[Music] we try to to to stay true to the flavor of Jane Austin and the world and the tone while making something that that felt contemporary and had modern sensibility thank you for joining us for the magic of Masterpiece collection PBS books is proud to partner with Masterpiece to bring you a behind the scenes look at your favorite stories brought to life as only Masterpiece can look back with us at the creation of sandon seasons 2 and three with headwriter and executive producer Justin Young with insight into all the lavish Regency Era drama it is full of gorgeous period details romance and Intrigue dare I say romcom sh don't tell it's all here at PBS books follow us on Facebook and stay up toate on everything PBS books stay connected with the PBS books community and check out our schedule of upcoming programs it's all available on the PBS books Facebook page hi I'm Heather Marie montia and you are watching PBS Books thank you for joining us today as we feature Justin Young head writer and executive producer of sanditon season 2 an English writer from the early 19th century Jane Austin was a Trailblazer a social changer in in early 1817 she was Ill with a mysterious disease when she started working on a witty and delightful no novel set in the seaside town called sanditon she never finished it but Masterpiece introduced its sanditon miniseries in 2019 picking up Austin setting characters and plot we meet her levelheaded heroine Charlotte Haywood the Parker family who H to transform Sanden into a Resort destination lady denim a key investor in the project and Miss Georgiana lamb an ays from Antigua let's watch this entertaining katchup video from Masterpiece come hear the tale of sanditon The Village By the Sea a fine Resort is sandton at least it hopes to be here's Charlotte naive country girl come to see what she can see hope you won't think too badly of me think too badly of you I don't think of you at all Tom Parker dreamed up sandton this Haven on the ocean here we are his brother Sydney brings rich friends to Aid in its promotion Lord babington and Mr Crow while brother arth is quite content avoiding the commotion Madness lady denim rules the town from from high upon a hill her Fortune's building sandon for she pays all the bills surrounded by her relatives all eyes are on her will there never was a will there most certainly was Edward and I had no choice but to burn it I am rising from the ashes neither of you shall ever darken my doors again into the mix and Aris comes her Fortune very Grand her sutors left and right compete to try to win her hand but her heart belongs to a secret love and to no other man we are forbidden from seeing each other by who my wretched Guardian this is what your father wanted what about what I want but wait what's this the a is gone Spirited Away her riches a Temptation seems she's met with some foul play can Sid and Charlotte come in time can they save the day we have nothing worth stealing I break the differ I never cared a damn about your fortune difference does it make now will Charlotte and Sydney a second chance to find their heart's desire the final ball the final dance who knows what may transpire Will Sparks of passion build to light a roaring blazing fire fire oh for God's sake Tom tell me the work is ured I will see you in the D's prison I have to do everything I can help the family and now it seems our Sydney must leave his Charlotte's side to save the town he takes a wealthy Widow for his bride and for poor Charlotte all that's left is a lonely carriage ride but fear not gentle viewer the story does not cease this was merely a reminder so your interest will increase for season 2 of sandon coming soon on [Music] Masterpiece on PBS each episode of Sanden Drew an average of 7.7 million viewers it was one of Masterpiece most successful seasons ever and as we think about this it not only it's amazing it not only took us on this amazing adventure to the 19th century with Miss Haywood but it also brought brought to conversation brought into each and every one of our households issues of race sexual abuse money and and power the series was actually cancelled in the UK after its first season but Masterpiece endeavored to bring the season back season 2 premieres on Sunday March 20th at 900 PM Central excuse me 900 P p.m Eastern let's take a look at what's in storm all who set foot in sandon Fall in Love on the spot was that your experience miss hward you remain stubbornly unwar do he I believe Independence is something be encouraged oh don't be absurd I will not let you destroy my reputation I am besieged by Fortune Hunters I have a plan for us both to find husbands here in sanditon love is not as simple as you seem to think why should it not be sanditon Sunday March 20th on PBS and the PBS app before we begin we'd like to thank our library Network Partners 1800 strong as well as numerous PBS stations across the country for sharing this important conversation with you but most importantly we'd like to thank you for joining us as many Librarians know across the country and Educators pbslearningmedia.org is a site for free and searchable Library resources it's a Library resources of thousands of programming related to PBS did you know that Masterpiece has a collection there too sanditon has a resource including slavery and its Legacy in England and one of my favorite an opinionated women visit pbslearningmedia.org and search for Masterpiece collection so now the moment you've been waiting for Justin young Justin Young is the headwriter and executive producer of sanditon season two and three his previous credits include sanditon season 1 dickensian Death in Paradise Ripper Street he received two British Academy of film and television Arts nominations for his work on HBY City Welcome Justin thank you so much it's really lovely to be with you today Heather Murray oh it's so great to have you here and to guide this conversation along with me I'd love to bring in Colleen odonnal she is um from Detroit public television one of my colleagu in the network and she also is this social media manager Guru um we're so happy to have you here Colleen thank you I'm I'm really happy to be here especially as a fan of this series yeah well I knew you were perfect to co-host this with me because I know you love stin um and you're a huge fan of Masterpiece so before we H get to bring Justin back in what what makes sandon so captivating to you well I I think part of it was the mystery of how is uh how is Masterpiece going to complete this unfinished story but there's also a something unique about this romance um it's a little bit of a departure from uh from Jane Austin I mean in in some ways it's very similar because you have that that Dynamic of the of the country uh lady and the uh the somewhat arrogant and uh full of himself uh gentleman from uh from London so it's that Clash but uh but it's handled very differently so I thought that was interesting and it the uh the scripts was very compelling the the casting was excellent so it was it was just a joy to watch well thank you and thank you for being here uh before we get started I want to remind everyone out there if you have questions for Justin please put them in the chat at the end of the program if time permits we of course will try to get some of those questions so let's bring in Justin and get the conversation started Justin welcome thank you before we jump into this conversation and and I promise Ken and I will not gang up on you but we wanted to talk to you a little bit about to share about yourself maybe if you could share a little bit about when you wanted to be if you wanted to be a writer as a kid and if you read Jane Austin as a child good question um the funny thing about my writing career is I I think uh I was pretty much born a writer uh and I think I was in denial about it for a very long time um I I went to University and I I thought I wanted to read psychology and I wound up reading English literature and language appallingly I managed to spend four years getting an English degree and didn't study Jane Austin at University at all um I I could I could tell you a lot about Virginia wolf from those days but strangely not Jane Austin uh when I came out of University my plan was to be a theater director that was my first love and so the writing went on a bit of a back burner and then as luck would have it after two or three years of trying to make it as a theater director I I was doing okay I wasn't doing particularly well and a friend of mine uh offered me the chance to help her write uh a show in Scotland and I basically pitched this show thinking I was just helping her out and a producer commissioned me on the spot and said right we'll we'll pay for you to write the script we open in a in a 400 seat theater in six months time and suddenly I was a writer and it it was sort of scary I I literally had to go and buy a computer I didn't have enough money to buy a computer I had to rent a computer and I bought a book on how to write scripts and that was in 2003 and suddenly I was a writer and I I wrote plays exclusively for about the first uh four years and then I was lucky enough to get onto a BBC training scheme uh which which is how I got into to television and and that was in 2007 and uh and so yeah I I I've always sort of been a this might sound a bit Blasphemous for for a program about books and Librarians but I I probably came to Jane Austin through the television adaptations before the novels uh most particularly Andrew Davis's classic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice which introduced the world to uh Colin fur as Mr Darcy of course um and and I cannot tell you I don't know if it was the same in the States but in America in in England that was a phenomenon that that television series so that was probably my way in and it was it was quite a lot later that I started reading the books and then obviously when the chance came to work on sandton I basically gave myself a sort of um University degree in three months and read absolutely everything I could get my hands on um sort of you know it was a kind of immersion immersion course nice so so Justin what was it like for you um to to take on uh finishing basically finishing an unfinished novel by one of the world's most beloved iconic writers well it was daunting I I have to be honest I think if they had approached me uh with series one and said we've got this unfinished fragment of Jane Austin's and we'd like you to finish it I think I'd have been terrified I think the fact that Andrew Davies had already written the first episode of series one was by the time I came on was reassuring because I thought there's literally no one better alive to to to do this than Andrew nobody knows Austin better than Andrew so by the time I came in I it sort of was like having you know I was sort of writing his coattails initially and and we had a fantastic time story lining uh series one together um and I think in a way I don't know that the so I don't know if you've read the the fragment that Jane Left Behind of sandon but it it's so fragmentary I mean it's not just unfinished the story that she wrote took us to halfway through episode one um Sydney Parker arrives and we're told that he's nicelooking and fashionable and that's all we know about him and they and they and Charlotte Haywood goes to Lady denim's house and then it cuts out so we have very very very little to go on which I think gave us a license to to um to sort of make make it up to make make it our own I think if if there was three quarters of it in existence we maybe would have felt a little bit more um a little bit more wary of finishing it but I think it meant because it was so fragmentary we tried to honor her intentions we tried to to to stay true to the flavor of Jane Austin and the world and the tone while making something that that felt contemporary and had modern sensibilities and we had not just the license to do that but we almost had a responsibility to do that because we were working so you mentioned earlier you know attitudes to contemporary attitudes to women and race we wanted to bring a contemporary sensibility and perspective to some of those things that although Jane was very very forward thinking she maybe didn't have the benefit of perspective that that we have so we're aware of the hubris I mean it is an act of supreme arrogance to take on one of the greatest novelists of all time and try and try and F in her footsteps but I hope it's a it's a respectful homage and I think it it's our interpretation we would never claim for it to be definitive many many people have tried to finish it many more people will try to finish it in the future I'm sure but this is our version yeah and were you aware uh when you started season two were you aware of the level of fandom for this series and did that factor into any of your considerations um oh my goodness Colleen it's been such an extraordinary Journey for us because you know television well like so many things it's very hard work and you put your heart and soul into it and we really really put so much into series one and when it first went out in England it didn't quite land in the way that we'd hoped uh you know there was quite a lot of snobbery in English press about it uh and and it it honestly it just didn't get the numbers audience-- wise that we'd hoped for um so initially it was crushingly disappointing you know we really thought we really loved this show and we hoped it would capture people's imagination and it didn't and then when it went out in the United States this wonderful thing happened which has got wonderful um audiences right away as you you mentioned earlier Heather Marie huge numbers right from the gate and quite soon after that I don't know who but one of the fans found me on Twitter even though I'm a pretty um irregular Twitter user and within days hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people were tweeting me and and I sort of gradually became AC became aware of this incredible ground swell of fandom and and and soon they called themselves to sandton Sisterhood and they became this incredible group of passionate fans and cheerleaders and and that was so rewarding and um gratifying to see how much they they didn't just understand what we were trying to do but they loved it and they loved our characters and they loved our world so by the all the all the while during these last few years it's been two years since um since sandon one went out um we've been you know we've been having discussions about bringing it back and and there's been constant chatter about we want Sanderson and a campaign so yeah I I I was certainly very aware of them and I and I think um we can talk in a bit about some of the actors didn't come back and so we had to change the story and and obviously Sydney is not returning for season two and I'm I'm well aware that many many people feel very disappointed about that although it actually opens up the story in new and I think very interesting ways but I was always very conscious of not disappointing the existing fans of giving them something that would not just reward their patients but would hopefully surpass their expectations and deliver everything they liked about series one but 10 times over so we hope that many many many many more people come to this but but but my fervent hope is that those loyal lovely people who whove been rooting for us all all the while will particularly love it yeah you know what I just I'm struck by your humility um I mean you you you kind of frame it that you wanted to pay you know appropriate homage to Jane Austin and yet the reason we're doing this this show season two and three is because you guys nailed it right you did such an amazing job that the fans are saying you know we want more and and I think that that's That's so exciting and it's exciting for for Colleen and I to get to talk to you and even learn more about about your process in that khen yeah so so Justin what do you think makes this story so special for fans that really ignited that passion for them that's such a good question I I think first and foremost I think it was it was the characters and we we were always very clear that this was a a character-driven show and it was the that the characters came first and the stories grew out of the characters rather than vice versa and I think different audience members related to different Journeys and I think the diversity of Journeys across the series meant that there was there was there was something for everybody and some some audience members really invested in Charlotte Haywood in her optimism and in her independent spirit and she's a very modern woman and again our contemporary um perspective man we wanted somebody who you know the word feminism obviously didn't exist although we're a little while after won craft but we wanted a a young woman who felt like she was born a 100 years 200 years too early you know Charlotte is a is a very smart Forward Thinking young woman and I think audiences really invested in in her and I think they really invested in the the the development of the characters you know they loved Sydney and Charlotte because we witnessed Sydney changing growing across the series from being a man who was in his own head and was rude and aloof and and isolated and they saw him improve um under her influence and I think that's that's a very inspiring idea that you know when we fall in love with the right people they can make us as Sydney says in the series a line that I wrote for him I am my best self when I'm with you and I I think that's sort of the ideal isn't it of of of the right person the right relationship the right love is somebody who makes you the best version of yourself and I think that was was one of the strands I think Esther's Journey again people really um related to that there was a woman who was smart and uh witty but had been manipulated by her awful stepbrother and ultimately she found Liberation and emancipation and realized he was bad for her and then you had lady denim who's a seric and appalling but sort of delicious in in her in her awfulness so I think I think it's partly the love story because people want escapism and people's lives are increasingly complicated and difficult and for those 50s something minutes you get to go to a world where everything is unstated understated and unspoken and people are witty and respectful and it's a world where there's huge passionate emotions just below the the surface and you couple that with these beautiful locations and hopefully witty dialogue and I think actually our secret weapon was the fact well one of our secret weapons apart from our wonderful cast was the fact that this was a Jane Austin novel set by the seaside so you had these beautiful sweeping English beaches uh which again meant that it was a place you wanted to go to and I have to tell you our team uh you you've just seen the trailer our team uh design team and our wonderful directors on season two they have raised the bar so far that the the the way that this series looks is I I mean they did a wonderful job on season one but honestly season two is just so beautiful looking I want to hang every single scene on my bedroom wall because they just it just is gorgeous to look at yeah that it's interesting you mentioned about the seaside location because I think that location kind of gives the story a lot of breathing space it seems to have a lot more freedom than some of the uh earlier Jane Austin works and maybe that's what part of what makes it feel modern I think that's right and I think I think it's that's exactly the right word and I think it's interesting that that Jane was writing this novel at a time you know the time that she died there was huge upheaval huge social change and I think she was trying to push herself forward I think it's such a crime that she died so young because she was trying new things in this novel it's got satirical elements that aren't in her earlier novels I think a character like Tom Parker is a self-made man which is a very very modern idea in in many of the novels Mr Darcy or and so on they've inherited their wealth it's in the family for Generations they have these enormous houses Tom Parker is Nish he's a man who's built his own made his own fortune he's a Speculator this was a very bold departure for her and I think some of our Austin experts have suggested that there are elements of sandon the fragment that feel almost looking ahead to Dickens in their characterization uh as much as they resemble other Jane Austin novels so you've got this Seaside town this new emergence of you know a health Spar and a health resort and a Seaside town and developments and that was all a very you know it's a clash of the old world the lady denims although I don't think she's quite as Old Manny as she'd like to pretend lady Denim and the new world represented by the Parker Brothers um and I think that Clash does feel quite contemporary and quite interesting um although hopefully I'd like to say England is not as high Bound by uh snobbery and social Convention as it used to be but if you look at the people currently running our country you might think things might not have moved on as much as we might have hoped um well I'm always interested in writer's creative process and so I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit I know I know a lot it seems like inspired you you've been talking about the seaside and and um a lot about Jane Austin and who she is and and even talking about how you delved into so much of her work one of the things that struck me though is am I her this work wasn't really published until almost a hundred years later is that yes true and that is even what makes it even more remarkable is to think that here this fragment which had so many of these Amazing Ideas hadn't yet uh seen the light of day until a century later can you though speak to your creative process and your inspiration that that goes along with that absolutely specifically in terms of sandon um yes I I think I think that's a really interesting point you make is that um her family basically hid this fragment for years and years and years because they you know as far as they were concerned it wasn't finished it wasn't you know why would anybody want to see this strange um unfinished work and so it was only many many years that that they released it in a collection with other uh other works of literature and and one of the fascinating things about Jane Austin I think one of the things that surprises people is that given how large she Looms in uh you know English language literature she only wrote six novels you know six published novels all of which are basically masterpieces so my process uh on this was quite interesting because it wasn't the same as starting with a blank page where where the really really difficult thing is coming up with the right idea you know that's what's difficult with this we had sort of several stages along the way and with with season one uh as I say Andrew had taken the novel what was there of the novel and he'd written episode one but I don't think he'd mind me saying he wrote episode one speculatively with no real sense of what was going to happen subsequently and so when I came in with Andrew and with the rest of the team there was sort of wonderful clues that he'd left us a slightly strange relationship between Edward and uh Esther and we thought oh I wonder what we could do with this and let's make them step siblings and you know and and and build out of that so we kind of followed the clues I think series television also is a very interesting thing because it follows a certain Rhythm you you know every episode you know that at the end of that hour you've got to build to a big turning point or a big for for lack of a better word Cliffhanger and and certainly M uh Sanderson is a show that in English channels has commercial breaks so we also know that that every sort of 10 minutes there's got to be something that's going to bring people back from the commercial break and actually that's quite a helpful structure because structure in any kind of writing is enormously helpful and and storytelling for the screen the um storytelling for the screen is basically structure you know uh the dialogue funnny enough is often the least important thing the most important thing the hard work is how you build your story where does this character start here where does he or she end here and then what the what the steps are to get there and I think of it visually because I often when you're working a lot of writers work with screen writers work with index cards and it is about the order of the scenes it's about what you put next to what and that and that's how you build it so with this there was a kind of I I I compare it to Google Earth you start you start way back here and you gradually move in and so when we were first Talking To Masterpiece about bringing the series back initially initially the question was could we just pick up where we left off and obviously we'd left Charlotte and Sydney broken apart on a clifftop with every intention that we were going to come back and we were going to continue that story probably for another series and then we'd give them a happy ending and then what happened was Theo the actor who played Syd decided two years had gone past perfectly reasonably he was happy with that slightly broken fairy tale ending he called it and he decided not to come back and so that presented us with a with a really interesting situation of you know do we call it a day or do we see if we can find a way to tell stories with the characters uh who are left behind and fortunately many of our our wonderful other actors did want to come back and so that became the first challenge story-wise as a writer okay we've got Charlotte Haywood we know where we left her we left her in Willington brokenhearted what happens if she can't see Sydney again what does her story become then and that was the starting point that was the Big Challenge and we decided very quickly that we had to make it very very clear to the audience that Sydney was never coming back because audiences are so narrative Savvy now and unless we really really really underlined that at the beginning of season two they would be waiting for him to come back they would be waiting to come back all the way to the end of Series 3 they'd be going well any day now he's going to walk through the door so our first decision was we have to unequivocally say Sydney is gone and Charlotte is brokenhearted and that became the start of the the story that became the story was how does Charlotte recover from her broken heart and then you have a heroin who is brokenhearted who is older who is sadder who is wiser who says actually I'm gonna swear off love and I'm G to swear off marriage because I don't believe I'll ever find love and marriage again and then you've got an interesting starting point because with any story you want your character to change and so you know you want to see a progression and Charlotte saying I'll Never Fall in Love again I'll never marry again then you've got somewhere to travel across the next two series and then once you break that down and I we broke it down across two seasons and we gave Masterpiece kind of 10 pages and they gave us a green light wonderfully happily just before Christmas our Christmas present 2020 they said yes we want to make two seasons incredibly quickly I might add we we we got the green light December 233rd 2020 and we finished filming December 2021 So within a year we' created this entire thing 15 months on from that green light we're sharing it with the world and then then the same process with all the other characters once we knew that Esther could come back and babington couldn't then we worked out right what's a story we could tell with her and really it's about what can we get six or 12 episode out of and what's the how can we watch a character change and then once we broke it down into the episodes we' give them to an individual writer and then we'd work with them to flesh that out and then as you say you get more and more and more granula and there are 600 scenes we did 600 scenes over the last year and every single scene once you get into it you've got to build the beginning middle and end and what changes and that's what I mean by the Google Earth view you're getting closer and closer and closer and also as the the saying goes and it's a cliche for a reason writing is rewriting uh and your first idea is is very very rarely the right one and and certainly on series three we were still speaking it until the last day of filming to get it right because as it went and you see an actor the great joy is when you're writing something that's being made you'll get what they call the rushes will come in and I'll sit on my computer and I'll have over here on my screen I'll have episode four that I'm working on over here I'll be watching what they filmed on episode one that day and I'll think oh I like that quality in that actor I'm gonna add that and I like that dynamic between those two maybe we can big that up so that's a very long-winded answer to your question it was great um I actually have to reset um I'm Heather Marie montia the national director of PBS books I'm here with Justin Young headwriter and executive producer khen O'Donnell who is Detroit public television social media manager we are here discussing Justin's work sanditon season two and three just a reminder if you have questions put them in the chat uh back to our conversation Colleen yeah so this next question is actually from my mother who is also a big sanditon fan and um we watch the show together usually and we discuss it together it's very fun I love that really I I'm so happy to hear that and so uh she wanted to know are there any historical similarities uh between in between sanditon and Real History that's a really good question and yes I mean there are actually that's that's really interesting I think particularly more so in season 2 and three we really tried to um draw root our stories in a sense of of reality you know you asked earlier about the sort of process and so one process was going back to to look at Austin herself her own life and and stuff in her other novels what we were very keen not to do was for the for saniton 2 and three to feel like we just uh cherry-picked things from her other novels we didn't want any of the characters to feel too familiar like oh that character is exactly the same as that character from PR Prejudice or sense of sensibility so we wanted them to feel of the same world but we were also as your mother suspected Ken inspired by real life and I think most particularly in the case of Georgiana lamb because we were really fascinated by this woman of color in the middle of what might have seemed you know she's the only woman of color the only person character of color in um in all of Jane Austin and and and that is entirely Jane's Innovation people people thought we had we had just cast Crystal because she's a wonderful actor um for the role but but it was Austin who specified she was a biracial character and so coming back for season two and three we were very keen to um develop georgiana's character more to to to kind of make her kind of give her much more weight in the story and so as a result of that we worked very closely with uh a guy called Professor SI Martin who's a a black history uh expert in in Britain here uh Britain's black history and we were really fascinated by the real historical precedents uh that might have inspired Georgiana and we discovered there was uh woman called um Sarah Anne redhead who married someone of um Jane Austin's acquaintance and she was uh a mixed race woman whose father had kept two families he'd had a family in Antiga uh with a with a slave woman and and an English family and she did eventually assimilate Sarah and redhead uh I don't think she inherited as much money as georgana did but she might have been a an inspiration and so the more we looked into these we were really interested with in the specificity of that you know in season one we dealt with racism with with we were pretty unequivocal that Georgiana faces racism from from the people around and and some people accept her and some people give her microaggressions and we really wanted to kind of think well what would the reality have been and the reality would be actually a lot of people her her Fortune would have given her power and her Fortune would have meant that she's besieged by Fortune Hunters but there might well have been many other members of her father's family coming forward who um who wanted to claim it them her money themselves who wouldn't have thought as a woman of color that she was entitled to that so that was an inspiration the Army come to sandton at the beginning of of season two and that was certainly something that we was is very much rooted in in history because where four or five years after the battle of watero and England didn't really have an army at that point they had a they had a kind of ragle taggle bunch of Posh guys who didn't know what else to do and uh you know hopeless borderline criminals who were there in it for the free beer and they would recruit these people when there was a war on and when there wasn't a war on these guys had nothing to do except for basically travel around place to place um causing mischief and so again that was all rooted in that um we've got the sort of you know we've got a new King on the throne uh at the beginning of season two and season 3 and we we referenced that and so we wanted it to feel sort of rooted in that um there were no kind of direct as I say the the the Georgiana story is one where we really did look at historical precedence and we really did work with our black history advisers to make sure that all felt absolutely true to the lived experience that a woman in georgiana's position would have had at that point there's also a nod uh in Charlotte and Sydney's story and the way that resolves to the real life story of Jane Austin's sister Cassandra who she was very close to and she was engaged to a man uh and it ended very very sadly and and in circumstances very not dissimilar to um to Sydney and Charlotte and so again all of these things hopefully meant you can feel can't you when the texture just feels true to life or or rooted in truth in that way and so so yeah there's nothing there are no I I think it can be a little jarring when you bring in a real historical character that's just my personal taste when they say ah here's you know Charles Dickens ENT stage left and here's a guy with a stick on beard I I think it pulls me out of the world a little bit so so but but as I said we were inspired by historical precedent and and real life people and uh and and and the other Tom Parker you know there were many other speculators who were doing what Tom did up and down the co the coast so we looked at what happened to them and what was inspiring them and Drew inspiration from that so in terms of you've touched on this a little bit right race you've definitely touched on that theme and how you wo it in when you think about also gender roles power money you've talked about how the was woven into season one and then you know maybe what we'll see a little bit more in season two but in terms of thinking through you've touched on some of it are there other things we'll see because what I know and what's so amazing to me about this is it Sparks dialogue right you've been able to do something in the 19th century and here it's sparking dialogue today in the 21st century helping us to address these really important issues that sometimes are hard to have a conversation about it's a huge respons ility on you I well listen that's I mean first and foremost uh we want to tell a good story first and foremost we want the audience to have a wonderful you know Escapist time and be taking on this journey but you're absolutely right you know I I I share a house with three strong women two of them are six and nine but they're very strong women and so you know I I I take that responsibility very seriously um that you know we are the the theme of of Austin and the theme of our series is about how do women find agency in a in a world in a in a situation where it's very very difficult for them where their options are really either you marry or you're poor that's kind of it a woman was told that this is your job is you know either you inherit money or you have to get married that's that's that's your your lot in life and so what happens when you have these characters whether it's um charet or Georgiana who think well actually no we we don't we want to Buck that status quo and I think you know I think hopefully you know women have a lot more equality now but the but the discussions carry on about how you define yourself how you you know the the right I always say I said to someone recently that that in terms of finding the right love story for Charlotte it had to be somebody who respected her own agency it wasn't enough for me Charlotte's happy ending was never going to be oh and she becomes a nice little housewife that's not a happy ending for me her happy ending is she has a marriage of equals with a man who respects her opinions and respects her for being exactly who she is so I think that's that's one of our our themes absolutely is you know women's equality and and without without overloading the narrative but hopefully through the um through the characterization that's one of the themes we've touched on Race I think money and power as well are absolutely themes that run through it and and you know the power of ambition and the power of class and and and what those what the you know every everyone's seeking everyone's got a got a view on everybody else whether they look down on them they look up on them everyone's on the make in some sort of way everyone's trying to find agency and so I think again a lot of those themes I think Esther you find Esther in season one I think it was a very difficult story but I think it was quite interesting that that that you know she was in a coercive relationship uh in modern terms she was in a coercive relationship with a man she thought she was in love with but actually he was just controlling her and that's you that's Timeless and that's Universal um and your find her in a very different place at the top of season uh two but again we've tried to find a way to to have those relatable contemporary chewy stories um without losing sight of the fact that as I say we want people to watch our show to escape life for 55 minutes and and have a wonderful aspirational world not not I I I hope hopefully there's more to the show it's not it's not just fluff you know I think we always wanted it it's it's for people I think our audience are very intelligent and discerned and I I respect that intelligence and I I I think they see all the different layers that we try to work into it I do think that comes through yes um so I think we're at our last question now I know this time flew by this was so fun um so do you Justin have a favorite character in sanditon oh well that's very dangerous because I've got a screening in two weeks I'm going to be seeing all the actors so I don't really want to get into trouble with anybody it's a it's a really good question it's it sort of alternates I have a soft spot for two new characters in season two and three called Leo and Augusta and I think they're a really fantastic addition um and they and again it might be because I have two daughters that I I particularly uh attach to them but I think they have such a wonderful Arc across the two seasons um so yeah I love I couldn't pick a favorite I love them all but I do have a particular soft spot for those two I think that they're wonderful actors Eloise and Flora and they're really brand new interesting characters so they're they're yeah I have a self spot for them I'll admit it nice well it makes me even more excited for season two I hope you and your mother really enjoy it Ken thank you so much Justin well we do need to close the conversation uh it's been delightful and you know Justin thank you so much for sharing this work with us thank you for sharing your creative process it's it's brilliant and we're so looking forward to being able to see um sanditon starting March 20th uh Colleen thank you for your questions being plateful and and for spending the time with us I know you have many things to do um and this has just been a wonderful fun conversation I just want to remind all viewers out there sanditon does begin it starts on Sunday March 20th at 900 PM don't miss it um from PBS Books thank you for tuning in and happy [Music] reading [Music]