Netflix Bridgerton’s Nigel Beebrooke (Jamie Beamish) indulging in one of Lady Whistledown’s dispatches. COURTESY OF NETFLIX/NETFLIX Bridgerton characters Penelope Featherington (played by Nicola Coughlan, at left) and Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie, right) are obsessed with high-society gossip as reported by the series’ mysterious Lady Whistledown. As for the acerbic Lady Whistledown, Curzon said she sounds somewhat similar to a real-life gossip writer from 18thcentury England. “It contained the Tête-à-Tête column, one of the first of what we would recognize as gossip columns,” explains Curzon. UniversalImagesGroup // Getty Images Actress Mary Robinson and her lover, the Prince of Wales, were one of the Regency gossip column’s most-chronicled duos.