A Corset on Broadway, Daisy Edgar-Jones Premieres Sense and Sensibility Downtown

The old United Artists house on Broadway was made for nights like this one. It opened in the 1920s to screen films for the studio that D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford founded, and it still keeps its three-story lobby and a vaulted ceiling set with thousands of small mirrors. On Wednesday night it took in a period romance, and Daisy Edgar-Jones walked in dressed for it.

The British actor led the Los Angeles premiere of Sense and Sensibility, Georgia Oakley’s new adaptation of Jane Austen’s first novel, at the old United Artists Theatre on Broadway, which now operates as the United Theater on Broadway. The Associated Press identified the venue by its original name, and WWD by its current one. Esmé Creed-Miles, who plays her younger sister, arrived beside her, according to an AP photo caption. Caitríona Balfe, the girls’ widowed mother in the film, was also photographed on the carpet, WWD’s premiere gallery showed. The movie opens in American theaters on Friday, October 16.

Two Sisters, Two Decades of Runway

Edgar-Jones, 28, plays Elinor Dashwood, the sister who keeps her head. For the night she chose a dress older than her own career, a look from Chloé’s spring 1999 collection, designed when Stella McCartney was the house’s creative director, WWD reported. The bodice was structured silk corsetry in a pale tone, scattered with wispy red and blue appliqués. A gunmetal silk skirt fell from it with a liquid sheen and pooled on the carpet behind her. Semi-sheer sleeves carried botanical embroidery. Her stylist, Dani Michelle, put the look together.

Creed-Miles, who plays the headstrong Marianne, went the other way in time. She wore a strapless bubblegum pink dress straight from Simone Rocha’s spring 2027 ready-to-wear collection, shown at London Fashion Week, with a midi hem of distressed petals and black Christian Louboutin pumps, WWD reported. Karla Welch styled her.

What tied the two looks together was romance, WWD noted, and Edgar-Jones and Michelle have been building an Austen wardrobe across a press tour that has crossed continents.

“We’ve tried to thread every look back to her character and the time period, searching for corsetry, lace, puffed silks, florals and brocade,” Edgar-Jones told British Vogue at the film’s London premiere, as Vogue later noted.

In Sydney, at Hoyts Entertainment Quarter, she wore a sheer nude Miu Miu gown embroidered with silver sequins, with a loosely tied, sequined corset over it, according to Vogue and WWD. Along the way she has also turned to Stella McCartney, Armani Privé and Vivienne Westwood, and to a run of Boucheron jewels, WWD reported.

A Sister on Screen and Off

The film has the bones that any Austen reader knows. After their father dies, the Dashwood sisters and their mother lose their family estate to a male heir and retreat to a small cottage in Devon. Elinor falls for Edward Ferrars, played by George MacKay, who turns out to be engaged to another woman. Marianne falls for the dashing Willoughby, played by Frank Dillane, and brushes off the awkward advances of Colonel Brandon, played by Herbert Nordrum. Fiona Shaw plays the kindly but coarse Mrs. Jennings, and Stacy Martin plays the stingy Fanny Dashwood.

It is a Focus Features presentation of a Working Title production, written by Diana Reid and scored by Roger Goula, with choreography by Holly Blakey, according to Variety. It runs 132 minutes and is rated PG.

Oakley made her name with Blue Jean, her BAFTA-winning debut, a Thatcher-era queer drama. In its review last month, Variety’s critic called her Austen a confident, bigger-budget follow-up and admired its textured world of candlelit interiors, hard country journeys and a great many dogs.

“Though slightly muted (in both feeling and color palette) by comparison, Oakley’s moody, naturalistic spin on the Austen touchstone is a solid undertaking,” the review said.

The comparison it had in mind is a heavy one. Ang Lee’s 1995 Sense and Sensibility, starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet from Thompson’s Oscar-winning script, is still the ideal for many viewers, Variety’s critic among them. Edgar-Jones counts herself among its fans. She told the BBC she loves that version and still thinks there is room to tell the story again.

“The more the merrier, in my opinion,” she said.

The casting runs closer to home than it looks. Edgar-Jones told the BBC that she really is an Elinor.

“When it comes to love, I think I am very much more Elinor in every sort of way,” she said. “I definitely lead a lot with my head and try and push aside, bury my emotion.”

Creed-Miles, 26, told the BBC that she is more of a Marianne, and laughed that it can be annoying. The two first worked together as teenagers, on the 2018 film Pond Life, the BBC noted. Edgar-Jones, an only child, said the sisterhood at the center of the story is the part of the film she is proudest of.

We still have the same human heart as we did 200 years ago.

That was how she explained to the BBC why Austen still speaks to younger audiences. Earlier in the interview she put it another way. “She has an incredible way of articulating the female experience,” she said.

A Movie Palace Gets Its Gowns Back

Edgar-Jones shot to fame during the pandemic in Normal People opposite Paul Mescal, and has since starred in Where the Crawdads Sing and Twisters. On Wednesday her carpet ran through downtown’s Historic Core.

The room has lived several lives. Long after its movie palace years, it reopened as the Theatre at Ace Hotel when the Ace opened downtown in 2014, and it took its current name after the Ace closed, according to Time Out. It is a 1,600-seat house that has hosted concerts, movie nights and lectures since it reopened. On Wednesday it went back to its first job, putting a film on its screen under a mirrored ceiling, for a story set more than two centuries ago.

There is a neat fit in that. Nearly a century after the studio’s founders gave it their name, a British actor in a Chloé dress from 1999 arrived on Broadway with her film sister in pink, and the old palace did what it was made to do.

If You Go

Sense and Sensibility opens in theaters across the United States on Friday, October 16, from Focus Features. Showtimes and tickets are on the film’s official site. The film is rated PG and runs 132 minutes.

The premiere is over, but the United Theater on Broadway still hosts concerts and screenings under the same mirrored ceiling.