‘Sense and Sensibility’ Stars on How New Film Is Not Trying to Compete With Ang Lee’s Classic

Thirty years after Ang Lee‘s famed adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, another telling of the Jane Austen classic has arrived — this one courtesy of director Georgia Oakley, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles. Lee’s 1995 version — which starred Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant — won an Oscar for its script, penned by Thompson, and was also up for best picture. Those are some big footsteps to follow in, but at the film‘s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, Edgar-Jones said the intention was not to compete with the past film. “I think that the great thing about Austen is because her writing is so timeless and transcendent and deep in terms of its themes, there’s always so much you can mine from it. I kind of think of her a little like Shakespeare, that every new individual that takes on her words and her characters will find something unique because of their uniqueness,” the star, who plays Elinor Dashwood, told The Hollywood Reporter. “I kind of feel like there’s a really beautiful conversation happening between each adaptation, and really the unifying quality being how brilliant and wonderful and amazing the Dashwood women are.” Many in the cast — including Creed-Miles, Frank Dillane and George MacKay — say they avoided watching Lee’s film altogether, as Caitriona Balfe noted, “I think you’re just doing your own thing, and Georgia is somebody that had a very unique take on it, something that spoke to her and that’s what we were following and really excited. I love the Ang Lee version and I don’t think that it needs to be this compared to that, it’s just that these are two expressions of the same story but in different ways.” Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s 1811 debut novel, follows three sisters after they’re forced to leave their family estate with their widowed mother and move to a humble cottage, finding love and heartbreak along the way. On top of the iconic source material, Edgar-Jones also had some prior experience to draw on in the romantic drama genre, after starring in the 2020 hit series Normal People. “I’ve always enjoyed stories that explore the stakes of a human life, I think it’s why Austen is so transcendent, because we all understand what it is to feel heartbreak and fall in love for the first time and how we grow in our early 20s and what we learn about ourselves,” she explained. “I suppose that’s always been something that’s really fascinated me, and also characters that maybe are initially overlooked that actually have a lot more to them if people take the time to find out. And Elinor is that in spades.” Sense and Sensibility hits theaters Oct. 16.