Interview with New Pride and Prejudice Director Joe Wright

Just three years ago, Joe Wright had never seen a Pride and Prejudice film, let alone picked up the novel. But when Working Title approached him to direct the first feature-length attempt since Laurence Olivier's 1940 film, Wright hunkered down with the beloved text and became a fast fan. "By page 60, I found myself crying into my pint of lager, and laughing out loud at parts," Wright says. "I thought it was the most consuming piece of character observation. You can't not be a fan, really. It's just so fantastic."

Coming fresh to the material, particularly without having seen the 1995 BBC mini-series, thought by many die-hard fans to be the ultimate adaptation, Wright took Pride and Prejudice and molded it into an entirely cinematic, realistic love story. Wright was unafraid to change lines of dialogue and take scenes out of drawing rooms and thrusting them out into nature.

"Jane Austen is a writer of the parlor, but in cinema, you want to step out, get some air. I wanted the Bennetts in very close proximity to their rural life," says Wright. "And I didn't want to be too reverential to Jane Austen's dialogue. I don't believe people spoke like that then; it's not natural."

He also set this Pride and Prejudice somewhere it's never been before: in the eighteenth century. Instead of staging the story in 1813, when the novel was published, Wright referred to Austen's first draft, written in 1797. The earlier time frame allowed him to highlight the great social contrasts of the post-French Revolution England, Wright says, but his decision was also influenced by his fashion sense. "I hate empire line dresses," Wright says, smiling. "So I got rid of them."

Probably the most controversial choice in filming a new Pride and Prejudice was Wright's casting of Keira Knightly in the role of heroine Elizabeth Bennett. Wright says he was equally skeptical, but was won over by Knightly's inherent qualities. "I thought she was too beautiful to play Elizabeth. I saw other actresses, but they all said what they knew you wanted to hear. I couldn't find the spirit of Lizzy…. but Keira had this incredible liveliness of wit and mind, and independence of spirit."

Wright similarly ruffled some feathers by casting Matthew MacFadyen as Mr. Darcy, the antithesis of the perennial favorite, fumbling, lake-diving Colin Firth. "I wanted a big strong, manly man, not some pretty boyband type," Wright explains. "Matthew's not a vain actor…he's not interested in being a sex symbol. I knew he could come to it not as an icon, but as a character."

While Wright is a bit peevish about the emphasis "Pride & Prejudice" fans place on Mr. Darcy ("They always call it Colin Firth or Olivier's Pride and Prejudice, but I want people to call this Keira Knightly's Pride and Prejudice. It's Lizzy's story," Wright exclaims), he admits the character's importance to the story as a whole. "Mr. Darcy give men a quality to aspire to. The best qualities in men are generally seen as feminine: gentleness, kindness, thoughtfulness. Elizabeth teaches him how to be a proper man."