In this episode of the ScreenUK Podcast, director Georgia Oakley and writer Diana Reid go inside the making of Sense and Sensibility, the new adaptation of Jane Austen's classic.
Diana Reid, whose debut novel Love & Virtue established her as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary fiction, talks about why she keeps returning to stories about sisterhood, what surprised her when she revisited Austen's novel, and the changes she made to ensure that both Elinor and Marianne feel truly triumphant - not just the one who wins the right husband. Georgia Oakley, director of BAFTA-nominated BLUE JEAN, talks about building a naturalistic, 35mm world for the Dashwood sisters, and why she pushed the film to feel alive rather than literary.
Together they discuss the darker reading of the novel that most adaptations avoid, why Edward's backstory needed a complete rewrite, the casting of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, and the accidental magic of the moment Esmé pulled her hairband and cracked her back. Plus: the duel scene that's in the book but has never been on screen, the fight scenes between the sisters that drew every agent in London to a tiny location, the pug named Phyllis, and Diana's theory - delivered with conviction - that Jane Austen was, at heart, a bit of a bitch. And that this is why she's a genius.
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