“Reach Out To The People You Love” — The Sense and Sensibility Cast on Romance and Adapting Austen
The Sense and Sensibility cast talk relating to their roles, modernizing their characters, and more.
English majors, rejoice! With the success of Britbox’s The Other Bennet Sister, Netflix’s upcoming Pride and Prejudice miniseries and currently streaming East of Eden, and Georgia Oakley‘s new Sense and Sensibility adaptation, now is as good a time as any to be an Austen fan. Fandango correspondent Jacqueline Coley sat down with the cast of Sense of Sensibility to discuss the upcoming feature, modernizing Austen’s characters, and creating a period piece.
Spoilers for Sense and Sensibility if you haven’t read the 215-year-old novel yet, but the story follows the three Dashwood sisters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, and their mother as they move from Sussex to a smaller cottage in Devon after their father’s death. The eldest two daughters, Elinor and Marianne, experience love and heartbreak, which challenges Elinor’s practical “sense” and Marianne’s emotional “sensibility”.
“I think what the film and the book does so well is it kind of explores, as you grow and fall in love, that different people bring out different facets in you,” explains Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Elinor. “The magical thing about the book and the film is that the sisters sort of gift each other each other’s sensibility. By the end, it’s a real journey, where Elinor is more able to access that [less reserved] side of herself and Marianne kind of learns to protect her heart at times.”
And, like almost all Austen adaptations, Sense and Sensibility of course features a ball. Yet the styles don’t look like what many audiences might picture an Austen dance sequence to look like. “The dances don’t feel stuck, stuffy, prescriptive, or like, generic. They feel almost modern too. They almost feel, like, folky and witchy and impassioned,” notes Esmé Creed-Miles, who plays Marianne. Frank Dillane, who plays Marianne’s other love interest John Willoughby, recalls that filming the dance numbers was “such a fun day, or a few days, of filming.”
As much as Sense and Sensibility is a story about finding love — at the end of the book, Elinor marries Edward Ferrars (played by George MacKay in the 2026 film) and Marianne marries family friend Colonel Brandon (played by Herbert Nordrum) — it is, as many an Austen novel is, a look into sisterhood. Creed-Miles, a sister herself, says she and Oakley agreed that the main love story in Sense and Sensibility is that of the Dashwood siblings: “Sister relationships aren’t always easy. I think any film that encourages you or makes you feel seen in those dynamics and relationships that could maybe encourage you to reach out to the people that you love is special,” Creed-Miles says.
As for her hopes of what audiences can take away from Sense and Sensibility? “I hope that people, when they leave the theater, give their siblings a ring.”
Check out the full Big Ticket interview above to see Daisy Edgar-Jones, George MacKay, Esmé Creed-Miles, Frank Dillane, Caitríona Balfe, and Herbert Nordrum discuss important character choices, the art of the meet-cute, and their favorite romance movies.
Sense and Sensibility opens in theaters October 16. Get your tickets now.
