P&P cast talks about their characters.
It´s a great love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, but underpinning it all is this kind of love that runs this family, that makes this family operate in such a wonderful, absurd, amusing and exciting way. There´s such a great mix of characters. They´re kind of irresistible.
“Society, as a whole, starts with the family. If the family unit is not treasured and nourished, you know, everything is gonna got to pot. So I think we should take a leaf out of their book”.
(Brenda Blethyn)
Did you bond with the other Bennet sisters?
Oh yes, totally! You know this was the first time for me that I worked with girls my own age. It was just lovely for me to work with people who shared the same interests cause I´ve never had that before. I´m still friendly with a lot of the people who worked on “Pride and prejudice”. It was a really special experience cause that rarely happens on a film set where everybody just loves each other and I think that you can really see that in the film as well.”
(Keira Knightley)
Carey Mulligan: I think Jena helped a lot ‘cause I kind of leaned, I have leaned on her the whole solo basically, because it’s kind of A: in my character, and B: just because she’s so much more experienced. She kind of psyches me up for stuff so she kind of helps me get in the giggly frame of mind all the time.
Jena Malone: You know when I go up she goes down and we both sort of hop, she skip and just sort of becoming synchronized with another actor. It’s quite hard, actually.
“Pride and prejudice is a youthful book, written by a twenty one year old girl when she wrote the first draft. So it’s got great energy, and I wanted that speed and energy running through it. I wanted that youthful telling of it. That’s not because I wanted a youthful audience, but because it was written by somebody young.”
(Joe Wright, Director)
“Three months skipping around the English countryside with a load of girls. It was heaven.”
(Joe Wright, Director)
“If you took Lydia out of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and put her into today, she’d be one of the popular girls. She loves soldiers, dressing up, silly games and laughter. She’s so concerned about the things she likes to do that she doesn’t see how they affect others. She’s basically a carbon copy of her mother. She’s not embarrassed by her. She’s inspired by her.”
(Jena Malone, Lydia Bennet)
“I didn’t want to cast people who looked like each other though. What I did rather, was to find mannerisms that they all shared.”
(Joe Wright, Director)
“The idea that all the women should be dressed in white at this ball was Jacqueline Durran´s idea. Was an idea she came up with in the interview that we had. And that was the idea that made me decide I wanted her to design the costumes. There was a massive fashion for wearing white at the time.”
(Joe Wright, Director)
