The saga of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice continues with The Other Bennet Sister
When His Dark Materials screenwriter Sarah Quintrell first read Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister, a continuation of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice that follows Elizabeth’s sister Mary Bennet, she felt a hearkening back to her teenage years. “It felt like when I first read Austen, in that the character felt so specific and yet so universal that you felt like you could reach back and hold her hand,” she says. “I absolutely understood who Mary was. I connected to her experience of life. It felt like it would be a beautiful story to tell: How do you come of age when you’re the odd one out? When you’ve been made to feel like you don’t live up to the right standards. When you live in a world where, as a woman, if you’re not beautiful and married, you somehow failed?”
To Quintrell, Mary Bennet was the perfect heroine for 2026 — despite being conceived in 1813. “Women like Mary never sit at the heart of any drama, let alone a period drama. But as Janice says, ‘Most of us like to think we’re Lizzie, but we’re not.’ We’ve all got Mary in us,” she says. “She’s a pedant. She says the wrong thing. She’s clumsy. She only hand flexes to get the toast crumbs off. And she’s always eating in the show. I wanted her to feel as human as possible.” But to find someone who could portray the surprisingly contemporary heroine in a 19th-century setting, was a tall order. “You write something and you just hope that the actor that comes along will get you,” says Quintrell. “You feel so close to the character that it’s hard to let go.”
When Quintrell saw the audition from Ella Bruccoleri, best known for her role as Sister Frances in Call the Midwife, she knew they had struck gold. “Ella made me laugh so much. She could go ricochet between the really emotional moments and the funny moments and back again in seconds with absolute truth,” she says. “It’s an unusually brilliant performance.” Ironically, Bruccoleri had never read Austen before getting her hands on Quintrell’s scripts. “I obviously knew of Pride and Prejudice because it would be insane if I didn’t, but I hadn’t read it. I had never seen any of the adaptations. I got Sarah’s scripts and I didn’t overthink too much how fanatical people are about that world,” she says. What she encountered in the scripts gave her a visceral reaction. “I felt quite seen by that character,” says Bruccoleri. “I was like, ‘I don’t know why I keep crying.’ It was just something in Mary and the way that she viewed herself that I was relating to on quite a deep level — the way that she struggles with interacting with the world and knowing her place within it.”
The first two episodes of the 10-episode series take place at Longbourne estate, detailing the events of Austen’s book from the viewpoint of middle sister Mary, who according to all descriptions is neither beautiful nor witty, like her sisters. But as she travels to London to stay with her uncle Mr. Gardiner (Richard Coyle) and his wife (Indira Varma) she embarks on a journey that opens her up to new opportunities — maybe even romance. “She comes across several men in the story, and each one of them offers Mary something in her life,” teases Quintrell. “Mr. Sparrow (Aaron Gill) offers her kindness right at the beginning. Mr. Collins (Ryan Sampson) makes her question whether love is important or not. You’ve got Mr. Ryder (Laurie Davidson), who’s so funny and kind of says to her, ‘This is the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll of the 1800s. We can do away with the tired expectations of society and we can be free.’ And then you’ve got Mr. Hayward (Dónal Finn), who’s quite bookish, like her. But what I wanted to do was walk a really careful line where the heart of the story is about Mary Bennet learning to love herself.”
A Hollywood coming-of-age story would involve a glow-up, but in the case of Mary Bennet the transformation is purely emotional. To portray Mary’s incremental journey to self-acceptance — out of order, none the less — Bruccoleri relied heavily on visual cues. “Mary’s journey isn’t linear, because she takes two steps forward and three steps back and then she slowly finds her footing again. So, I did a lot of colour coding and worked out the colour chart of Mary’s journey,” describes Bruccoleri. But when it was time to shoot her scenes the actress would continually be surprised what her co-stars would bring out of Mary. “You can have done all this prep, but if you get there, and that’s not how it plays out — which is so often the case when you’re doing it with the other person — you have to just throw all that stuff out of the window and just be alive and be present,” she says.
The series is full of familiar characters, including all of Mary’s sisters and their spouses. But avid Austen fans ought to be particularly intrigued by this version of the Bennet matriarch, played by Ruth Jones. “This is Mary’s mother, not Lizzie’s mother. Siblings can have very different experiences of a parent,” says Quintrell. “Mrs. Bennet is brilliantly funny, but she’s brutal. And Ruth Jones was so brave in embracing that. I think she’s magnificent. She makes me laugh so much, but she’s also so mean.” In taking on the Bennet family from a new perspective, Quintrell set aside any pressure to live up the expectations of millions of Austen worshippers around the world. “I just thought, what a privilege to go and play in this world,” she says. “I didn’t let any of that in until we launched over here. And then I kind of went, ‘Oh my goodness, what did we do?’ We went into Jane Austen’s world. But people have been great about it. And I think it’s so important that we’re bringing her characters to the next generation. I can’t think of a better guide through life for anyone, but particularly for a young woman than Jane Austen.”
The Other Bennet Sister, streaming Wednesdays on BritBox