The BBC’s most-watched show since May last year, “The Other Bennet Sister” has also proven to be a sizeable hit on BritBox in the U.S. And the success of the show has taken its star Ella Bruccoleri by surprise, she tells Variety at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.
“Everyone connected to it was saying ‘I think this is going to be received really well’ but I always set my bar really low because it depends on timing and all sorts of other factors. So I thought ‘I don’t really mind about the reach of it, I just want people to feel seen by it.'”
Since it aired she’s “been messaged by people of all genders and ages who have just felt like a bit of an outsider, like they’re on the periphery of something they can’t quite access” – just like Mary Bennet in the show, who doesn’t fit in with her family or peers in Regency-era England.
“She looks at her sisters, like Elizabeth who is effortlessly charming people all the time, and Mary finds a basic conversation with someone really difficult,” Bruccoleri says.
“I’ve had people write to me that have difficult relationships with their mothers, as Mary does, and women who feel very scrutinized for the way they look and have felt like that for a very long time. They’ve felt very seen by having someone on their screen who didn’t look like a supermodel as the lead character in a show, which is rarer than it should be.”
