A McDream job! Patrick Dempsey is taking his talents back to the big screen for his first post-Grey’s Anatomy gig. According to reports from Deadline and Variety, the hunky actor, 49, is close to finalizing a deal to appear in the upcoming movie Bridget Jones’s Baby with Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth.
No details are known about Dempsey’s role in the sequel, but Deadline speculated that the Can’t Buy Me Love alum might be a rival for Bridget’s affection in the absence of Hugh Grant‘s charming but caddish Daniel Cleaver.
Zellweger, 46, is set to reprise her role as the hopelessly romantic title character, whom she played to perfection in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Firth, 54, will return as her uptight but endearing love interest, Mark Darcy.
The first two films were based on Helen Fielding’s books of the same names. According to Deadline, however, the upcoming third installment was inspired by Fielding’s columns, not by Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, in which (spoiler alert) Mark, whom Bridget marries and has kids with, dies.
Whatever Dempsey’s role is, it will be his first on-screen appearance since (spoiler alert, again) his Grey’s Anatomy character was killed off earlier this year.
“Will I be allowed to do something different?” he asked Entertainment Weekly after McDreamy’s death in April. “Is Derek so identifiable that I can’t go on and be someone else? That will be the challenge. To see if people embrace me as someone else.”
