The cast and crew of The Other Bennet Girl were agreeable indeed on Monday night, at the first official screening of the BBC–BritBox adaptation in central London.
Based on the book by Janice Hadlow and written by Sarah Quintrell, the 10-part series follows the forgotten Bennet sister, famed for being unremarkable in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — Mary. Call the Midwife and Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials actress Ella Bruccoleri stars in the titular role, as we see Mary, fed up of being the ugly duckling among her siblings, slowly coaxed out of her shell.
Ruth Jones (Gavin & Stacey) and Richard E. Grant (Saltburn) play Mrs. and Mr. Bennet in the Bad Wolf production, alongside Maddie Close, Poppy Gilbert, Molly Wright and Grace Hogg-Robinson as Jane, Lizzie, Kitty, and Lydia, respectively. At the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Jones and Bruccoleri sat with romantic leads Dónal Finn (Young Sherlock) and Laurie Davidson (The Girlfriend) for a brief Q&A, ahead of the show’s U.K. premiere on Sunday.
“I didn’t really overthink the institution that is Pride and Prejudice and who Mary Bennet was at that point,” Bruccoleri told the crowd about landing the part. “I just thought, ‘This is a character I love on the page, and would love to play her.’ And then I leapt into that world.”
“She also completely sees herself through her mother’s eyes for quite a quite a lot of it,” she added, referencing Jones’ semi-antagonist role. “And Mrs. Bennet, in her mind, their value is [equated] to their marriage-ability… Deciding to be happy by yourself feels like a really maverick thing to do, right? And back then, completely insane [and] financially really difficult. You see her go on this journey where she makes this really difficult decision.”
Jones was asked about taking on one of the most iconic mothers in English literature, and acknowledged those who have come before her, including Alison Steadman (in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice series) and Brenda Blethyn (in Joe Wright’s 2005 movie).
“We are seeing Mrs. Bennet with all her surface removed, and we’re seeing a different side to her,” continued the Welshwoman. “I think what I love about Mrs. Bennet’s relationship with Mary […] her intentions were good, right? She wanted the best for her daughters because she knew how tough it was for women, and that if they did not marry well, they would not survive.”
Richard E. Grant and Ruth Jones as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in ‘The Other Bennet Sister.’
BBC/Bad Wolf/James Pardon
Jones recalled a conversation she had with Bad Wolf CEO Jane Tranter about the character. “I said, ‘She’s like an 18th-century estate agent.’ Five properties to sell and one of them just will not shift, no matter how much she reduces the price! So that’s what we kind of saw in this quite monstrous mother, but she did have her reasons for behaving the way she did, and that’s what really appealed to me.”
When probed on what details about their characters fans might miss on the first watch, she answered: “I think Mrs. Bennet relies very heavily on a heaving bosom. It’s almost like her engine. I think she very rarely gets seen without it. That’s her secret weapon.”
Finn said about playing Mr. Hayward: “There was a freshness in what Sarah had written. I thought it was kind of amazing that, in the same way that Mary Bennett was maybe the unlikely protagonist, I also felt in reading Hayward, he was an unlikely romantic lead,” he laughed. “What’s lovely is they’re the foundation of each other’s confidence… I felt it was in the way that all these people were relating to each other, and how Sarah had found amazing ways of letting us see things at that time that we can immediately map onto, like our lived experience.”
Davidson chimed in about Mary’s potential suitors: “We see different parts of Mary flourish with these different people —they bring out something different in her. I think that’s such a human thing, you know? We are so different with different people. And Mary gets to discover that.”
The Other Bennet Sister debuts on the BBC in the U.K. on Sunday, Mar. 15, and will be available to U.S. viewers at a later date on BritBox.