(dramatic classical music) - I think Jane Austen really, truly, deeply understood the human condition.
- She was someone who was attempting to push and progress the understanding of women and their role in society.
- I'll play.
(men chuckling) She was a fabulously brave, intelligent, creative woman.
- May I be permitted to write to you?
- If you wish to waste your time.
- I think that her guts, to write in such a satirical way, it's just so genius.
I just think she understands what true love is, and she understands what self-actualization is, and she kind of marries those together in beautiful works that remain timeless.
(seagulls cry) (cheerful classical music) "Sanditon" is a fresh, new Jane Austen, with all the qualities that we know and love.
- Complex characters, a very strong heroine, family dynamic.
- That is a portrait of Sidney, my younger brother.
We're expecting him down from London for the ball.
- But then, it's a little more modern than I think we're used to, it's a little edgier.
- There's a love triangle, there's feminism, which we love.
- I am my own woman.
Am I not permitted to speak my own mind in my own house?
- It's very much a sense of identity and a sense of freedom and adventure.
- Here we are, a perfect day, as I promised you.
- It's Jane Austen as we know it, but also dynamic and different, because it was a very different style of writing compared to her other works.
- It deals with the idea of sex as a weapon, as a tool, race in the 1800s.
- It's the through-line of history, an amalgamation of the old and the new, how they're all connected, and how that can help us move forward.
- Jane Austen had a modern sensibility, so it's relevant to her, but it's equally modern and fresh for us.
"Sanditon" is the joy of the English countryside and seaside, and rich, fun, naughty, bold characters in this kind of mad, emerging seaside resort.
(laughing)
