Pride and Prejudice, Twenty Years On

On Location peels back the curtain one some of your favorite films, television shows, and more.

When Jane Austen put pen to paper and brought readers the romance of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy—and the social climbers who complicate it all—she likely didn’t consider the cultural grip it would still possess more than two centuries later. There have been countless on-screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice since (with another in the pipeline soon, courtesy of Netflix) but one of the most memorable remains director Joe Wright’s 2005 version—a dusk-colored haze of big frocks and longing looks. Starring a 20-year-old Keira Knightley, fresh off the back of Bend It Like Beckham fame, and a shockingly dashing Matthew Macfayden, playing a man every bit the opposite of Succession’s comically spineless Tom Wambsgans, the cast is a who’s who of British acting talent—while the locations themselves provide a tour of some of England’s most spectacular stately homes.

Ahead of a special 20th anniversary screening of the movie on April 20, we spoke with Wright about what it took to bring the universe of Jane Austen to life, how the film prompted an unexpected move to the countryside, and finding the perfect Pemberley.

The movie followed in the footsteps of the beloved 1995 BBC version starring Colin Firth. How did you overcome that pressure and set out to create your own, distinct version of Pride and Prejudice?

I specifically chose to never look at the BBC version. I've still never seen it. I've watched clips of it, and it looks great, but I just felt that we needed to do something different. At the time I was steeped in the work of British realist directors like Alan Clark from the 1970s and 80s—in fact, that's the sort of work I’d imagined I'd be doing. I never really imagined I'd be doing Pride and Prejudice! Robert Altman was a big influence as well, and I wanted to bring some of that, kind of, mess and reality [from his movies] to show what it must have been like living in the Bennet house at that time, without toilets or running water, and, you know, washing your dresses once a month. I worked very, very closely with my production designer Sarah Greenwood, set decorator Katie Spencer, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran to convey that, and also what it must have felt like being in a house with five daughters—the noise volume and the talking over each other and just the constant babble of it. We wanted to present some sort of reality.

It was a messy world, but also a very romanticized one, particularly when it comes to Jane Austen, and I think you can see both sides in the way it’s shot. How did you strike the balance for the audience?

Each color and texture was carefully considered. I had a wonderful director of photography called Roman Osin. And we were very lucky with the weather. We shot pretty much everything on location and really tried to utilize the late afternoon light to its best effect. We scheduled filming around the light, especially dusk. It's all about the light, really, how we used it, and then the colors that Sarah, Katie, and Jacqueline chose to use.

The movie has such a spectacular cast. What memories do you have of that time on set? Was Judi Dench bustling around as Lady Catherine de Bourg all summer?

I remember everyone just being very excited. I was getting to direct my first film, and for a lot of the actors, like Carey Mulligan, it was their first film, too. We were all just thrilled to be there. It was a wonderful summer of laughter. Brenda [Blethyn, who played Mrs. Bennet] spent the whole time cackling. She became the mother to all of us really. And Donald [Sutherland] became the father to us all, and was slightly indulgent, really, much like his character Mr. Bennet. When Mr. Bingley [Simon Woods] and Mr. Darcy [Matthew Macfayden] first came to rehearsals, Donald was introduced to them, and he was very suspicious—dare I say, a little jealous of them, as a father can be. I was like, Oh no, Donald doesn't like them! This is going to be terrible, you know? But it was actually just Donald being the paternal figure to them.

There are some incredible stately homes featured in the film, as well as gorgeous shots of the English countryside. What locations have you come to cherish?

Well, I live there now! We shot all over the country, in Derbyshire, Wiltshire, and Somerset. And it was while making that film that I fell in love with Somerset. Some of it was shot at Stourhead, where the rain scene happened, and I can actually see [the estate] from my house. I’m a Londoner, and I could never imagine myself leaving London, but there is something wonderful about this part of the world… the magic of the light in that landscape. Now I’m living here like Mrs. Bennet herself.

Speaking of the Bennet family, how did you find both their house and Pemberley, where Mr. Darcy lives?

For the Bennet house in Tunbridge Wells, I can't remember how we found it, but it's certainly a house that signifies the family’s social status—they were kind of middle class. It's a beautiful, beautiful house, but it's not a stately home. It's made from crumbly brick, not that gorgeous limestone [like Pemberley]. And it’s in proximity of a farm, so you have the pig getting led through the house, and the geese out the front.

Meanwhile, at least according to research I did 20 years ago, Pemberley was based on Chatsworth House, which Austen had visited. And so it felt completely natural to choose that for Mr. Darcy. I mean, it's the highest of the high in the land, really, short of Buckingham Palace. It's a perfect house. The scene where Elizabeth Bennett confronts Darcy's bust was filmed in its sculpture hall. At the time, the sculpture hall was covered in this Victorian-era red velvet—it was dreadful. I thought, We need to take the red velvet down. Obviously, we were told by the house that this was impossible. It had been there since Queen Victoria's reign. I found lots of research suggesting that actually, when the house was originally built, the velvet wasn't there, and it was a later addition by Victorians who didn't know anything about interior decoration. And so I wrote a letter to the late Duchess of Devonshire and said, The red velvet is very lovely but we’ve got to get rid of it. And she agreed, bless her. They took the red velvet down, and it's never gone back up.