Rewrite
dress, shoes + socks. Louis Vuitton
How do you step into the shoes of someone who, for centuries, has been overlooked? It’s a task Ella Bruccoleri approaches with a studious vigour that would have made Mary Bennett – the titular character of the aptly named period drama ‘The Other Bennet Sister’, a companion piece to Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, – proud.
In Bruccoleri’s hands, Mary is no longer the sidelined, one-dimensional figure created by Austen, but a fully realised heroine brought into sharper focus. The series, based on Janice Hadlow’s novel of the same name, has steadily captured audiences’ attention, becoming the BBC’s biggest drama launch of the past 12 months. Part of its appeal lies in how Mary, despite her Austen-era origins, feels unexpectedly contemporary: a non-typical period heroine who is, at times, disarmingly relatable, learning to take up space in a world that has long written her out of it.
The show’s success, and the ease with which Mary resonates with a modern audience, is no mean feat, made all the more striking given that this marks her first time at the top of the call sheet. In conversation with Schön!, she reflects on bringing Mary Bennett to life, from reimagining a character long relegated to the margins to navigating the quiet pressure of comparison on set, leading a landmark BBC drama, and finding nuance in a role defined by how easily she is dismissed – and the quiet power in refusing to be.
blazer, jeans + shoes. Ami Paris
opposite
cardigan, skirt + shoes. Moschino
tights. Calzedonia
How would you describe Mary to someone who hasn’t encountered her in the show yet?
She’s bookish, pedantic, full of facts, and honestly a socially awkward, non-typical period drama heroine. She’s highly intelligent, and I think she is incredibly emotionally intelligent too, when it comes to friendship and romance. When we initially meet her, however, she tries very hard to fit herself into different boxes and tries to be someone she thinks will be appealing to other people, but because that’s not who she is, it doesn’t work for her.
Mary’s struggles feel really modern, even though the show’s set in a different time…
I think so, too, yes. A lot of the themes, and especially Mary’s journey, resonate with girls today, and did with me as well.
No, all she really needed was a change of scenery and a new perspective, both on life and herself, right? It’s almost reminiscent of a lot of young people’s journeys who peak once they step away from the homes they’ve grown up in.
Exactly, in a way, it almost feels like someone leaving for uni and getting to experience who they are without their family for the first time.
For Mary, it’s obviously not university, but a stay with her aunt and uncle in London that serves as a turning point, and actually, there’s a line that really struck me early on, when she isn’t feeling particularly jovial, and her aunt reassures her that in their household “nobody is required to sparkle.”
It’s a beautiful moment, isn’t it? For someone to tell her that it’s fine for her to be in whatever state she is in and that she doesn’t have to be anything other than herself. I think, for all of us, meeting people in life that allow us the freedom to not perform all the time but simply be is so important. It’s so exhausting and draining to constantly be putting on a show. And you know, especially for Mary, who had sisters that seemed to naturally shine at all times, it’s even harder to feel like she can never quite reach that standard and never just relax and breathe.
Speaking of Mary’s sisters, I found their relationship so fascinating, but what I was actually wondering was how that affected you out of character. You’re leading the show, and yet, for a while, every scene suggests that somehow you’re “less” than the others…
I do confess I felt completely different filming the family scenes in Longbourn compared to the ones in London or the Lakes, where Mary feels more liberated. It always sounds a bit wonky to say you take it home with you, but there was something about those Longbourn scenes, where she’s constantly being shut down, that was hard to shake.
What exactly made it hard, do you reckon?
Even just going to work, putting on that plain, dowdy dress while the other girls were in hair and makeup for hours getting all dressed up, it created this real sense of comparison. It’s there in the story, but you start to feel it off-screen too. People would compliment the other girls on their looks and costumes, and I’d just be there in my little grey frock.
Did that also affect how you felt on set?
No, I felt really supported, especially since it was my first time leading something, which can be pretty daunting.
jacket, dress, shoes
opposite
dress. Richard Quinn
shoes. Christian Louboutin
tights. Calzedonia
Your first time leading a show, but you did study drama. I suppose university doesn’t necessarily set you up for TV work, though, does it?
Oh no, not at all. I honestly didn’t even do that much screen work during school, but the one thing it really taught me was how to work with heightened language. Even though they feel modern, the scripts are still heightened. We did not learn how to be on camera at all, though, so when I first graduated, I was like a deer in headlights.
How did you prepare, not just for the screen work but in general? Did you go full Mary Bennett?
Funnily enough, yes. I had two months to prepare, which was the most amount of time I’ve ever had to prepare for a role, and I thought, “this is brilliant, I’m going to go full Robert De Niro and I’m gonna read every book that Mary references or has read.”
I ended up buying all these books from secondhand bookshops, all of them huge tomes, and my boyfriend immediately told me that there was no way I was going to be able to read them all. I did get some of the way through and read the likes of James Hutton’s ‘Theory of the Earth’, which is one of the smaller ones on the list. And when Mary discovers poetry, I just started devouring poetry too. Ultimately, I did go a bit Mary Bennett, in terms of my prep.
I think we all sometimes get caught up in treating poetry as something overly serious and important, and then you look at the page and think, like she does…
…“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” yes… It’s something I loved too because it’s so universal, to look at a page and think “I don’t get it and I don’t understand why it has to be so flowery and verbose when all I actually want is to understand the concept.”
There’s also that later moment when Caroline talks about reading poetry, and Mary suggests they read it together. You can immediately tell there’s no chance Caroline has ever read a poem and actually understood or enjoyed it.
Yes, yes, totally. She just forms her personality based on what she thinks Mr Ryder will like, doesn’t she?
Which, let’s be honest, is something we all do from time to time, sometimes even for a boy. That’s also what makes Mary’s “love triangle,” if you can even call it that, feel so refreshing. She doesn’t change herself for either of the men who enter her life. Still, I won’t lie, when the idea of a love triangle was first introduced, I was a bit hesitant…
So was I when I first read it. Initially, I really wanted her to end up alone. I thought it would be the most radical way to end it, but then I knew that the show needed to have its final romantic beat. Now I can really appreciate it, but we were very keen to get it across that Mary would have been more than fine being on her own if the reunion that happens at the end – and we won’t spoil who Mary ends up with – didn’t happen. Ultimately, she found a level of contentment before romance reentered her life and was never going to be pining over somebody for the rest of her life.
I actually could not decide who I was rooting for when it came to Mary’s heart, and honestly, I am not sure if that is a terrible reflection of my own taste…
Not at all, I felt similarly, and I’ve heard so many people say the same thing. At the end of the day, I don’t think there’s any bad choice. No matter what Mary would have decided, though, I do think one would have offered her plenty of fun and companionship while the other was perhaps more natural kinship.
cardigan, skirt + shoes. Moschino
tights. Calzedonia
It’s a joy seeing both men, Mr. Ryder and Mr. Hayworth, absolutely delight in Mary and all her quirks. They really treat her like she is the most fascinating person they have ever met. And yet, I do have a note on my phone where I did question whether or not Ryder might be the definition of an Austen-times fuckboy…
I see that, yes, he certainly has the tendencies. There’s a moment, and I don’t know if you caught that, but at one of the balls he is flirting with someone else before he sees Mary and puts the flirtation on hold to come and spend time with her. I think he’s so used to women falling over him and Mary is different, which intrigues him.
I’ll contradict myself now. I just said that he gave me the impression of a bit of a player and yet I never had the feeling he was simply spending time with Mary to conquer her.
No, I never had that thought either. I think he genuinely respects her and he sees her as something different to all these other women who he’s sadly comparing her to, which is unfair in its own way. I heard Laurie describe Ryder as an unlikely feminist, which I know is because he’s sort of a misguided feminist, but he hasn’t quite understood the fact that he’s coming at that from a place of white male privilege.
Yeah, and rich white-male privilege at that.
Exactly that, yes. I do think he genuinely means well, though, despite the occasional comparison and perhaps ill-advised propositions.
Comparison looms large throughout the show for several reasons, and let me bring up one more, because there is a parallel to 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Matthew Macfadyen’s infamous hand movement when Ryder gets into a carriage at some point. Without giving anything away, but that was the moment I thought the show might actually divert from the book…
I love that. In your mind, there was a whole different version of the plot for a moment?
Yes, I did think we were all in for a surprise for a moment, and I won’t lie, I’d like a spin-off that focuses on the alternative world that could have been, depending on who Mary chooses. Speaking of choosing, though, I do want to briefly touch upon the fact that Haywood is as close to being unavailable when he meets Mary as one can be without actually being in a relationship…
Yes, and everyone seems to forget that. What we’re hopefully meant to believe is that he says it himself, that he entered that agreement when he was very young, and he doesn’t want to do the dishonourable thing by leaving that agreement, so he’s hanging in there. But then we see him start to fall in love with Mary, which he doesn’t hide particularly well…
I do think, upon first glance, Ryder feels like a dangerous choice while Haywood is somehow the ‘more comfortable’ option.
I agree, though I do think in a lot of ways Haywood is the male version of Mary. One thing I loved was that once they have those little romantic moments, they are both wearing their spectacles, which is so lovely and rare to see on screen. We rarely see two bespectacled bookish characters having a romantic moment without them somehow whipping off the glasses to fit into a more standardised mould.
While we are on the topic of the glasses, at first, they are introduced in a rather comedic fashion, but they become so symbolic for Mary and her growth throughout.
Absolutely, and when Mary decided to wear them to the ball for the first time, that’s quite a radical thing to do because you just wouldn’t as a woman go to a ball wearing glasses, it would be like you’re scuppering any chance you’ve got if you do that. So she pushes back a lot of the time. Plus, she needs them, whether it is to read or for more straightforward and practical reasons.
God, I loved the moment when she needed to put them on to figure out who was standing opposite her across the room.
Exactly, that’s the thing, she’s constantly squinting unless she’s got them on, which actually was hard for me to play because, touch wood, I do have quite good vision.
There’s one man we have not talked about yet, and I’ll argue, bear with me, that he might just be the most important: Mr. Collins.
Wow, what makes you say that?
blazer. Ami Paris
top + shorts. Simone Rocha
shoes. Grenson
socks. Calzedonia
opposite
blazer, jeans + shoes. Ami Paris
It was their exchange about happiness for me and the idea of taking happiness into one’s own hands that felt like everything had truly come full circle.
It’s a beautiful moment, isn’t it? In that moment they are two people who are able to find these small moments of kinship while they both feel very trapped in their current situations. It’s like the way I read it was like two children discussing the concept of happiness and kind of trying to intellectualise it.
There’s a whole chunk in the book where Mary spends time with the Collinses after their marriage, and she actually realises she thinks that maybe they could have been quite happy together, because even if there’s no romantic connection between them, maybe this would have been enough to just sit and read books together every day, and that kind of companionable silence together.
That’s kind of what the show is about, at least in some ways, the question of what it is that we want to settle for, no?
Mhm, yes, it’s about what you’ll settle for and questions how high you aim when it comes to being truly fulfilled in your life, not only by a romantic partner but in every one of your relationships. I think a lot of people settle for whatever they perceive as “enough” and then realise that they want something more. And it’s a hard thing to find, that thing that ticks all those boxes for you, that’s going to make you come alive while also somehow still feeling really safe and comfortable.
Which is a really hard balance to strike… and actually, speaking about balance, for one moment I wondered if friendships kind of fell to the wayside throughout the show but actually they did not, they simply became family.
Yes, it is all about her chosen family, which is a really important lesson, isn’t it? One of the most life-affirming things is the fact that Mary builds a whole new family around her from scratch, made up of people who make her feel really nurtured and really happy, ultimately. And they are still, I guess, blood relation because it’s her uncle and her aunt, but she comes to the realisation that the people who are the closest to her in terms of being her own flesh and blood are actually destroying her.
They’re quite toxic relationships, and so to be able to have the courage to step away from that, you know, she kind of, when she leaves her family, she says, “I realise I could never come back here, I can never come back to my family.”
It’s really not one to be taken lightly, is it?
No, it’s a very weighty thing to go through, but ultimately she realises that her happiness is paramount, which is quite significant to be able to put that first, isn’t it?
The show, obviously, without the spoilers of how it ends, ends with a book script on a table called ‘Advice for Young Women’ by Mary Bennett. What do you think would be in it? What would be her big piece of advice for any young woman?
Ultimately, she wants to empower young women to embrace their intelligence and knowledge, because it wasn’t fashionable to be an intelligent woman in those days. Being overt about reading books and acquiring knowledge was not considered sexy or cool. So she’s imparting this mindset to young women and encouraging them to grow in confidence. She also wants to show them that it’s cool to be intelligent and powerful to embrace what they know, and not to dumb themselves down.
blazer, jeans + shoes. Ami Paris
‘The Other Bennet Sister’ is out now on BBC One.
photography. Eva Salvi
art direction. James Williams Creighton
fashion. Andrew Burling
talent. Ella Bruccoleri
hair. Alex Szabo @ Carol Hayes Management using K18
make up. Natalie Stokes @ Carol Hayes Management using Hourglass Cosmetics
production. Clara La Rosa
photography assistant. Simon Melber
interview. Jule Scott
in HTML format, including tags, to make it appealing and easy to read for Japanese-speaking readers aged 20 to 40 interested in fashion. Organize the content with appropriate headings and subheadings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6), translating all text, including headings, into Japanese. Retain any existing
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dress, shoes + socks. Louis Vuitton
How do you step into the shoes of someone who, for centuries, has been overlooked? It’s a task Ella Bruccoleri approaches with a studious vigour that would have made Mary Bennett – the titular character of the aptly named period drama ‘The Other Bennet Sister’, a companion piece to Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, – proud.
In Bruccoleri’s hands, Mary is no longer the sidelined, one-dimensional figure created by Austen, but a fully realised heroine brought into sharper focus. The series, based on Janice Hadlow’s novel of the same name, has steadily captured audiences’ attention, becoming the BBC’s biggest drama launch of the past 12 months. Part of its appeal lies in how Mary, despite her Austen-era origins, feels unexpectedly contemporary: a non-typical period heroine who is, at times, disarmingly relatable, learning to take up space in a world that has long written her out of it.
The show’s success, and the ease with which Mary resonates with a modern audience, is no mean feat, made all the more striking given that this marks her first time at the top of the call sheet. In conversation with Schön!, she reflects on bringing Mary Bennett to life, from reimagining a character long relegated to the margins to navigating the quiet pressure of comparison on set, leading a landmark BBC drama, and finding nuance in a role defined by how easily she is dismissed – and the quiet power in refusing to be.
blazer, jeans + shoes. Ami Paris
opposite
cardigan, skirt + shoes. Moschino
tights. Calzedonia
How would you describe Mary to someone who hasn’t encountered her in the show yet?
She’s bookish, pedantic, full of facts, and honestly a socially awkward, non-typical period drama heroine. She’s highly intelligent, and I think she is incredibly emotionally intelligent too, when it comes to friendship and romance. When we initially meet her, however, she tries very hard to fit herself into different boxes and tries to be someone she thinks will be appealing to other people, but because that’s not who she is, it doesn’t work for her.
Mary’s struggles feel really modern, even though the show’s set in a different time…
I think so, too, yes. A lot of the themes, and especially Mary’s journey, resonate with girls today, and did with me as well.
No, all she really needed was a change of scenery and a new perspective, both on life and herself, right? It’s almost reminiscent of a lot of young people’s journeys who peak once they step away from the homes they’ve grown up in.
Exactly, in a way, it almost feels like someone leaving for uni and getting to experience who they are without their family for the first time.
For Mary, it’s obviously not university, but a stay with her aunt and uncle in London that serves as a turning point, and actually, there’s a line that really struck me early on, when she isn’t feeling particularly jovial, and her aunt reassures her that in their household “nobody is required to sparkle.”
It’s a beautiful moment, isn’t it? For someone to tell her that it’s fine for her to be in whatever state she is in and that she doesn’t have to be anything other than herself. I think, for all of us, meeting people in life that allow us the freedom to not perform all the time but simply be is so important. It’s so exhausting and draining to constantly be putting on a show. And you know, especially for Mary, who had sisters that seemed to naturally shine at all times, it’s even harder to feel like she can never quite reach that standard and never just relax and breathe.
Speaking of Mary’s sisters, I found their relationship so fascinating, but what I was actually wondering was how that affected you out of character. You’re leading the show, and yet, for a while, every scene suggests that somehow you’re “less” than the others…
I do confess I felt completely different filming the family scenes in Longbourn compared to the ones in London or the Lakes, where Mary feels more liberated. It always sounds a bit wonky to say you take it home with you, but there was something about those Longbourn scenes, where she’s constantly being shut down, that was hard to shake.
What exactly made it hard, do you reckon?
Even just going to work, putting on that plain, dowdy dress while the other girls were in hair and makeup for hours getting all dressed up, it created this real sense of comparison. It’s there in the story, but you start to feel it off-screen too. People would compliment the other girls on their looks and costumes, and I’d just be there in my little grey frock.
Did that also affect how you felt on set?
No, I felt really supported, especially since it was my first time leading something, which can be pretty daunting.
jacket, dress, shoes
opposite
dress. Richard Quinn
shoes. Christian Louboutin
tights. Calzedonia
Your first time leading a show, but you did study drama. I suppose university doesn’t necessarily set you up for TV work, though, does it?
Oh no, not at all. I honestly didn’t even do that much screen work during school, but the one thing it really taught me was how to work with heightened language. Even though they feel modern, the scripts are still heightened. We did not learn how to be on camera at all, though, so when I first graduated, I was like a deer in headlights.
How did you prepare, not just for the screen work but in general? Did you go full Mary Bennett?
Funnily enough, yes. I had two months to prepare, which was the most amount of time I’ve ever had to prepare for a role, and I thought, “this is brilliant, I’m going to go full Robert De Niro and I’m gonna read every book that Mary references or has read.”
I ended up buying all these books from secondhand bookshops, all of them huge tomes, and my boyfriend immediately told me that there was no way I was going to be able to read them all. I did get some of the way through and read the likes of James Hutton’s ‘Theory of the Earth’, which is one of the smaller ones on the list. And when Mary discovers poetry, I just started devouring poetry too. Ultimately, I did go a bit Mary Bennett, in terms of my prep.
I think we all sometimes get caught up in treating poetry as something overly serious and important, and then you look at the page and think, like she does…
…“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” yes… It’s something I loved too because it’s so universal, to look at a page and think “I don’t get it and I don’t understand why it has to be so flowery and verbose when all I actually want is to understand the concept.”
There’s also that later moment when Caroline talks about reading poetry, and Mary suggests they read it together. You can immediately tell there’s no chance Caroline has ever read a poem and actually understood or enjoyed it.
Yes, yes, totally. She just forms her personality based on what she thinks Mr Ryder will like, doesn’t she?
Which, let’s be honest, is something we all do from time to time, sometimes even for a boy. That’s also what makes Mary’s “love triangle,” if you can even call it that, feel so refreshing. She doesn’t change herself for either of the men who enter her life. Still, I won’t lie, when the idea of a love triangle was first introduced, I was a bit hesitant…
So was I when I first read it. Initially, I really wanted her to end up alone. I thought it would be the most radical way to end it, but then I knew that the show needed to have its final romantic beat. Now I can really appreciate it, but we were very keen to get it across that Mary would have been more than fine being on her own if the reunion that happens at the end – and we won’t spoil who Mary ends up with – didn’t happen. Ultimately, she found a level of contentment before romance reentered her life and was never going to be pining over somebody for the rest of her life.
I actually could not decide who I was rooting for when it came to Mary’s heart, and honestly, I am not sure if that is a terrible reflection of my own taste…
Not at all, I felt similarly, and I’ve heard so many people say the same thing. At the end of the day, I don’t think there’s any bad choice. No matter what Mary would have decided, though, I do think one would have offered her plenty of fun and companionship while the other was perhaps more natural kinship.
cardigan, skirt + shoes. Moschino
tights. Calzedonia
It’s a joy seeing both men, Mr. Ryder and Mr. Hayworth, absolutely delight in Mary and all her quirks. They really treat her like she is the most fascinating person they have ever met. And yet, I do have a note on my phone where I did question whether or not Ryder might be the definition of an Austen-times fuckboy…
I see that, yes, he certainly has the tendencies. There’s a moment, and I don’t know if you caught that, but at one of the balls he is flirting with someone else before he sees Mary and puts the flirtation on hold to come and spend time with her. I think he’s so used to women falling over him and Mary is different, which intrigues him.
I’ll contradict myself now. I just said that he gave me the impression of a bit of a player and yet I never had the feeling he was simply spending time with Mary to conquer her.
No, I never had that thought either. I think he genuinely respects her and he sees her as something different to all these other women who he’s sadly comparing her to, which is unfair in its own way. I heard Laurie describe Ryder as an unlikely feminist, which I know is because he’s sort of a misguided feminist, but he hasn’t quite understood the fact that he’s coming at that from a place of white male privilege.
Yeah, and rich white-male privilege at that.
Exactly that, yes. I do think he genuinely means well, though, despite the occasional comparison and perhaps ill-advised propositions.
Comparison looms large throughout the show for several reasons, and let me bring up one more, because there is a parallel to 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Matthew Macfadyen’s infamous hand movement when Ryder gets into a carriage at some point. Without giving anything away, but that was the moment I thought the show might actually divert from the book…
I love that. In your mind, there was a whole different version of the plot for a moment?
Yes, I did think we were all in for a surprise for a moment, and I won’t lie, I’d like a spin-off that focuses on the alternative world that could have been, depending on who Mary chooses. Speaking of choosing, though, I do want to briefly touch upon the fact that Haywood is as close to being unavailable when he meets Mary as one can be without actually being in a relationship…
Yes, and everyone seems to forget that. What we’re hopefully meant to believe is that he says it himself, that he entered that agreement when he was very young, and he doesn’t want to do the dishonourable thing by leaving that agreement, so he’s hanging in there. But then we see him start to fall in love with Mary, which he doesn’t hide particularly well…
I do think, upon first glance, Ryder feels like a dangerous choice while Haywood is somehow the ‘more comfortable’ option.
I agree, though I do think in a lot of ways Haywood is the male version of Mary. One thing I loved was that once they have those little romantic moments, they are both wearing their spectacles, which is so lovely and rare to see on screen. We rarely see two bespectacled bookish characters having a romantic moment without them somehow whipping off the glasses to fit into a more standardised mould.
While we are on the topic of the glasses, at first, they are introduced in a rather comedic fashion, but they become so symbolic for Mary and her growth throughout.
Absolutely, and when Mary decided to wear them to the ball for the first time, that’s quite a radical thing to do because you just wouldn’t as a woman go to a ball wearing glasses, it would be like you’re scuppering any chance you’ve got if you do that. So she pushes back a lot of the time. Plus, she needs them, whether it is to read or for more straightforward and practical reasons.
God, I loved the moment when she needed to put them on to figure out who was standing opposite her across the room.
Exactly, that’s the thing, she’s constantly squinting unless she’s got them on, which actually was hard for me to play because, touch wood, I do have quite good vision.
There’s one man we have not talked about yet, and I’ll argue, bear with me, that he might just be the most important: Mr. Collins.
Wow, what makes you say that?
blazer. Ami Paris
top + shorts. Simone Rocha
shoes. Grenson
socks. Calzedonia
opposite
blazer, jeans + shoes. Ami Paris
It was their exchange about happiness for me and the idea of taking happiness into one’s own hands that felt like everything had truly come full circle.
It’s a beautiful moment, isn’t it? In that moment they are two people who are able to find these small moments of kinship while they both feel very trapped in their current situations. It’s like the way I read it was like two children discussing the concept of happiness and kind of trying to intellectualise it.
There’s a whole chunk in the book where Mary spends time with the Collinses after their marriage, and she actually realises she thinks that maybe they could have been quite happy together, because even if there’s no romantic connection between them, maybe this would have been enough to just sit and read books together every day, and that kind of companionable silence together.
That’s kind of what the show is about, at least in some ways, the question of what it is that we want to settle for, no?
Mhm, yes, it’s about what you’ll settle for and questions how high you aim when it comes to being truly fulfilled in your life, not only by a romantic partner but in every one of your relationships. I think a lot of people settle for whatever they perceive as “enough” and then realise that they want something more. And it’s a hard thing to find, that thing that ticks all those boxes for you, that’s going to make you come alive while also somehow still feeling really safe and comfortable.
Which is a really hard balance to strike… and actually, speaking about balance, for one moment I wondered if friendships kind of fell to the wayside throughout the show but actually they did not, they simply became family.
Yes, it is all about her chosen family, which is a really important lesson, isn’t it? One of the most life-affirming things is the fact that Mary builds a whole new family around her from scratch, made up of people who make her feel really nurtured and really happy, ultimately. And they are still, I guess, blood relation because it’s her uncle and her aunt, but she comes to the realisation that the people who are the closest to her in terms of being her own flesh and blood are actually destroying her.
They’re quite toxic relationships, and so to be able to have the courage to step away from that, you know, she kind of, when she leaves her family, she says, “I realise I could never come back here, I can never come back to my family.”
It’s really not one to be taken lightly, is it?
No, it’s a very weighty thing to go through, but ultimately she realises that her happiness is paramount, which is quite significant to be able to put that first, isn’t it?
The show, obviously, without the spoilers of how it ends, ends with a book script on a table called ‘Advice for Young Women’ by Mary Bennett. What do you think would be in it? What would be her big piece of advice for any young woman?
Ultimately, she wants to empower young women to embrace their intelligence and knowledge, because it wasn’t fashionable to be an intelligent woman in those days. Being overt about reading books and acquiring knowledge was not considered sexy or cool. So she’s imparting this mindset to young women and encouraging them to grow in confidence. She also wants to show them that it’s cool to be intelligent and powerful to embrace what they know, and not to dumb themselves down.
blazer, jeans + shoes. Ami Paris
‘The Other Bennet Sister’ is out now on BBC One.
photography. Eva Salvi
art direction. James Williams Creighton
fashion. Andrew Burling
talent. Ella Bruccoleri
hair. Alex Szabo @ Carol Hayes Management using K18
make up. Natalie Stokes @ Carol Hayes Management using Hourglass Cosmetics
production. Clara La Rosa
photography assistant. Simon Melber
interview. Jule Scott
and integrate them seamlessly into the new content without adding new tags. Ensure the new content is fashion-related, written entirely in Japanese, and approximately 1500 words. Conclude with a “結論” section and a well-formatted “よくある質問” section. Avoid including an introduction or a note explaining the process.
