“Colin Firth I think was a bit daunting. I never talked to Matthew Macfadyen about it. I mean was a hard act to follow, he set a million, billion female bosoms heaving!! I know people watch that video again and again and again. Ours is just a different Mr. Darcy and he´s absolutely extraordinary. A lot of the people involved in the film hadn´t seen the TV adaptation so I don´t think they were inhibited or daunted as much as I was, because I´d seen it.
I gave a homage to Colin Firth secretly. When I have to write a letter, the letter that Darcy´s painting is saying that `being unable to sleep, I got up early and went out to the lake and I was just about to tear off my shirt and dive into the water when the arrival of a gamekeeper puts an end to such foolishness´. I had Matthew writing that as a little homage.
I think the two things can co-exit, that was eight years ago. There´s a whole new generation and our Darcy is MY Darcy. So he´s wonderful.”

(Deborah Moggach, Screenwriter)

The side effects of playing Mr. Darcy.

In an unguarded moment, Macfadyen­ calls it “the curse of Mr Darcy”. He and Colin Firth met for the first time recently and had a good laugh about the syndrome. But it wasn’t so funny right afterwards, when the only scripts coming his way were endless crappy romcoms. Spooks had already given him a sense of what it might feel like to end up stuck in one kind of role. “During those two series, I felt myself getting very sluggish and fed up, doing one character for so long. It felt wrong. After Darcy, I thought, ‘No, I’m going to be fussy.’ So I didn’t do anything for six months, just sat around getting ­fatter and fatter, feeling grumpy, getting on my wife’s nerves, and thinking, ‘Oh no, I’ve missed the boat.’ It might have been different if a well-written romcom had come along, but it didn’t.”

Macfadyen did win over at least one Firth fancier: Keira Knightley. “I loved Colin’s Darcy. You can’t not. But that’s fine. Because you can love more than one.”

“I can confirm that there is no wet shirt episode in the upcoming version. My pecs and I will not be seen emerging in a sultry fashion from a lake.

I had seen his wet-shirt scene at an awards ceremony, but I hadn’t really registered the impact of it. So I was unprepared for the ‘How are you going to make it different?’ question”.

(Matthew Macfadyen)