Sense and Sensibility 2026: Georgia Oakley and Diana Reid on the contemporary feels of Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every Jane Austen article will begin with her most famous quote.

It works because in the more than two centuries since Austen’s books were first published, they have only become more and more relevant to her readers – no matter the era.

But what someone took from Sensibility and Sensibility in 1811 is different to what it might mean to a young woman reading it in 2026.

Or one who watched a movie version in 1995, when Ang Lee and Emma Thompson released their beloved film, or at the time of the two BBC TV series, one which arrived in 1981 and the other in 2008.

So it also a universal truth that in our screen culture era, that a new iteration of any Austen tome will be made every decade or so, and it will be a different interpretation to what came before.

Austen’s work has that flexibility, and the latest version, a sweeping cinema film starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esme Creed-Miles as impoverished sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, courses with the creative spirit and cultural context of the young women who made it.

The filmmakers in question are Georgia Oakley, a Millennial British director, and Diana Reid, an Australian writer on the Gen Z-Millennial cusp who is best known for her novels Love & Virtue and Seeing Other People.

Reid remembered the Austen screen adaptations of the 1990s and early 2000s (such as the BBC Pride & Prejudice, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Clueless) were always in the cultural ether when she was growing up, and that she had become acquainted with them before she ever cracked open one of Austen’s books.

But since then, Austen has always been there. “When I started writing novels, I would often look to Jane Austen, especially for comedic writing,” Reid told The Nightly.

“When my producer suggested that maybe we should try adapting Sense and Sensibility, my gut reaction was that the 1995 film is so good, and why would you attempt it. So I had to go back and re-read the book, and then I actually rewatched that film, because I had to satisfy myself that I could find something to say that I didn’t feel had been said before.”

That different focus was to make the great romance of Sense and Sensibility not on the traditional Elinor-Edward pairing, nor Marianne’s lovelorn connection to the dastardly Willougby or her eventual acceptance of upstanding Colonel Brandon, but between the sisters.

“It was that thing of centring the sisters and making sure that their relationship was the spine of the story,” Reid explained. “When I started working with Georgia, I said to her that I tried to think of it like a typical rom-com, except rather than having a romantic pair, it was the sisters who occupied that position.

“So, the story starts with them very close, and then the climax is where they’re the furthest apart from each other, and they have a big fight. It’s only after they’ve both learnt from each other and grown that they can end up back together again.

“That’s the plot of every rom-com, but the challenge was, can we make their love story the beating heart of the film without compromising on the romance with the men?”

Unlike in Lee’s 1995 version, where Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson were 16 years apart in age, Oakley wanted to find actors who were much closer in years.

“I felt that perhaps that would unlock something of a sisterly dynamic that would feel different from what had come before,” Oakley said.

Oakley cast Edgar-Jones, 28, first, and said the actor who broke out with Normal People, had the “poise and restraint” to embody Elinor, the “sense” of the Dashwood sisters. “Finding the duo was going to be a real challenge because I knew the film would live or die by the performances of the two sisters,” she added.

When Creed-Miles, 26, walked in, Oakley was struck by how unburdened the actor seemed to be, as if she had no knowledge about any period dramas that had come before. She wasn’t tethered to stereotypes, and had the looseness of Marianne, the “sensibility” of the title.

Oakley knew Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles had worked together before, on the 2018 British film Pond Life, but she was still surprised by their natural familiarity.

“When they saw each other, there was this immediate sisterly dynamic, and that continued the whole way through the shoot,” Oakley recalled.

“There was a moment that they first hugged in the audition, and I could feel that there was a history there, a secret history that I was not privy to, and that is exactly what I wanted.”

Like Reid, Oakley didn’t have making an Austen adaptation on her bucket list, it wasn’t something that was on her mind. But it was Reid’s screenplay, and how contemporary it felt, which piqued her interest.

Making a story from 1811 feel resonant to a modern audience is not easy to do, especially when you’re keeping fidelity to the original setting, and this Sense and Sensibility makes full use of the visual romance of that era.

It’s expansive landscapes, imposing manor houses and the occasional bonnet, but much like the heightened emotions it wants to harness, the Dashwood sisters wear their hair loose, as if to symbolise the roiling feelings that both sisters possess, no matter how they express them or don’t.

Oakley pointed to more of an equilibrium in this version, where it’s not just Marianne picking up “sense” from Elinor, but that the sisters have a symbiotic relationship where they learn from each other.

“In this day and age, sensibility has essentially won over,” Oakley said. “We understand that talking about one’s emotions and being true to who we really are is healthy, whereas at the time (of publication), the qualities Elinor exhibits were held in the most high regard.

“It’s not that she doesn’t possess the ‘sensibility’ Marianne also has, and that’s what we wanted to show in the film. By the time she gets to the end, we see that loosening of Elinor’s character, but it’s all been there originally.

“It’s not one or the other, that’s what is so lovely about the story because neither one nor the other way of being is right or wrong. I think Austen was writing about the two warring parts of herself that were splintered off into these two characters, because we all have a little bit of both inside of ourselves.”

Austen is timeless, Reid contended, which is why her stories have worked so well across different eras, but for the writer, there is something particularly resonant about them right now.

“She understands intimacy really deeply, and especially with how online we all are at the moment, people are very familiar with that feeling of being perceived by lots of people, but actually understood by very few.

“That’s a conflict her stories make legible because they’re always about people who are required to perform in public in some way, and then when they fall in love, it’s because they found someone who sees the real them beneath all that public performance.”

Young people, Reid and Oakley’s contemporaries, know exactly what that’s like. It’s Oakley’s hope that, that audience, perhaps a new one, will see something they like.

“If this version of the film can open up a pathway to new people who haven’t discovered Austen before, that would be a huge achievement,” she said.

“Because as well as all of the people that we hope will be drawn to the story from their previous love of Austen, it would be nice if more young people could be exposed to her work.”

If anything is going to ignite a new appreciation of Austen, it’s going to be a Sense and Sensibility made by young women which reflects the young women of the 21st century.

Sense and Sensibility is in cinemas on October 15