‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life' Director Laura Piani & Star Camille Rutherford Talk Putting A Fresh Spin On The Iconic Author's Work

Geek Vibes Nation

23-05-2025

At the very beginning of Laura Piani's Jane Austen Wrecked My Life , a bookstore clerk named Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford) finishes up her closing duties to the tune of Solomon Burke's 'Cry To Me,' the song blaring through the store and surely disrupting the evenings of any bordering tenants, as if Agathe could give a damn. This is her time, after all; the customers have gone and her coworkers have clocked out. Now is the time to dance like no one is watching, even if the lively tune to which she shimmies is a dour one at its core. Its lyrics speak to a sort of isolation that the perpetually-single Agathe understands. 'Whoa, nothing can be sadder than a glass of wine alone,' Burke croons. 'Loneliness, loneliness, such a waste of time.' Each verse concludes with a similar refrain, one where the subject is asked, 'Don't you feel like crying?' only to be encouraged to 'cry to me.'
Agathe certainly has it in her to cry, though outwardly, she treats her aforementioned solitude as a safe harbour. Nothing can hurt her there, not when she's nestled into a windowsill with a good book – she's partial to Jane Austen's Persuasion , identifying closely with its main character, Anne Elliot – or able to freely move about without a care in the world. In many ways, these qualities make her the sort of character that could slide seamlessly into Austen's literary world, the protagonist who doesn't need anyone else to make her happy and views a life of good friends, great novels, and the dream of writing her own one day as more than enough to get by. That's precisely Piani's point, of course, and the title of her debut feature suggests that there is plenty more to this world than Austenian tropes and the troubles one can get in should they worm their way into their everyday affairs. Once the ball of Agathe's long-gestating book gets rolling, sending her to a writer's residency housed at her favorite author's old home, so too rolls the ball of romance. Who is Agathe to pick, though? Her best friend, confidant, and the very man who pushed her to attend the workshop to fully realize her gifts? Or the haughty chauffeur-slash-Austen's great-great-great-grandnephew who is simultaneously the worst and the ideal in terms of British suitors in a rom-com?
That tension is partially what pushes Jane Austen Wrecked My Life along, but Piani's film – which is out in limited release on Friday, May 23 – has much more on its mind than Agathe's romantic pursuits. It depicts writer's block as a bona fide mental conflict, one where the scribe can't get out of their own way due to genuine emotional wreckage, not merely the inability to find the right words. The film is smart when it comes to romance, yet doubles as a masterclass in physical comedy, thanks in large part to Rutherford's ever-committed lead performance and Piani's trust in her star. Best of all, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is far from 'just another Jane Austen movie.' It's indebted to the legend's work, sure, but more so, it's clever in its depiction of how the tropes with which she has become synonymous could feasibly make someone's head spin. Especially if that someone is a secret hopeless romantic and a writer. (One and the same, oftentimes.)
I spoke with Piani and Rutherford about their introductions to the author's work, how they put a refreshing spin on something recognizable – a film that can reach Austen obsessives and newbies all at once – and more. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation. CAMILLE RUTHERFORD with director LAURA PIANI | Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Geek Vibes Nation (Will Bjarnar): It feels silly to ask because of how obvious the relationship with Jane Austen's work is in the film and its text, but I'm curious about the origin of your own individual introductions to Jane Austen's work. Did you have a formal education that focused on her work? Perhaps it was formative or even not so positive.
Laura Piani: What is good is that we have a different kind of relationship to her. In my case, it started when I was a teenager. I was reading all kinds of romance. I was eager to read love stories. And so my understanding of [Austen] was that it was really interesting in terms of romance, but very disappointing in terms of, well, kissing and sex scenes. It's only when I became a bookseller – actually at Shakespeare and Company – and when I was more confident to read in English, that I rediscovered Jane Austen. I remember being behind the till, reading Persuasion . And Persuasion is probably not the funniest one, but even in the other books, I discovered how funny she was and how political she was, and how ahead of her time she was. She was mocking conventions. So, it was to both the teenager in me, and to the young woman, the one who felt that she was capturing something that was resonating with the things that I was going through at that time.
Camille Rutherford: I discovered Jane Austen when I was about 12 with my sister, living in the north of England, in Durham. I don't remember who, but someone bought us a copy of Sense and Sensibility , the film directed by Ang Lee with a script written by Emma Thompson. Of course, she acts in it with Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, and Hugh Grant. We watched it so many times that we got obsessed with it, and then we watched Pride and Prejudice again and again – the BBC television version – and we got obsessed with that as well. We liked it because, in both of these adaptations, there are sisters. We liked the movies, and at the same time, we thought there was an old fashioned thing about them. The balls, the way they talked. We would make fun of it, but at the same time, we liked the characters because they themselves would make fun of their own. Jane was ahead of her time, so she already knew how ridiculous it was, and she would make her characters laugh about certain ridiculous conventions during that time.
GVN: I think what struck me about this film, especially regarding those conventions you mentioned, is how refreshing it is. You've taken a well worn entity – the world of Jane Austen and her texts – and you've distilled it into one story about a writer who loves Austen's tropes and starts to see them bleed into her life over time. How did you make sure in your film, which is both something of a satire but also an ode, to not let it become just another example of a Jane Austen adaptation?
LP: To be completely honest with you, it's because I'm French. I think, somehow, being French gave me some freedom, because I don't own Jane Austen. I think England owned Jane Austen. I don't. I believe we can adapt whatever we want, so I could've adapted Jane Austen, but that was not my goal. What I wanted to do was to tell the story of Agathe nowadays. So, the starting point is not Jane Austen. And then I thought, 'Okay, today, if I struggle as a writer and as a young woman with romantic ideals that are too high, if a young woman is always disappointed by reality, who could she blame?' In terms of literature, I thought it was funny to blame Jane Austen. And also, because I wanted to do a comedy, if you blame someone, it means that you pay tribute to someone. So that was the starting point. I also didn't want to make an elitist movie for Jane Austen experts. I wanted this film to be reachable for an audience who knew who she was, but maybe never read Jane Austen, really. The people that know her work will see the meta writing, all of the things that are coming from her books or from her life. But I wanted an audience that has no idea about Jane Austen to be able to engage with the character's journey and the questions that were raised. I think all of this gave me some freedom to not adapt anything, and to not feel like I was doing another film after so many about Jane Austen. Because I would have been petrified and then incapable of trying anything. CAMILLE RUTHERFORD as Agathe in 'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life' | Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
GVN: Camille, can you speak to that as well? Especially based on what you said about your relationship to Jane Austen, what was important for you as a performer when it came to not playing another Jane Austen heroine like we've seen in Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion ?
CR: Well, I tried my best to play it the way… I don't know. It's difficult to say because it's hard to judge yourself. I tried to do the best I could to please Laura.
LP: We talked so much about the character's journey, not about Jane Austen and what was before us. I think if the film touched the audience, it's because Agathe is all of us. She's trying to deal with her shame, her grief, her doubts. We talked about that a lot. I think when you do a movie, if you start talking about all the movies that have been made before you with the actors, you can say, you know, 'You should have a look at that film because the character is really interesting, maybe it will inspire you.' But you cannot say to an actor, 'You should look at all the Jane Austen adaptations that have been made and be inspired,' because then you're petrified. You can create. You can invent somehow.
CR: Sometimes I think in Jane Austen adaptations, the characters… they're very sophisticated. They sit upright and everything. That's something that annoys me a little bit. You want it to be modern instead.
GVN: Laura, you mentioned Agathe's shame, grief, and doubts. The film as a whole is balancing a number of tones. The character is dealing with intense grief on one hand, but she's also feeling intense romantic feelings for multiple people, and also for her work. The film is also multiple things in and of itself. It's a romance, a pure comedy, and it also features a lot of physical comedy. Camille, I admired that in your performance, the commitment to that physical comedy. Maybe a better question than one about you not becoming another Jane Austen character is, how did you inform Agathe's journey yourself, and all of her many quirks and characteristics?
CR: Well, we rehearsed a lot, which helped. And sometimes it was nice, because Laura would let me do a take like I wanted to do it, and then if she didn't think it was suitable for her vision, she would ask me to do it again the way she wanted it. We always try to listen to one another, and sometimes we agreed on our vision for the character. Sometimes not. But most of the time, we got to a mutual understanding of where we were going. And there's a few moments where Laura gave me a lot of space to have fun. There are two scenes in particular: The one when Agathe arrives at the writer's retreat, and she smells herself, and the smell is terrible, and she gets naked. As an actor, I often – maybe it's a bit egotistical – but I look at scenes and I look at what's going to be fun to play. Often if a scene is fun to play, it is because the situation itself is really fun and funny, and so I was looking forward to playing that because what follows that is pure physical comedy. You open the door and you think you're in the bathroom, but, oh, you're in a man's room that you don't know. That was fun.
LP: What was the other scene that you liked?
CR: Oh, yes! I liked the scene where I'm drunk and we come back from the pub.
LP: I have to say, just to complete what she's saying. It's a little bit embarrassing, but I'm still laughing, even having seen the film like 300 times, when they are back from the pub. I have to hide myself from laughing discreetly. When they are back from the pub, and [Oliver, played by Charlie Anson] carries her, puts her down on the bed, and she says, half drunk, 'You won't even go down on me?' This is something that we found together in rehearsal. This was not written. So, I think what the beauty of working with Cami and creating this character together – one that was in my mind, that was based on some experience – is that she then became someone else. [Camille] put so much of who she is and her weirdness into it, and I'm saying that in a good sense. That's why I wanted to work with her. She's beautiful. She has all the things that you could expect from a Jane Austen character. But she's weird, she has something else, and she's modern. And so the mix was really fabulous, because it's like it was beyond my imagination, because she's a real person. During rehearsal, I realized, watching her, that I had an actress who could actually be extremely physical in terms of comedy, but also… There's a scene with a literature discussion in front of a chimney. That is a very important scene for me. I could feel the pleasure that she had reading the lines. Stop me if I'm wrong, but when you come from theater [as Camille does], you play with others a lot, much more than in cinema where you sometimes have the camera on you and you alone. I could feel that Camille had this slapstick, absurd physical comedy, and the pleasure of working with other actors on very specific lines that she will cherish. And as a writer, it's beautiful when you feel that sometimes the actors are having fun with the lines they've read. CAMILLE RUTHERFORD as Agathe, CHARLIE ANSON as Oliver in 'Jane Austen
Wrecked My Life' | Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
GVN: Camille, did you feel that more stepping into the lead role here on a film set rather than theater? Is there a different challenge when you serve as the film's engine, so to speak?
CR: I was very nervous. I'm always nervous when I start a new job; I think most actors are. When you start something new, you don't want to disappoint other people. As an actress, I always want to try and hope to make the audience enjoy themselves. I prepare a lot before. I know some actors don't. I know a lot of great actors who don't prepare before a new project. I'm kind of the opposite. I work a lot on my own, and I was very happy because Laura, like me, really wanted to rehearse. I think it's very pragmatic, even if it's a small role, to do that. For me, and I think Laura as well, rehearsing is key because it allows you to be bad, to fail, and try to find something and to get familiar with one another. Because the most important thing when you're working is to get along with your director and the other actors, to be able to be real and to converse in a very honest way. To be able to do that, you have to see each other beforehand a lot, so that the politeness goes away. At first you're like, 'Oh, how are you?' And you talk about the weather and have these little conversations in the lift in the hotel. 'Oh, it's hot outside.' But when you've rehearsed so much, all of that goes away, and you develop a language. You find your language that only belongs to you, the director, and the other actors on set. Rehearsing is a lot of pressure, but it's also easier, because I'm used to having smaller roles: three days here, four days there. When you're a lead, everybody is around you. Everyone is asking so many questions about how you're doing. You're a bit like a princess.
LP: Well, I definitely didn't choose Cami because she was a princess, because she's not. [ Both laugh .] What drew me to her was, I saw her in a film called Felicità . That was the starting point. I didn't know her before, and I was really intrigued and touched by her, the way she acted, of course, but also something that is quite rare in terms of… I don't know, beauty that she doesn't use, that she's not aware of, that is not the most important thing for her. Which is rare because, you know, this world is cruel for actresses, and they have to put [beauty] in front a lot. Too much. Which is absurd, because we are not working in fashion. You know, what is interesting with an actress is the 10,000 expressions that she will have on her face, not the perfect face. I was not looking for [the perfect face.] I also thought that she was timeless. And that was very important for this character, Agathe. Another thing: Camille, like Agathe, is also bilingual. Her father is English. It's always a good sign when you can find some very obvious bridges between the actress and the character.
We actually had a very funny first meeting, which started as a catastrophic meeting, because her beer fell into her french fries. We tried to save the french fries, and she was clumsy, and I liked it. The shyness also was interesting to work with, because I think if she was overly confident, Agathe's fragility would have been harder to find. But she was doing her own composition on her own terms. I could see the bridges that we could build to create this character together.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life opens in theaters on May 23 from Sony Pictures Classics.