“Mary is a non-typical period drama heroine. There’s more of those women seen at the forefront of shows today, but very rarely in a period drama,” Bruccoleri says later, hiding from the heat in her trailer. (And she would know: her prior credits include parts in Call the Midwife and Bridgerton.) “The women are feminine, ladylike, proper, or a bit coy—Mary is none of that. She has no filter. She’s proud, intelligent, messy. She doesn’t know how to be anything other than that.”
“Sometimes you read a period drama and it can feel a bit stiff—it comes from that repressed feeling at the time,” Bruccoleri goes on. “Ours feels so intimate, so open. I’m not playing a period-drama person—I’m playing a human that just so happens to live in 1814.”
While the first block of filming was all dinner parties and ballroom scenes, much of the second took place around here, with the Welsh countryside standing in for Windermere and Scafell Pike in Cumbria. On the day I visit, Bruccoleri, Davidson, and Finn film a scene that will be familiar to P&P fans: as both suitors vie for her attention (and jibe at each other), they drag Mary’s boat through the water, staggering to shore with white shirts clinging to their torsos, à la Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy.
Photo: BBC/Bad Wolf/James Pardon
“My favorite scenes involve the main challenge of…total exhaustion,” says Davidson. In a bid for “visual integrity,” he refused to wear the neoprene underclothes meant to keep him warm in the water—“a massive mistake,” he admits later.
There’s a sense of camaraderie on set. Varma, in costume but on a break, sunbathed on the banks of the lake and hollered encouragingly at Finn and Davidson. Finn and Bruccoleri shared AirPods and playlists (Mitski, Big Thief) to make sure they were entering scenes in the same frame of mind. (After filming, Bruccoleri presented Finn with a Big Thief vinyl and a framed lyric from their song “Mary.”) Show writer Quintrell says the crew booed when Caroline Bingley (Tanya Reynolds) first treated Mary badly.
“I hope the joy comes across. If it’s half of what we experienced making it, that’s more than enough,” Quintrell says. “It’s about what it is to come of age when you’re the odd one out, and the transformative power of kindness.”
