‘Pride & Prejudice' Helmer Joe Wright Talks Film's Internet Legacy — And How Emma Thompson Improvised Charlotte Lucas' Meme-Worthy Speech

Yahoo

20-04-2025

On the heels of the 20th anniversary of Oscar-nominated Pride & Prejudice, helmer Joe Wright reflected on his Austenian adaptation's second life in the internet era, calling it 'strange' and 'kind of extraordinary,' as well as ultimately 'very nice, very gratifying.' Particularly, the filmmaker revealed that among the most-discussed and much-memed speeches in the period drama — delivered by Claudie Blakley's Charlotte Lucas — was improvised by writer Emma Thompson.
Speaking with Mashable, he said, 'Deborah Moggach wrote the screenplay and did an amazing, amazing job. And then we asked Emma Thompson to help with a little bit of the dialogue. And I went round to her house, very nervous, with my little briefcase and we walked up onto Hampstead Heath onto a hill. And she said, 'Sit down, take out your notebook and take notes.' So as she improvised scenes, I wrote them down. And that was one of the things she improvised on that hill on Hampstead Heath.'
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The scene — which has since been used as allegorical fodder for the current dating landscape — features Blakley's iconic and passionately spoken lines: 'I'm 27 years old. I've no money and no prospects. I'm already a burden to my parents. And I'm frightened.' It's been iced onto birthday cakes, has taken over meme pages on social media and been emblazoned on custom shirts.
Differing from Jane Austen's original prose (though conveying similar sentiments), Wright recalls 'almost crying' at Thompson's 'miraculously' thought-out ideas that he 'scribbled down.' (Thompson was previously in another Austenian film adaptation, Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, for which she won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards.)
Wright also discussed another viral moment from the film, the hand flex from Matthew Macfadyen's Mr. Darcy — something he had shotlisted and was 'very specific' about including in the pic. (Immortalized in the movie, it can now also be yours with official Focus Features merchandise featuring the image screen-printed on tees.)
'The beginnings of that were very humble,' he recalled. 'And it was a day where, we were running out of time and the weather was crappy and I knew I wanted to convey this sense in which our bodies are cleverer than our brains, and the electricity that moves between them, and him kind of trying to shake it off, I remember talking to Matthew about that. But all you're trying to do is tell the story as psychologically honestly as possible.'
Starring Keira Knightley, the Pride & Prejudice rerelease is now in theaters.
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