Ella Bruccoleri on Mary, Tom and season 2

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from season 1 of “The Other Bennet Sister,” now streaming on BritBox.

Ella Bruccoleri may play a Bennet sister on TV, but the actress wasn’t always a fan of Jane Austen.

Bruccoleri first read “Pride and Prejudice” while preparing to star in the BBC drama “The Other Bennet Sister,” written by Sarah Quintrell and adapted from Janice Hadlow’s novel of the same name. In the role of Mary Bennet, Elizabeth’s younger and more timid sister, Bruccoleri wanted to portray the coming of age story of a Regency woman.

“We wanted to make a show that Jane would enjoy if she was there today, or that would be true enough to what she was trying to do,” says Bruccoleri. Variety.

The show’s dramatic romance and journey of self-growth seem to fit into something Austen envisioned for her characters. Mary, overshadowed by her vivacious sisters and belittling mother (Ruth Jones), begins to find her feet when she moves to London to care for her nieces and nephews after her father’s death. In the new town, Mary lives with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, where she encounters a friendly lawyer named Tom Hayward (Dónal Finn), with whom she shares an immediate bond. While Tom has a pre-existing romantic arrangement, Mary crosses paths with Mr. Ryder (Laurie Davidson), a charming playboy who begins to pursue her (unbeknownst to her). Familiar characters from “Pride and Prejudice” appear, such as Ryder’s love interest Caroline Bingley, who takes great pleasure in being cruel to Mary, as well as the rest of the Bennet family, accompanied by flashes of Mr. Darcy refusing to spend time with his in-laws.

Worlds collide when Ryder follows Mary to Pemberley, but their friendship (as far as Mary is concerned) hits a snag when he asks her to be his mistress. Mary returns to the Gardiners and reconnects with newly single Tom Hayward on a trip to the Lakes – which is crashed by Ryder and Caroline Bingley.

A series of misunderstandings arise and Tom eventually leaves the Lakes, seemingly for good. In his absence, Mary, who has grown immensely into herself over the course of the season, continues to build a life for herself in London. She runs into Mr. Sparrow, an old friend she had rejected; resolves her issues with Caroline, and even finally addresses the way her mother treated her.

In the final scenes of the finale, Tom returns to London (after Caroline convinces him to do so!) to confess his love for Mary, admitting that he thought she loved Ryder instead. The two end the season engaged and preparing for a life together.

“The Other Bennet Sister” first premiered on the BBC in Britain earlier this year and moved to BritBox for a weekly streaming program in the US and Canada. The interest spread across the continent, with the show ‘The Other Bennet Sister’ adding five times more new subscribers to the streamer in its first five weeks than any other series, helping BritBox achieve its strongest quarter yet in terms of subscriber growth.

In fact, it was so successful that BBC and BritBox announced this week that “The Other Bennet Sister” will have a three-part Christmas special this summer. But before that news broke, Bruccoleri expressed nervousness about the possibility of a second season. “When something feels really perfect and is received in a beautiful way, I’m a little afraid to touch it again,” she said.

In the interview, Bruccoleri discusses portraying Mary’s anxious tendencies, charting her own path – and what’s next for Tom and Mary.

Centuries later, Jane Austen is still as popular, and Mary’s story of being an overlooked wallflower still persists. What do you hope audiences who see themselves as Mary take away from the show?

Society’s message tells you that in order to fit in and be accepted, you have to make sure you look a certain way and look polished. Mary goes on this journey where that message is so instilled in her that she finds it very difficult not to listen and thinks, “Okay, I’m doing something wrong. I have to change how I am to get people to like me.” It doesn’t work because Mary is who she is; she will never be able to live in this box like other people want. Her flaws become her charms once she’s around people who accept her for who she is, and that’s the takeaway I want people to have.

I noticed that Mary was pricking the skin around her thumb when she was around her family and was probably nervous. What were some of the mannerisms you used to shape her?

It was actually written! I loved that detail in the script, so I took that and ran with it. My makeup artist did minimal prosthetics on my hands and around my nails – every day – to show off this redness. We had to keep track of where she was in her journey because I wanted her to do that less as she progressed. And besides, I don’t wear glasses in real life, so I really had to think about when she would need them, because it was kind of up to me. I flipped through the script and said, “How far away is this object?”

The Bennet matriarch is almost a cartoon villain in her parenting. Why do you think Mary kept trying with her? How did you and Ruth Jones approach filming those scenes, which are often very funny?

They were really hard to do because I would just panic a lot. Why does she keep trying with her is a good question, and very heartbreaking to think about. Janice Hadlow talks about it a lot in the book: this eternal need for approval from your parents, no matter how they behave towards you, you still really want to make them proud of you. If you have not achieved that, then you cannot find it in yourself. Ultimately, she doesn’t need approval to come from an outside source. It can come from within. I like that the show doesn’t try to simplify it, because it’s such a complicated relationship that people have with their parents, and even when it’s toxic, it’s very hard to move on from.

Do you wish grieving for her father, who she seemed to get along with better, was a bigger part of the show?

That was the only thing I was sad to lose from the book. There are some heartbreaking moments where Mary tries so hard to please him. She puts together this little book with quotes from his favorite authors and then realizes that this is kind of mocking a lot of those authors, and she didn’t know it, so she tears it up. There are always more things you would like to explore, but I think there just wasn’t room for the way the show was written.

You mentioned Mary’s glasses earlier. In the scene where she meets Tom, he puts on his own glasses, and when they get engaged, the glasses are present again. Was that a conscious decision throughout the season?

Tom was always assumed to be the male equivalent of Mary. The glasses were a very obvious way to tell that story, but it is a sign of their intellect and the fact that they love reading and poetry. And it was very intentional to include them in that final romantic scene. We didn’t want to romanticize them aesthetically anymore and wanted a way to push back: they’ll keep the glasses on, they’ll look exactly the same as they do in the rest of the series, and just as nerdy.

One of their most important scenes takes place during a boat trip that is interrupted by Ryder and ends up in the lake with both men. What was that shooting like?

That was a really good day on set. It had been a pretty intense day of filming because they were having some trouble securing the boats to the bottom of the lake or something. We didn’t start filming until after lunch and everyone was very stressed. We got on the boat to do those scenes, and Indira [Varma, who plays Mrs. Gardiner] showed up in a swimsuit and a hat with a duck on it so she could go swimming in the lake. And if it was caught on camera, she thought it wouldn’t matter because there was a duck in the hat. And everyone said, ‘We don’t have time for this now,’ and they tried to stop Indira from jumping into the lake. But when we did the scenes with Dónal and Laurie, for example, bless their hearts, it was freezing. You have a doctor on hand, but… [ours] was way too careful. He kept saying he thought they were going to get pneumonia. It was really funny. And then Dónal lost one of his whiskers in the lake!

Did you feel like it was important for Mary to have another love interest before ultimately ending up with Tom?

It adds another layer so that the show has a slight will/will not, even though everyone knows she will end up with Mr. Haywood. But I personally think it’s important for Mary because she needs to have a feeling for other people out there. Her relationship with Mr. Ryder is so formative in so many ways, and she learns so much about herself. It’s important for her to see that, but that’s not what love is to her, to know that she’s in love with Tom.

Especially in the last episode, she makes a lot of good choices, such as rejecting Ryder. She sees Sparrow again. She stands up to her mother. She is having tea with Caroline. Were there any scenes that were particularly satisfying for you to film?

The scene with her mother. A lot. Ruth and I spent most of the day filming as if we were putting on a little play in the living room. We kept doing it and discovered new things. It’s just very satisfying because it encapsulates the place that Mary has arrived at, which is that she was no longer dependent on her mother, able to make her own decisions, and trusting her to do so. She is fully empowered at that moment and owns the things she says to her mother. And also meeting John Sparrow on the couch. It doesn’t really come across at all in the show, but in the book, Mary clings to John Sparrow’s guilt, constantly returning to it in her mind, and can’t get past the guilt. She can’t ignore the fact that she may have hurt this other person; she hopes he’s doing well, and since he’s happy, things have come full circle for her.

Another big moment in the finale is Tom and Mary finally getting engaged and getting married off-screen. What do you see them doing after the final?

I’ve been playing with this a bit and thinking, should they have kids, or is that not for them? Because Mary is not very motherly by nature. She develops friendships with the kids once she lets her guard down a little, but I think it would be a big decision for her. I see them having a beautiful, fair, quite progressive relationship for that time, where they both make decisions equally and prioritize each other’s happiness. And I see Mary continuing with her governess. In the last part of the show, Sarah was really up and down about whether it should be Mary writing a book. Because it was like, “Is it too obvious?” That she becomes a kind of Jane Austen figure and eventually starts writing for other people. I thought it was really important that Mary wanted to pass on something that she had learned as a young woman, so I think she would want to pass that on in some way. I saw them being happy together and living a kind of bohemian life in London.

This interview has been edited and condensed.