Tumblr crosspost (15 September 2020)

[anghraine]

An anon asked:

What do you think about a new adaptation in a couple of years with millie bobby brown as lizzy bennet?

I replied:

Sorry, I don’t know who that is!

Comments

[anghraine]

I've mostly just seen gifsets of her in Enola Holmes, I think (since I originally made the post). I think I still haven't actually seen anything she's in, though, so I have no idea if she could carry the role. IMO she looks okay for the role (a bit too conventionally pretty for me, but that's nothing new) and is currently the right age, but I'm not super enthusiastic about the prospect tbh.

[elperian]

She looks similar to the other Elizabeths, but tbh I think if she's cast it'll have more to do with her being the favorite actress of Netflix right now than true "casting". And there are maaaaany reasons to be worried about any Netflix Austen adaptations.

I saw her in Stranger Things S1, when she was a kid, and the first Enola Holmes movie (meh), but the hypothetical reminds me of how Emma Watson got cast in All The Roles after she was Hermione - not necessarily because she was a great "Belle" in BatB, e.g., but because she was Emma Watson. Sigh.

[anghraine]

And there are maaaaany reasons to be worried about any Netflix Austen adaptations.

As we painfully know! >_>

And yeah, I mean, that was pretty obviously the reason for Keira Knightley's casting in so many things in the early 2000s including P&P. It feels kind of gendered honestly—big male roles in this sort of thing sometimes go to big names, of course, but it doesn't feel as common to me.

[elperian]

Oh, yes! I was thinking that Firth and Macfadyen were big names, but I actually might be mentally backwards applying that ex post their P&P adaptations. Certainly Johnny Lee Miller was not a big household name, nor even JJ Field.

[anghraine]

Right! Playing Darcy made Firth and Macfadyen famous more than the other way around, I suspect. I know Firth used to joke that he could do anything with his life, take any role, go to space, and the headline would still be "Mr Darcy goes to space." I feel like Succession is probably the only thing comparable to P&P for Macfadyen and it's been huge.

It's more a trend than an absolute thing (1995 S&S has a bunch of stars regardless of gender, for instance) but at least with P&P, the only time a really big name has been Darcy was Olivier in 1940 IIRC.