‘Miss Austen’ Star Keeley Hawes On Her First Regency Romance And Being Married to Matthew Macfadyen IRL: “I Do Bask in the Reflected Glory of His Mr. Darcy”

Masterpiece on PBS‘s latest foray in the world of Regency drama is Miss Austen, an adaptation of the Gill Hornby novel of the same name. Masterpiece mainstay Keeley Hawes stars in the four-part series as Cassandra Austen, the older sister and best friend of legendary author Jane Austen (Patsy Ferran). Even though Jane passed years earlier, her presence is still felt as her books have become more and more popular with devoted readers.

Miss Austen attempts to explain one of the great mysteries of Jane Austen’s legacy: why did Cassy burn so many of her personal letters? What was hidden scrawled on those private pages? Who really was Jane? Why can’t we ever know more about her?

**Spoilers for all four episodes of Miss Austen, now streaming on PBS Passport**

Miss Austen divvies its time between Cassandra’s present struggle trying to get hold of her sister’s last letters in the house of a deceased family friend and the bittersweet memories of the past that reading those missives brings back. We learn that a young Cassy (Synnøve Karlsen) suffered not one, but two great heartbreaks. First when her fiancé Tom Fowle (Calam Lynch) dies before their wedding, later when her romance with fictional character Henry Hobday (Max Irons) is stymied in part because of Jane’s needs.

However, Miss Austen is not strictly a story of sorrow. It’s full of humor, romance, and sisterly love. Cassandra might not get to have a happily ever after, but she’s able to contrive one for Tom’s niece Isabella Fowle (Rose Leslie). (Not only that, but she’s able to pull it off with the help of Jane’s novel Persuasion!)

DECIDER caught up with Miss Austen star Keeley Hawes last week to chat through all things Cassandra Austen. Hawes not only revealed that she’s a massive costume drama herself — shouting out the Colin Firth Pride & Prejudice as a “classic” — but giggled when we brought up her IRL husband Matthew Macfadyen’s version of Mr. Darcy in the 2005 film…

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DECIDER: Hi, I’m so excited to talk to you. I’ve been a huge nerdy fan of yours for like decades now, because I am a Masterpiece girly. I think I first saw you in Wives and Daughters all the way back in the day. I know that not everything you do winds up on Masterpiece, but you’ve done quite a few things over the years, be it Upstairs, Downstairs or The Durrells in Corfu. I’m curious, as an English actor, do you notice anything different about a Masterpiece audience in the States versus what you will get back at home with BBC or ITV?

KEELEY HAWES: Um, gosh, that’s a good question. There’s a lot of enthusiasm, but then people generally, the kind of audience that loves this show, really loves this show. You know, anybody that you’ll have a conversation with will be a fan of costume dramas. And I think something like this, which is kind of, it’s not reinventing the wheel, but it’s a different take on an Austen and so there does seem to be a kind of enthusiasm for it that comes from that audience which is quite unique, I suppose.

Let’s talk about Cassy. I love her introduction because already from that first opening scene, how she reacts to the letter tells me so much about her spirit, her gusto, what she prioritizes. What drew you to that particular role and what do you think sort of defines her personality the most?

Well, I knew that the script was coming my way and I read the book and I was quite shocked when Cassy appears that she is described as having long gray hair trailing down her back and can barely get up the stairs. [Laughing.] So I read that sentence a few times and I’m quite pleased that they [changed it] and I think it makes total sense to bring her age down. She’s sort of in her seventies in the book and during this period, but we have played with that a little bit. Actually, I really like that because it brings her closer to the age when she lost her sister. I mean, not terribly close, there’s still twenty years or whatever there is between that period.

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It’s always such a joy to have a book to work from, actually. Our brilliant writer Andrea Gibb did the adaptation, but that is based on Gill Hornby’s book, Miss Austin, and to have the sorts of details and the descriptions of those characters, you know, my character in particular. We know about Cassy. We know that she destroyed the letters. But we are sort of scratching the surface in terms of what we know about Jane and what we knew about other characters from that time. So to have that and all of that immaculate work from Gill sort of presented in the form of a book when you’re going to play a character is just the most brilliant thing you could wish for. So yes, it’s all there. And then to have these brilliant scripts that Andrea wrote. It’s all there on the page. So I was very, very excited.

And the thing that I really like about it, I wasn’t sure of that tone that they we’re going for, but I love that it feels like a classic. You know, it feels like the Wives & Daughters. It feels in that vein. It feels like the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice or Vanity Fair, when the BBC made it. It is very much in that sort of arena rather than… I mean, Bridgerton has brilliantly reinvented the costume drama and those sorts of versions that we have now are fantastic and are bringing in a whole new audience. But this did feel like, and I think it does feel like, one of those kind of classics, which I’m a big fan of myself.

In the series, your character, we have two versions of her. We have yours and Synnøve’s. How involved were you guys together in creating the character? Were you kind of very distant? Did you get to know each other? Did you compare notes?

Well, luckily enough, Synnøve had played my daughter in The Midwitch Cuckoos for SKY a couple of years before. So we’d actually spent time together in a way that we never would have been able to on this show because we were never together. We only saw each other briefly on set, sort of in passing. So it was kind of brilliant and we get on so well. Weirdly, I see so much of myself in her, even in her mannerisms. We’re very, very similar and we got that for free, weirdly, having not known each other at all before Midwitch Cuckoos, either. But we had a lovely, lovely time on that job and were very well cast, I think, as mother and daughter. Therefore, it just worked really, really well. I would like her to always play the younger version of me. [Laughing.] I think she would probably get quite bored of that. But it’s the most flattering thing in the world. She is absolutely brilliant. She has such a beautiful quality, I think, as the young Cassy. Then, of course, I come along and I’m much more world-weary and have all the experience. So it’s lovely to see that imprinted on someone because age is a wonderful thing. But I think you can see it in Cassandra, she’s really lived a full life and a very long life for people of that period. She died in her seventies and that was quite unusual.

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Speaking of which, we see through the flashbacks a lot of the heartache that Cassy endures. Obviously, I think that the core love story is between Jane and Cassy, but Cassy does have two suitors she loves very passionately and both romances do not work out. Between Tom Fowle and Henry Hobday, do you think there’s one loss that really nags at the older Cassy more than the other? Like what could have been the Sliding Doors version of her life?

I think, as you say, the core love story is is between Jane and Cassy. I don’t think — I mean, we can only go on our own personal feelings and the research that Gill has done — but I would like to think that doesn’t necessarily nag at Cassandra because she did the right thing. Her sister was the love of her life and vice-versa. So yes, I think they were the loves of each other’s lives and I think, in our story, she has no regrets about that. Yeah, I mean, I think she loved Tom, but you know, even being the age that I am now, [Whispers,] forty-nine, gosh, thinking back to when I was twenty, I can barely remember what happened last month, let alone how I felt about people when I was twenty. I’d like to think that she didn’t have those sorts of regrets because she was there for Jane. Otherwise, it’s a bit too sad. [Laughing.] Otherwise it’s just a bit too heartbreaking.

I did love the whole sequence where Persuasion is being read and kind of used to get Isabella back with Dr. Lidderdale. First of all, I think it’s really funny how Dinah and Cassy don’t seem to get along at first and then they become like natural allies for Isabella. But also how fun was it to play act that whole scheme?

It was so brilliant. I mean, Rose Leslie, all of those actresses, just going into work every day was way, way too much fun. I was already a fan of them all. So it just felt like I lucked out really. But that sequence in particular, we really did have some fun with that. And it’s so odd now to think. You know, now we’ve all been watching The White Lotus or whatever we’ve been watching. We watch it on a Sunday and then we talk about it on Monday or whatever. Then we talk about it with everybody and it’s in the news and it is on Instagram. But that was their version of White Lotus or whatever else we’re watching. I really think it would have been that exciting. Which is hard for us to imagine now because we’re so entertained by everything, really: TV, film, Instagram. We’re endlessly entertained. Fashion, celebrity, all of those things. And then there wasn’t that sort of entertainment. So I think that people did read to each other. People played music, people sung, people played the piano. But to have these stories read aloud, almost like a podcast, I suppose, is the closest thing, and to hear those stories about passionate love… Just even people saying those sorts of things out loud would have been really thrilling. So it was just pure joy, really. I mean, Rose’s face throughout, it was really a quite tricky scene because she’s very funny and just delightful.

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Speaking of your funny costers, Jessica Hynes is like one of my all-time favorite comic actors in the business. The chemistry (or lack thereof) between Mary and Cassy, how they kind of like don’t really get along, was so fun to watch. What was it like working with her on that? Because it seemed so the opposite of how she seems in real life.

As you say, she’s one of our finest comedy actresses, but she is, I think, also one of the best actresses that we have. Playing a part like this, it’s not a “comedy role,” but she’s someone with funny bones and so you sort of get that for free even though she’s playing it totally straight, which is just another layer to that character. I think that it works brilliantly because she’s someone who could be so unlikable that you have no sympathy for whatsoever, but the casting of Jessica Hynes and the way that she plays her, I couldn’t help but feel… I don’t know if you’ve seen the last episode, but it’s so moving. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but it’s moving. You can’t help in spite of everything, in spite of what she does to Cassy, in spite of her history with all of them….you can’t help but love them. I think it’s very relatable with her, hopefully.

You’ve mentioned repeatedly how you’re a fan of the period dramas and this kind of stuff, and Regency is a very hyper specific genre. Forgive me if I’m wrong, this is your first time doing Austen or Regency? Is that true? And I’m curious why this was the time to jump in.

It is. I have no idea. I mean, it’s never come along. In all the Austens that have been made [Giggles] in the last however many decades, no. And I’m kind of quite glad, actually because I’m not sure how this would have worked out otherwise. This story has been brought to the screen a couple of times in various way, so we have seen versions of Cassandra. I’m very grateful to have been part of this one. Especially in this year with the 250th anniversary, as well, and the kind of celebrations that have been going on, that are starting to come up now. It’s a really lovely, it’s a wonderful thing to have been part. There’s actually an exhibition here, I can’t remember where it is, of Cassandra’s work because she was actually a brilliant artist. She was a wonderful watercolor artist. So it’s really lovely to be part of that.

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You mentioned that she’s an artist. I almost wanted to bring it up earlier, because I have this beautiful folio book of Jane Austen’s History of England and it’s illustrated by Cassandra. Did it ever come up in conversation that you maybe wanted to explore the artistic side of her more? Because it’s almost like she was a proto-graphic novelist with her sister in some respects.

Yes, yes. Well, we see that a little bit in the flashbacks with Cassy and her sketching of Mr. Hobday. So we do touch on it, which is lovely, I think. Also the fact that their parents, Mr. And Mrs. Austin, were so encouraging of their daughters and their talents and their creative talents. They’re so encouraging of Jane and of Cassandra and all of their children, but at a time where people also weren’t necessarily so. So, yeah, I think they grew up in what seems to be a very happy household.

What is like the one thing that you hope that Masterpiece fans take from this series? Is it a new perspective on Jane Austen? Is it new perspective of the women of the era? I’m just curious what would matter the most for you.

I would hope that anybody who ever felt badly towards Cassandra for her acts of, I suppose it has been described as “cultural vandalism” in the destruction of the letters, which is a bit harsh. [Laughing.] Also I believe, and I might be wrong, that it wasn’t only Cassandra who did that. There were other members of the family. I think it was her mainly. I believe, I’m happy to be corrected, that she didn’t work alone. I would hope that they have a new understanding of why she did what she did and maybe have some sympathy for her because I think she’s pretty wonderful. Forward-thinking. She was just a gift to play and was a gift to Jane. And without Cassandra, well, there would be Jane Austen, but maybe a different one.

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Before I go, I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask this, but Austenites are a very passionate breed. They’re probably very opinionated. I recently just rewatched your husband’s performance in Pride and Prejudice on the big screen. It’s so good. Did he give you any pointers on how to navigate this particular genre and its fans?

Uh,[Laughing,] he didn’t, but I have to say I do bask, and I have basked, in the reflected glory of his Mr. Darcy for the last twenty years, so I’m very happy about that.

Yes, it has been a wonderful thing and, again, so lovely. I forgot then that is, of course, a big, big part of [the Jane Austen celebrations] that that film has been put back on the big screen, which is the best place to see it. It’s just a wonderful piece of work and yes, it makes us feel quite old. [Laughing.]

I saw it when it was first in theaters when I was in college and I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s been twenty years. I’m forty now.”

I was pregnant with our daughter, who is now twenty. So, yes, it’s a while ago, but it has stood the test of time.

This interview has been edited and formatted for clarity.