10 Secrets From The Making Of Sense & Sensibility

At long last, the wait is over. Three decades after Ang Lee’s celebrated 1995 adaptation, Sense and Sensibility has made its much-anticipated return to the silver screen. Though Georgia Oakley’s fresh take on Austen’s tale of sisterhood and romantic misfortune swept into UK cinemas on 25 September, there’s still rather more to this latest adaptation than meets the eye.

From a derelict Dartmoor cottage that almost defeated the production crew to a real-life Dashwood family home with a decidedly scandalous past, the stories behind the camera prove just as intriguing as those unfolding before it.

Whether you’ve watched it already or are preparing for a second viewing, these are ten of our favourite behind-the-scenes secrets and insights from the making of Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility.

1. The Film’s Central Romance Isn’t Quite What You Think

Courtship, marriage and the occasional unsuitable gentleman: few have made quite such an art of the affairs of the heart as Jane Austen. But what more could possibly be said about Sense and Sensibility? That was the ‘threshold question’ facing Diana Reid when tasked with adapting Austen’s beloved classic. Her answer came from an unlikely source: the modern romcom. And this time, the film’s greatest love story, it turns out, is something of a family affair.

Borrowing the genre’s familiar arc of conflict, separation and eventual reconciliation, Reid introduced one crucial twist: ‘In our film, that arc tracks the sisters,’ she revealed. Reid gives Elinor and Marianne’s opposing temperaments a more reciprocal dynamic, with each learning as much from the other’s differences as from her own mistakes. 

The gentlemen, of course, still have their part to play, but romantic fulfilment becomes as much about the sisters’ coming into their own as finding their respective Mr Rights.

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne in Sense and Sensibility (c) Alex Bailey / 2026 Focus Features LLC

2. This Austen Adaptation Was Designed For All The Senses

Leaving the perfectly coiffed curls and poppy pastel coloured gowns of your typical period drama behind, Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility puts its emphasis firmly on the senses. The brief, according to location manager Ian Hutchinson, was to make the film ‘quite raw and quite natural’, a world to be felt as much as admired.

‘It’s the sensorial part of it we were trying to translate’ explained production designer Francesca Di Mottola as the Dashwood sisters’ fall from fortune brought them face to face with the decidedly unromantic business of cooking, cleaning and gardening. Their attempts at making a pie, she recalled, left the kitchen in a rather sorry state.

From costumes dyed with blackberries and breakfast china adorned with foliage to the film’s very colour palette, ‘it was almost like nature invading the world in every way’ she added. ‘Everything from the wild ponies to a real sheep farm became part of the movie.’

3. A Bicycle Ride Led The Filmmakers To Norland Park

Norland Park is where it all begins for the Dashwoods. As their family estate, it’s the embodiment of a comfortable life soon to be upended. 

Determined to remain faithful to Austen’s geography, location manager Ian Hutchinson and his team scoured the south coast from Dorset all the way to Penzance, with little success. Then came a rather fortuitous detour. On his day off, location scout Eddie happened upon a 17th-century mansion while cycling through Dorset. One phone call to Hutchinson and a knock on the door later, Kingston Russell House had entered the picture. And the welcome was evidently a warm one. The young family who own the privately held estate so thoroughly embraced the process that Hutchinson considered them ‘part of the crew’.

4. Barton Cottage Was Almost Lost To The Elements

As if losing their family fortune wasn’t trouble enough, the Dashwoods’ move to Barton Cottage proved something of an ordeal for the filmmakers too. By far the production’s most ‘logistically difficult’ location, the humble cottage presented a rather less humble set of problems: a crumbling roof, missing windows and a potential resident bat.

‘Absolutely remote, very rustic. We could say rundown.’ Ian Hutchinson’s brief came to life when the crew found Ditsworthy Warren Farm, a derelict stone building so dilapidated that even Hutchinson doubted it could be made fit for filming. With no windows and a roof in desperate need of reconstruction the production team had their work cut out, transforming the shell into a habitable-looking cottage for the Dashwoods in just three and a half weeks.

However, Dartmoor wasn’t quite finished with them. Production designer Francesca Di Mottola recalled that they ‘almost lost the location altogether’ as on the very first day of filming, a violent storm left the newly landscaped garden in such a state that much of it had to be redone.

Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Margaret, Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and George MacKay as Edward in Sense and Sensibility (c) Alex Bailey / 2026 Focus Features LLC

5. The Dashwood Sisters Really Do Share A Wardrobe

Raiding your sister’s wardrobe (whether secretly or not) to ‘borrow’ some clothes is practically a rite of passage, and even 200 years ago, the Dashwoods were no exception. With the family fortune dwindling, a little sartorial recycling was in order. But for costume designer Grace Snell, the sisters’ hand-me-downs were as much about intimacy as a practical solution to their reduced circumstances. 

Eschewing the prim-and-pristine look of conventional period drama, Snell wanted audiences ‘in the room with this family, rather than seeing it through a telescope’. And what better way to capture the familiar intimacy of sisterhood than through a little clothes-swapping?

Among the shared treasures was a coral-coloured ribbon, which Bodhi Rae Breathnach, playing the youngest Dashwood, Margaret, fondly recalled borrowing from her onscreen sister Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones). But the costume exchanges were hardly incidental. Look closely and you’ll spot Marianne’s pink sash, discarded in the throes of heartbreak, making its way into Margaret’s wardrobe for the ball, passing from one sister’s heartbreak to another’s coming of age. The Dashwood sisters – they’re just like us!

Esmé Creed-Miles stars as Marianne Dashwood in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. (Focus Features)

6. This Isn’t Quite A Regency-Era Sense and Sensibility

Though empire-waists – and the Regency look in general – are practically synonymous with Austen, Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility takes us a little further back in fashion history. The film is set in the late 1790s, around the time Austen first put pen to paper, when Georgian fashions were giving way to the silhouettes we now associate with the Regency. 

Not everyone, however, was quite so eager to move with the times. Take Mrs Jennings (Fiona Shaw), whose wardrobe is something of a fashion time capsule, combining the latest styles with underpinnings from decades past. For costume designer Grace Snell, the inspiration came from a surprisingly modern habit: our reluctance to part with a favourite bra. 

‘We keep going back to the same place for our bras, the same styles. I have done that for 30 years,’ she explained. Why, then, should Mrs Jennings be any less attached to the corset shapes of her youth? Some of her garments even harked back to the era of panniers, those elaborate structures that exaggerated the width of the hips. Shaw was rather taken with the costumes, joking that the panniers made her feel ‘like a certified rhinoceros’.

Fiona Shaw as Mrs Jennings in Sense and Sensibility (c) Alex Bailey / 2026 Focus Features LLC

7. Fiona Shaw Found Her Mrs Jennings In Cork

Mrs Jennings’ wardrobe may belong to another century, but her personality is rather more familiar. An incorrigible matchmaker, shameless gossip and enthusiastic meddler in everyone else’s affairs, Austen’s larger-than-life society matron is the sort of character we’ve all encountered, whether we care to admit it or not. And Fiona Shaw didn’t have to look far for inspiration. Forget Austen’s England; her Mrs Jennings was alive and well in her native Cork.

An admirer of Austen’s ‘astute, cruel eye’ for society, Shaw recognised plenty of familiar personalities in the author’s creation. ‘There are people very like Mrs Jennings in my life’ she explained, ‘ebullient [and] completely without filter’. Though the fashions and rules of propriety may have moved on, the village gossip certainly hasn’t. And long may she thrive, if only to give the next Jane Austen something to write about!

8. The Dinner Tables Are Full Of Hidden Meanings

As fortunes are flaunted, reputations dissected and marriage prospects weighed up, in Austen’s world, there’s rarely such a thing as an innocent dinner scene. And for keen observers, Sense and Sensibility’s production designer Francesca Di Mottola made sure that the table settings were every bit as intriguing as the conversations around them.

From silverware to seating arrangements, Di Mottola and her team left little to chance. Designing the elaborate display of silverware at Norland ‘was like creating a sculpture,’ Di Mottola revealed as the arrangement became a carefully constructed window into Fanny’s possessive attitude towards the Dashwood fortune. While at Barton Cottage, the long wooden dining tables give way to messy countertops and a cluttered butcher’s block, strewn with garden produce in evidence of the sisters’ less-than-expert domestic endeavours

When Edward Ferrars confesses his engagement to Lucy, a decanter and two untouched glasses sit between him and Elinor, creating an awkward physical divide as their romantic hopes unravel.

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor,Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne, Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Margaret and Caitriona Balfe as Mrs Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (c) Alex Bailey / 2026 Focus Features LLC

9. The Real-Life Dashwoods & West Wycombe Park

Of all the grand estates in England, what are the chances that Austen’s fictional Dashwoods should find themselves in the ancestral home of actual Dashwoods? Rather good, apparently. The setting for Marianne’s mortifying encounter with Willoughby at the London ball was none other than West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire, home to the real-life Dashwood family for over three centuries. 

And if the fictional family’s romantic entanglements weren’t scandalous enough, their real-life namesakes had rather more colourful pursuits at West Wycombe Park. The mansion owes much of its splendour to Sir Francis Dashwood, an 18th-century aristocrat whose penchant for extravagance extended well beyond architecture. Among his more notorious pursuits? Founding the infamous Hellfire Club, of course!

No stranger to a little drama, West Wycombe has enjoyed quite the screen career, with Bridgerton, Downton Abbey and Little Dorrit among its credits. With its frescoed ceilings, scandalous social history and an enviable period-drama pedigree, West Wycombe makes a particularly fitting backdrop for Marianne’s rude awakening to the cruelties of fashionable society. 

10. That National Gallery Heartbreak Happened Before Most Of London Woke Up

Heartbreak waits for no one, not even the National Gallery’s opening hours. The National Gallery might be one of London’s most familiar cultural landmarks, but few have seen it quite as the cast and crew of Sense and Sensibility did: at four in the morning.

While the film’s poignant gallery scene may appear effortlessly intimate on screen, bringing it to life required some extraordinary logistical manoeuvring. Although the scene was always scripted to take place in an art exhibition, securing London’s National Gallery was, according to Ian Hutchinson, ‘logistically challenging’ to say the least. ‘It was quite a process,’ Hutchinson admitted, ‘but very much worth it.’ The catch? The cameras could only roll outside public opening hours, leaving the cast and crew with a rather unsociable appointment. All in the name of art, naturally. Setting up at 2am, filming began at 4am and wrapped just two hours later, before most of London had even stirred. 

Sense and Sensibility is out now in cinemas.