Sense and Sensibility star didn't need to read the Jane Austen novel before filming

Sense and Sensibility star George MacKay has revealed what his required reading was for the role of Edward Ferrars in Georgia Oakley's adaptation – and, surprisingly, it was not Jane Austen's 1811 novel.

MacKay, recently seen in Rose of Nevada, stars alongside Normal People's Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two sisters embodying two opposite ways of dealing with one's feelings. Following the death of their father and amid a difficult financial situation, level-headed, no-nonsense Elinor meets Edward, with their connection developing at a slow, steady pace.

Speaking on the Kermode & Mayo's Take podcast, MacKay said he hadn't read Austen's Sense and Sensibility before filming, but that Oakley had a different book in mind to help him understand this new incarnation of Edward.

Related: Where was Sense and Sensibility filmed? All the major UK locations

"The first time we met, I said, 'Should I read the book?' Because I hadn't read the book and I hadn't seen any other versions," MacKay said of meeting Oakley.

"And she went, 'Well, you can, you don't need to. But what I would like you to read is Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, because that will give you a historical context of the time, of the sort of the thinkings, the feminist thinkings of the time,'" he added.

MacKay explained how reading Wollstonecraft's 1792 seminal essay on gender inequality was helpful in reframing Edward as a man who would've read this kind of proto-feminist literature.

"It made me feel that it's a book that Edward would have read," the actor said, adding that his version of Edward would be "a man of that time who would have read that book and felt sort of comfortable and unthreatened and championed those ideas".

"It then became very clear to me her take on Edward Ferrars and that there was an openness [to him]," he added.

"And with that openness, a confidence and an agency in him, even though he's quite shy and cautious with his feelings and isn't sort of outwardly ambitious in a way that most sort of male heroes sort of in certain kind of romantic books would be."

The actor then read Austen's novel and found himself "quite surprised" at how Edward comes across from the page as opposed to his interpretation from Diana Reid's screenplay.

"I think [Reid] wanted to sort of draw out the love story between Edward and Elinor and kind of have that longing and that yearning between them feel more palpable and more potent," he noted.

In the book, he said, Edward, is "sort of seriously lacking in any agency and confidence".

"And when I read that, I thought, 'Oh, this is quite a different man than our version of him,'" he concluded.

Edward Ferrars was previously played by Hugh Grant in 1995's Sense and Sensibility. The film was directed by Ang Lee and adapted for the screen by Emma Thompson, who also stars as Elinor opposite Kate Winslet's Marianne.

Sense and Sensibility is out in cinemas now.

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Stefania is a freelance writer specialising in TV and movies. After graduating from City University, London, she covered LGBTQ+ news and pursued a career in entertainment journalism, with her work appearing in outlets including Little White Lies, The Skinny, Radio Times and Digital Spy. 

Her beats are horror films and period dramas, especially if fronted by queer women. She can argue why Scream is the best slasher in four languages (and a half).