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]

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.