Daisy Edgar-Jones approached Sense and Sensibility with a personal connection to Jane Austen’s work and a distinctly modern route into Elinor Dashwood’s emotions: a playlist that includes Dolly Parton, Billie Holiday, Minnie Riperton, Alice Pheobe Lou, Julia Jacklin and Jessica Pratt.
Edgar-Jones plays Elinor, the eldest Dashwood sister, in the new adaptation. At the Los Angeles premiere, she described having read Austen’s novels in quick succession as a teenager after receiving the books from her mother. That early reading experience matters here because Edgar-Jones is not framing Elinor as a distant literary obligation. She identifies strongly with the character’s composure, interiority and eventual willingness to acknowledge feelings she has kept contained.
Her musical selection gives that interpretation an especially revealing angle. Parton’s “Here You Come Again,” a song Edgar-Jones said she used to sing in the car after school, became a useful emotional key for Elinor. In her view, it captures the collision of romantic hurt and the barely contained flash of anger that can accompany it. It is easy to understand why that song would speak to a character whose public self-control can conceal a much fuller emotional life.
A playlist is not a period detail—it is an acting tool
There is no suggestion that Dolly Parton belongs literally within Austen’s setting. The point is not historical accuracy in the soundtrack sense. Edgar-Jones uses music privately to establish a character’s headspace: the emotional state, instincts and internal rhythm an actor draws on when building a performance.
That distinction is important. A character playlist is generally a preparation device rather than proof of what a film will sound like, or a promise that any of those artists appear in the finished feature. Actors can use songs from any era to locate a feeling that dialogue, costume and plot leave largely unspoken. For a role such as Elinor, that can be particularly practical. If the character’s defining quality is restraint, the actor needs access to what exists beneath that restraint—not simply a polished surface.
Edgar-Jones described Elinor as someone with considerable strength and emotion who has learned to “button up” those feelings. Her interest lies in showing the deep reserve that others may overlook, while tracking the character’s movement toward accepting her more untamed side. Parton’s song, in that reading, is less a playful anachronism than a shorthand for longing with teeth.
That makes the choice more specific than a broad “sad-song” selection. Edgar-Jones singled out an emotional mixture: heartbreak, love and a strain of female rage that wants release. The image she offered is Elinor singing the track in her bedroom at Barton Cottage if she had lived in Parton’s time. It is a humorous hypothetical, but it also clarifies the performance target: Elinor may be quiet, yet quiet is not the same as empty, passive or unaffected.
Elinor and Marianne are being placed at the center
The adaptation also puts additional emphasis on the relationship between Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, played by Esmé Creed-Miles. Creed-Miles said screenwriter Diana Reid’s version more strongly centers the sisters’ relationship. That is a meaningful creative focus for a story in which the sisters’ contrasting temperaments are central to its emotional design.
Within the material described at the premiere, Elinor is associated with good sense, while Marianne is the more openly passionate sister. Edgar-Jones said she felt an affinity with Elinor even when first reading the novels. Creed-Miles, meanwhile, spoke warmly of the sisterhood that surrounded the production itself, naming director Georgia Oakley, writer Reid and Edgar-Jones among the women she felt close to during the film’s making.
That off-camera connection does not establish what every scene will look like on screen, but it explains why the performers are discussing the film in terms of family and sisterhood rather than solely as a familiar literary adaptation. Creed-Miles called the experience cathartic and rewarding, emphasizing the feeling of a family of women making a story about sisters.
She also noted the attention around the project felt intimidating, even as the support was meaningful. Creed-Miles was recognized as one of 10 Actors to Watch on the day of the Los Angeles event, and Reid received the same recognition. Creed-Miles said her priority entering the production had been the filmmakers, particularly Oakley, whose earlier film Blue Jean she admired.
Why Austen adaptations invite this kind of close reading
Edgar-Jones has already appeared in adaptations of books, including Normal People and Where the Crawdads Are, with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow also identified as an upcoming project. Yet she recognizes an Austen role as a different proposition. The characters arrive with a long cultural afterlife, devoted readers and established expectations around their motives and relationships.
For performers, that can mean balancing two potentially competing demands: honoring what audiences recognize in the text while finding a personal way into it. Edgar-Jones’s comments suggest that her answer is not to play Elinor merely as “the sensible one.” Instead, she is looking for the emotional pressure generated by having to be sensible—what gets hidden, how that hiding becomes habitual, and what it costs when love and pain do not disappear simply because someone behaves with decorum.
The Dolly Parton connection is memorable because it makes that approach accessible without reducing it. “Here You Come Again” gives Edgar-Jones a language for emotions that can otherwise be flattened into a single trait. Elinor’s restraint is not presented as the absence of passion; it is a way of managing passion. The tension between the two is where an actor can find drama.
It is also a useful reminder that period roles need not be prepared through period material alone. Research, scripts and direction remain foundational, but contemporary songs can provide an immediate emotional route for an actor. The song’s exact musical era is beside the point. What matters is whether its voice and feeling illuminate something truthful about the character.
The practical takeaway for viewers
For viewers interested in this adaptation, the premiere comments provide a clearer sense of the creative emphasis than a conventional plot summary would. Edgar-Jones’s Elinor is being approached as an emotionally layered figure whose self-command contains longing and anger, rather than a simple counterweight to Marianne. Creed-Miles’s comments indicate that the Elinor–Marianne bond is a more pronounced concern in Reid’s screenplay.
That focus places the sisters’ relationship at the heart of the film’s emotional stakes. It also makes the cast’s shared vocabulary—family, support, catharsis and sisterhood—feel relevant to the adaptation rather than merely promotional. Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles are describing a production environment that they feel informed their connection to the material.
There is a familiar challenge in adapting a beloved novel: audiences want recognition, but they also want a reason for the new version to exist. Edgar-Jones’s playlist cannot answer every question about the finished film, and it should not be confused with a guide to its soundtrack. What it does reveal is a concrete interpretive choice. She sees Elinor as someone whose reserve coexists with a forceful inner response to love and disappointment.
In other words, if Elinor Dashwood had access to a car stereo—or a bedroom speaker at Barton Cottage—Edgar-Jones imagines she might have turned up Dolly Parton and let the feelings out. For another recent example of actors discussing the emotional work behind a difficult screen project, see Judi Dench’s reflections on the intentions behind Cats.
Sense and Sensibility also stars Caitríona Balfe as Mrs. Dashwood, alongside Herbert Nordrum, Stacy Martin and Frank Dillane. Edgar-Jones, Balfe and Creed-Miles attended the Oct. 7 Los Angeles premiere at the United Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles.
