At the beginning of Netflix’s new adaptation of Persuasion, our heroine Anne Elliot, still in the flush of youth, embraces a handsome soldier in a field of wild grass overlooking the sea, while lush, romantic strings play in the background. Except, of course, Persuasion isn’t like other Jane Austen novels—and the acclaimed British theater director Carrie Cracknell’s new riff on the story starts exactly where you might expect another Austen take to end. “I almost got married once,” says Dakota Johnson’s protagonist, Anne Elliot. “But he was a soldier without rank or fortune, and I was persuaded to give him up.”
Flash forward seven or eight years, and Anne is—by the standards of Regency Britain, anyway—already past her prime. In a Bridget Jones–esque montage, she cries in the bathtub, drinks wine straight from the bottle, and describes herself as “thriving.” An introduction to her preening, social-climbing family, the aristocratic Elliots, who have fallen on hard times thanks to the profligate spending of Anne’s father, Sir Walter (Richard E. Grant), sees her deliver deadpan asides that break the fourth wall, poking fun at the flaws and foibles of those around her as she resolves to cut her own path through high society Bath.
“With period pieces, I’m always interested in there being a connection between then and now,” says Cracknell, whose playful take on Austen marks her directorial debut as a filmmaker; a regular at London’s National Theatre and Royal Court, her Jake Gyllenhaal–and–Tom Sturridge–starring production of Sea Wall/A Life picked up four Tony nominations in 2020. “I think period films often teach you as much about the moment they were made in as they do the moment that they’re replicating, somehow.” It was this understanding that equally informed the unique approach of screenwriters Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow. After all, even the most obsessive fans of Jane Austen will admit that Persuasion—the last novel she wrote, and published six months after her death in 1817—is something of an outlier within her beloved, endlessly adapted canon, thanks to the older age of her protagonist and its more wistful, reflective air.
Delving deeper into Anne’s voice, Bass and Winslow identified a crackling sense of humor that spoke to a very contemporary strain of comedy, recalling the incisive, self-deprecating work of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel. “I think the humor [in Persuasion] absolutely speaks to Jane Austen’s writing, but it also has a sort of modernity,” Cracknell says. “We really hoped it would help the material to connect with a new or younger audience.” For Johnson, too, it was this subversively comedic (and firmly of-the-moment) take on the source material that felt particularly compelling. “I was drawn to the occasionally modernized language and themes, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, and the fact that a strong-willed woman remains as much a topic of discussion these days as it was then,” the actor explains.
Like any good Austen love story, though, Persuasion hinges on a romantic dilemma. Anne’s first option is to try and rekindle the flame with her first great love, Captain Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis), who she spurned at age 19 after being persuaded by her godmother that he wasn’t a suitable match due to his low social status. On Frederick’s return from the Napoleonic Wars as a military hero (and with a great fortune), the two would have to overcome their resentments around how their initial relationship ended in order to reconcile. All of that is thrown into question with the arrival of William Elliot (Henry Golding), however, a distant relation of Anne’s whose louche charm may be hiding some more nefarious ulterior motives, as he is a direct heir to the family fortune whose position may be in jeopardy.
“For me, the role of Mr. Elliot was just too juicy to say no to—he’s such a naughty, mischievous spanner in the works,“ says Golding of his turn, which gleefully subverts his image as a beloved rom-com heartthrob. “Knowing that you don’t end up with the girl, you can really let loose with it all. He’s such a great character, as you have no idea what he’s thinking or what his motivation is—he just turns on a dime. I was reveling in it.” Elsewhere, Richard E. Grant delivers a deliciously campy scene-stealing performance as Sir Walter, the narcissistic, flamboyant father of Anne. “Sir Walter Elliot is arguably the vainest character in all of literature, so we took that to the hilt and beyond,” says Grant. “It was a huge pleasure playing someone who is so entitled, egocentric, and unaware of anyone else’s feelings.”
Still, from beginning to end, Persuasion is very much Johnson’s film. In arguably her most robust comedic role to date, the actor continues her streak of impressively versatile projects over the past year with a performance that captures both a sense of frustration with the cards life has dealt her, and the occasional outburst of pure, unbridled emotion. (Oh, and plenty of biting wit, of course.) “I think Dakota’s humor comes from her intelligence,” says Cracknell. “Anne sees things around her very clearly, and Dakota’s just like that too. She’s very watchful and very, very bright. And she was pushing to go funnier all the time, so we kept exploring the moments where we could find physical humor. She’d also have loads of ideas while we were shooting that we would end up doing in the film. It’s always the dream when the actors give you so much.”
Persuasion’s story offered a unique set of challenges, with much of the narrative centered on Anne’s razor-sharp perceptiveness when it comes to the eccentricities and underlying ambitions of those around her. The introduction of direct-to-camera moments and doses of contemporary humor make Anne’s inner journey immediately relatable, in a way that might have been impossible under the standard conventions of the buttoned-up Regency drama. “This is ultimately a piece about longing, and elements of that are quite hard to dramatize,” says Cracknell, contextualizing their gently iconoclastic approach. “Breaking the fourth wall gives us an opportunity to see right into her thinking and understand where she is going.”
Indeed, for Cracknell and her writing team, those moments seemed built into the original text. “I think trying to kind of dust off traditional ideas about what her writing represents, and who her writing is for, felt really important—to allow the anarchy and the humor and the anger of her writing to come out, because it’s all there,” she says, while also noting that the novel’s proto-feminist explorations of gender felt like they offered the team license to lean even further into that sensibility. “Anne is sort of railing inside a structure that she doesn’t quite see yet,” Cracknell adds.
So too does the film take some joyous artistic license when it comes to bringing the world of Regency Britain back to vivid life. Instead of slavishly recreating every dress or interior design feature down to the very last detail, the freshness and modernity of Cracknell’s Persuasion is reflected in costuming that intentionally dials back the sumptuous bonnets, bustles, and crinolines of Austen adaptations past, instead leaning towards something a little more understated.
Initially intended to reflect the film’s intense focus on the inner life of Anne and to let the actors’ performances shine, costume designer Marianne Agertoft’s sleeker silhouettes and muted palette of cool tones come with their own delicate beauty too. “For me, it was a really exciting opportunity to step a little bit away from the conventions of Regency costume dramas and do something slightly more minimal and to de-fuss it a bit,” says Agertoft. “As soon as I read the script, I had quite a clear idea of where I wanted to take the leading lady, and to tune into that comedic, rebellious spirit that Dakota and Carrie were working with.”
More than anything, though, Persuasion feels like a new kind of Austen adaptation simply for the sheer amount of fun it offers. (You’d be hard-pressed to find a prior adaptation with as many laughs per minute.) “When I read the script for the first time, I loved it because it was so incredibly funny,” says Cracknell. “It made me laugh when I read it off the page, which is quite unusual. It was a real treat. I felt so free making this film.” So it was as much fun to make as it is to watch? “It was wildly fun,” says Johnson, with a winking playfulness that couldn’t be more Austen if she tried.