George MacKay opted not to watch Ang Lee's take on Sense and Sensibility before starring in the new adaptation of Jane Austen's novel.
The 34-year-old actor plays Edward Ferrars in Georgia Oakley's new flick and explained that he decided not to watch the 1995 adaptation - which starred Dame Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet - beforehand as he didn't want to put "pressure" on himself.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the film's world premiere in London on Tuesday (15.09.26), MacKay said: "I knew [the film] in the ether to be something of a great import, but I elected not to try and see the film so I didn’t do exactly that — didn’t put pressure on myself. I let my interpretation be my own, [I was] led by the script that Diana Reid wrote for this, and so the pressure wasn’t too bad in the end."
The 1917 actor explained that Sense and Sensibility appealed to him because of "chivalrous" characters such as Edward and Elinor Dashwood (Daisy Edgar-Jones).
MacKay said: "What I love about this story is that it champions, particularly through Elinor and I guess through Edward as well, people who put others first.
"It’s very difficult to have stories centred [around] characters who hide their emotions, and it’s not a particularly shiny quality to put others in front of you all the time. It’s chivalrous, but it’s difficult to translate. And I love that Jane Austen, in her writing, does that so beautifully with a character like Elinor. And in this film, Edward gets to share in that a little bit."
Meanwhile, Oakley claims that her movie contrasts from Lee's adaptation because of the age difference between the Dashwood sisters.
The 38-year-old director said: "[They’re] much closer together in age in reality, and so I guess I was looking to get under the skin of a certain type of sister dynamic. For me, it was important that they were closer together in age. But also, the visual language is very different. The locations are very different."
Oakley explained that she decided to bring Sense and Sensibility to the big screen again because of the "contemporary" themes of Austen's writing.
She said: "What interested me was that Austen is writing about themes that are inherently contemporary, and there is still, for young women today, such a negotiation to be had between what the world tells them they can expect from their lives and what it’s actually prepared to offer them. That negotiation happens usually between the teenage years and your mid-20s to mid-30s, and I feel like that hasn’t changed at all. We’re still living in a world where the rules have been made by men for men, and so I think in that respect, it’s really a timeless story, and felt like a good time to adapt it again."
