Leading lady Renée Zellweger and director Sharon Maguire reunited on the Tribeca Film Festival stage, celebrating the boundaries they broke together through their work on “Bridget Jones‘s Diary” 25 years ago. Sitting in the audience, the film’s transcendence of time was evident. The theater erupted in boisterous cheering when the title card appeared, and there were several rounds of applause during pivotal moments — including when Mark (Colin Firth) finally confronts Daniel (Hugh Grant) on the street in front of Jones’ apartment.

Zellweger, reflecting on why she believes the movie has continued to resonate with people, said, “Most romantic comedy heroines are polished, and they fit a particular paradigm for beauty in that moment, and this was not the paradigm.” Bridget Jones, for all intents and purposes, was a normal girl who “looked like her lifestyle.” This portrayal was rare in the early 2000s and prompted a shift in audience expectations, as people began to consider the different ways a leading lady could, or should, look. Zellweger found it equally freeing as the actress in front of the camera.

“I loved that I could cry, and my mascara could run, and nobody was running in with a little thing to make it not shiny. I could have a runny, snotty nose when I cry, like what happens in real life, you know? And the wind blows, and your hair is messy and nobody’s running in to brush it and make it perfect. I loved it. It was so liberating to play someone who’s having authentic experiences authentically.”

Early in the conversation, moderator H. Alan Scott turned to Maguire to discuss the period between the casting announcement and the film’s premiere, during which British audiences were widely displeased with Zellweger — a native Texan — playing the iconic British character. The harsh critiques of the tabloids, which Maguire described as “quite vicious,” put a lot on her shoulders and left both her and the film’s producers concerned about whether Zellweger could get the accent right. (She nailed it). Zellweger laughed through Maguire’s story, eventually confessing that she “didn’t know” about the fear surrounding the project.

As for what continues to resonate with Maguire two and a half decades later, “it’s a movie that celebrates failure.” She acknowledges there’s still a lot of fairy tale amidst the normalcy, joking that, as a woman in her 30s at the time, she didn’t have Hugh Grant or Colin Firth banging down her door, but it was ultimately about ordinary people and validated ordinary lives; that’s what continues to make it special. The cherry on top, though, is that it was “about a woman, conceived by a woman, and directed by a woman. And heavens, it worked.”

Maguire’s next project, which begins production in three weeks, is an adaptation of Alex Comfort’s 1972 book “The Joy of Sex.” Colin Firth is set to star as Dr. Comfort, a scientist and mollusk expert who becomes a sex guru overnight. Maguire also revealed that Julianne Moore and Laura Linney have joined the cast, but did not disclose which roles the women would play. The film does not have a release date, nor has it been acquired by a distributor.