. Sometimes it’s easier for them to use a pre-existing arrangement or work with someone else. But yeah, I’m hoping I get to do a few more of those.
AD: You worked again with Ava DuVernay for DMZ this year. What was it like working with her again?
Kris Bowers: So amazing! I love developing that type of relationship with a director and developing that kind of vocabulary and the sense of trust with the director. I feel like this project was a pretty great example for our relationship. She challenged me to write a really unique score, wanting it to have the scope and scale of a graphic novel but also at the same time wanting it to have the sensitivity of the relationship between Alma and her son. For me, one of the early things I mentioned to her, having lived in New York for ten years, was in the show seeing and hearing such a quiet version of the city in a lot of the moments, so wanting the score to have these moments of sparseness and quietness that can live besides these loud, bombastic moments. She really just trusted me to do exactly what I envisioned. There never really was that much direction in terms of the sound of the show other than telling me what she wanted it to feel like emotionally. This was a project where I really challenged myself to try something different sonically and stretch my comfort zone, and she really encouraged me to keep pushing that, which was really fun. One of the things I told myself was that it might be interesting to think of the memories of music of New York. I made this playlist of angsty industrial aggressive music from New York specifically, and then started to develop a palate that was inspired by all these different aspects of that music. Like making drum tracks out of some of the drum pieces and then writing from that so it had this connection to New York in some sort of way, but obviously a very different version.
AD: Besides DMZ and Bridgerton this year, you also have Inventing Anna and We Own the City. How are you able to work on so many different projects? Are you doing these at the same time and have to compartmentalize, or do you focus on one intently and then move on to the next one?
Kris Bowers: A lot of them were spread out and dovetailing, where I would finish one as I’m starting the next one. Then it works out where some of these projects are calling for something very specific such as We Own the City. There is very little score in the show; it’s an hour-long show and the most music in one of those episodes is three minutes. In some of the other episodes, it is even less than a minute, more just playing between the lines of sound design and score. So the bulk of the work for We Own the City was in creating the main title and making this track that’s all police sounds except for the 808 in the trumpet–but everything else in the beat is police sounds. That created a palette to begin the score, but once we had that main title the score work was definitely not as much heavy lifting.
Similarly with Inventing Anna, I co-composed that with my old assistant Pierre Charles. Basically for that, I pitched to Shondaland the idea I would help him with the sound of the show and the main themes and work on a couple of the first episodes with him, but from that point on it would be something that he would do by himself. He would be the primary composer with me operating in the background and giving my notes on cues before he set them and helping with some of the cues that were hard to get across the finish line. For that one, it’s always been my goal to make sure, that anybody that’s working for me who wants to become their own composer, I try to find a pathway to do that and oftentimes doing some sort of co-composing project is a bridge to that. So when Shondaland asked me if I could score Inventing Anna, I told them I wouldn’t be able to take it on, but I would love for them to give Pierre a chance. I would help oversee the process, but that he was more than capable of scoring the project. That’s another one where once it was really on its feet it was really me just overseeing the process and not necessarily being involved in the finer details like I was in DMZ or Bridgerton.
AD: You taught Mahershala Ali how to play piano and you were his hand double in the film Green Book. What was that experience like, and does he owe you part of his Oscar because of it?
Kris Bowers: [Laughter] He was always very clear with me how much he appreciated my contribution to that character. I’m super thankful that he was such an amazing guy. We are still friends and still chat, and he has been so generous. His appreciation of my help in that project was definitely felt on my end. As for what that was like, he was such an incredible student but that just seems to be who he is in his life. There were times when we were having a lesson, and he would be playing the C major scale for 3 hours over and over and over again, and it reminded me that he was an athlete in college and that athletic dedication to the practice and the process really came through in that he’s going to continue to do something. He is going to continue doing something until he feels he really has it under his fingers or in his body. Unlike the way that some people would get frustrated by the process or not being good at something or how long it was taking, he was so dedicated and patient with the process of learning something new. By the first few lessons, he really already had the ability to play a few melodies, and then when we were on set, he would have me bring a keyboard into his trailer and play in front of him so he could watch me. Then he would have me record myself on video so he could watch those. There were times on set where he would have me stand off to the side and play air piano essentially so he could be certain he was in the right place on the piano. It was more like choreography of hands being in the right register. He was just so dedicated. It was pretty incredible to be sure.
AD: I was reading your Wiki page and your parents played piano music while you were in the womb, got you piano lessons when you were four, and got you classical piano lessons at nine. Were your parents just psychic about what your interests were going to be, or did it seriously affect how you got into composing?
Kris Bowers: One hundred percent. It was pretty interesting. They’re not musicians. It was a combination of my dad wanting to be a musician when he was younger and never pursuing that and wanting that for me. He told me this story recently about how he heard piano music on the radio when my mom was pregnant with me and it moved him emotionally in a way that really surprised him. So much so that he told my mom that he wanted me to play the piano, and then I think the composition aspect really came out of the connection I developed with the piano. It was interesting that over time it became clear due to the research they had done as new parents that putting your child into music is really helpful to them in all these different ways. But they were also wanting me to do anything extracurricular. I wanted to be a cartoonist, and they found me a cartoonist school that they drove me to every week for years. I did sports and martial arts and all different kinds of stuff. They just had me staying busy, but piano was this thing that was special to them, especially to my dad, but for me it was this connection to the emotional outlet of the instrument. Once I started jazz lessons and started improvising, I realized I could meditate on where I was emotionally in that moment and play from that place and get to something and move through that emotion.
That’s when the piano became the thing that I was fond of and couldn’t let go of. I could be angry and not really have a place where I could verbalize it but I could go play piano and get through that anger. Or if I was really sad and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about that I could play the piano and move through that sadness and not be so sad any more after I played. So I think that emotional connection to the piano and to music is what really made film scoring speak to me. My dad was a writer for film and TV so we would watch movies and shows, and he was always telling me about the structure and keeping track of certain aspects of the hero’s journey and other details. But for me the thing that stood out was that I could listen to the score to Jurassic Park or the score to Star Wars or other John Williams scores in my backyard running around feeling the same level of emotional heights. Feeling the fantasy and excitement and all that stuff just from listening to the music. So it was like I could listen to this score and immediately feel excited and connected to the story, this journey, the emotions by just listening to the music. I don’t have to watch the movie. Having that emotional connection to the piano made it immediately clear to me at twelve years old that I told my parents I wanted to find a way to get into film scores.
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