Fans of Call the Midwife (which is currently “taking a break” after the conclusion of Series 15) will no doubt recall, with a nostalgic tear, Ella Bruccoleri’s performance as Sister Frances, which she sustained from 2018-2022. Some said she was nuts to walk away from such a well-loved show, but Ms Bruccoleri sensed that it was time to strike out for pastures new.
She has also previously appeared in The Last Kingdom, Bridgerton, Bookish, Down Cemetery Road and Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, but her career is about to go up a gear or two. Viewers will be able to see why when she appears in the title role of The Other Bennet Sister, which kicks off on BBC One (and iPlayer) on Sunday, 15 March. Adapted from Janice Hadlow’s novel, with a screenplay by Sarah Quintrell, it’s based around the character of Mary Bennet, the supposedly unremarkable and unglamorous middle sister of the five Bennet siblings (pictured below) from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Ruth Jones and Richard E Grant appear as Mr and Mrs Bennet, the girls’ parents, and other prominent roles are filled by Indira Varma, Laurie Davidson and Dónal Finn.
But Broccoleri seizes the lead role of Mary with both hands and runs with it eagerly, delivering a performance which is comic, poignant, satirical and heartfelt as she navigates her way through a social milieu in which marriage is a mercantile arrangement, and if you don’t have pots of hereditary money you’d at least better be beautiful. But as it happens, Mary has brains, courage and determination, and finds ways to make her own weather.
Meanwhile, she has a couple of film roles coming up, in the British comedy Go Away! and the “romantic fantasy” Wicker, which recently screened at the Sundance festival. And if she can find the time, she gets together with her musical partner Yoan Segot in their Americana band Marry Me Emelie! Dare we say the only way is up? Now read on...
ADAM SWEETING: The Other Bennet Sister consists of 10 30-minute episodes, which is quite unusual for a drama series, isn’t it?
ELLA BRUCCOLERI: Yes, and when you watch it, it just slides by. And I think you're packing in so much story, like so many story beats to every episode. So I was wondering how they'd release it, because I feel like I would want to just binge it all. But I like that they've done it, because I think it separates it from those other Sunday night, hour-long kind of cosy drama spots. And it’s a nice way to see Mary's journey as well, those little episodic bursts. She changes so much episode to episode, I think, that it works for her.
It feels as though it gets to the point faster, and it's got a slightly different sense of pace. So for instance you don't have a half-hour ballroom scene.
Yeah, sure, I see that. I think that can only be a good thing, right? The production design, the music, the atmosphere is very traditional. I think maybe it's the 30 minutes that really helps with it feeling just a little bit fresher. It really grabs you, and the pace just keeps going (pictured below, Bruccoleri with Richard E Grant and Ruth Jones).
So I imagine you like Mary, your character?
I do, how could you tell? I really, really like her. I'm very fond of her, very attached to her. I think there's a lot to not like about her initially, which is kind of a reaction I'm hoping for in a way, because she's not a typical period drama heroine. You kind of have to warm up to her a bit. She's a pedant, she's preachy. I've had people say to me, “oh, is Mary the really annoying one?” And you're like, well, you can see her that way if you want. You see why she's decided to form that character and why that's her coping mechanism or her interface with the rest of the world. But it's not who she is. She's so much more than that. And she's got such tenderness. And when you see her experience joy and experience love for the first time, I think it's really lovely to see a character like that have many different facets to them that you didn't know they had.
It's nice the way that when she goes to stay with the Gardiners, her aunt and uncle, they really let her flourish.
Well, they're her secret weapon, really. I think I've heard the writer say that she wrote this show about the transformative power of kindness. The Gardiners decide to take her under their wing and show her that she should embrace who she really is rather than trying to become someone else. And they're just incredibly kind and loving towards her. She hasn't experienced that before in her own family and they just let her fly, as you said. It's lovely to watch, I think.
But your mother describes you as “clumsy, ungainly and maladroit”!
I know, it's very cruel, and Mary overhears it. I always like to give Mrs Bennet the benefit of the doubt and say she's being practical. At every point, she's being practical because she really has to be. Her husband's not helping and she has to save her family. So she has to work out, okay, how can I marry off all of these daughters to wealthy men? And she's so frustrated by the fact that Mary's not really a possibility in that regard. She doesn't think anyone's going to want to marry Mary. She says some really cruel things to Mary's face as well. It's sad. It's a very funny relationship to watch, but it's also not a very easy relationship to watch sometimes, I think (pictured below, Bruccoleri with Laurie Davidson as Mr Ryder).
Yes, there's a slightly satirical tone to it, but there's also a reality which would be really awful if you had to live through it.
Yeah, completely. I think because Ruth [Jones] plays it, Ruth's just innately very funny. So it sort of makes you want to laugh when she says those things. But when you really understand the implications of hearing that as a child, that you're ungainly, it’s quite devastating. What's what's really nice about the show is that you see why Mary became the Mary that people know from Pride and Prejudice. So you kind of see her forming, absorbing other people's ideas of her and deciding... I guess she decides to kind of protest against the whole notion of it. And that's why she becomes this really locked down, studious character. It's almost a feminist protest of its time, really.
That idea of having those very glamorous sisters all being lined up for posh guys in the neighbourhood would be quite soul-destroying if you weren't a very strong personality.
Oh, completely. But that's just indicative of the whole time, isn't it? It's like your value as a woman was very much tied up in what you looked like. Especially if you didn't have any money, because Mrs Bennet's daughters don't have anything to offer a man financially. So they have to be very beautiful or very charming. Mary feels she's constantly being compared to her sisters and she knows that she doesn't measure up in her mum's eyes or in potential suitors' eyes. It's kind of horrible! But the message of the show becomes really life-affirming in that way, because she realises once she leaves that little tiny world of her family that all she needs to do is be true to herself.
So there must be bits of her that are actually like you?
I think there are many bits. And I think it's an interesting comparison because I also feel like I exist in an industry where people are kind of obsessed with the way people look. You feel sometimes, as a female actor, you’re constantly compared to people who are very glamorous or very like what I think is quite a narrow definition of beauty, but it exists. It was an interesting exercise for me to be on set every day and for the other people to be going through their rituals of having their hair and makeup all done and wearing these glamorous dresses, and me just coming in and putting on my grey dress and putting on my glasses and standing next to them and being like “I'm actually going to own this. I'm going to feel really comfortable in my own skin and not feel like I'm missing out on that”.
I think Sarah's writing is really clever there because normally when you read a script every piece of dialogue feels quite placed, and everyone knows what they're saying all the time. You very rarely get characters going to say something and then realising that they don't know what they're actually saying, or talking over someone and then apologising for it. And Sarah's writing is kind of full of that and that's what I really like.
Because Mary has this big inner life that doesn’t necessarily come out every time she speaks or whatever?
Yes. Totally. You get to see so many different sides to her that you sort of couldn't imagine from the Mary in Pride and Prejudice. You couldn't imagine her dancing giddily around a room and laughing raucously and flirting. She's not good at flirting but you can't really imagine Jane Austen as Mary doing any of those things. But she has all of that in her because we all do.
Do you feel that making a movie is very different from making a TV series? Is it a different vibe?
It's a good question. I think no, actually, not any more. But I think that's to do with the production values being a lot higher for TV now, so TV feels like you're making mini bits of cinema. There's TV that I've done that feels like maybe that's what it used to be like, where the pace is so quick that you're like, okay, there's no time to really think about this. You just have to go, and I think it’s a really good training ground. But then if you're doing something slightly bigger-budget, it feels a bit more like the pacing of what you do when you're making a film, where you have more luxury, you have time for rehearsal.
I think the only difference for me between TV and film is how much time you get. I think people used to be a bit snobbish about it. Now you just think TV is so good that there's no distinction between doing the two. It's nice to go to film festivals, obviously! But now I'm going to TV festivals, which is its own thing. But I think seeing something in the cinema is really special. People don't approach TV in the same way because people watch things on their phones. I think if you can be a part of something that people go into a dark space and watch and give their full attention to for an hour, two hours, that's really special. So I love that about cinema.
In Bennet Sister, you also get a chance to be a musician, don't you?
I get to play a bit of piano but I don't play piano in real life. And I got to learn some beautiful pieces of music. You know the song Sarabande? It's that famous, quite melancholic piece. I remember coming home after these quite long exhausting days on set and being like, okay I need to practise Sarabande for an hour. But it's such a beautiful piece and I feel really privileged that I got to learn it.
You've got a couple of movies coming out this year as well?
The one I'm thinking of is Wicker, which I was at the Sundance Film Festival with a few weeks ago. It’s a really unusual film. I think people will like it. Olivia Colman plays a smelly fisher woman. It’s set in this mediaeval village but it's this ageless, timeless place. And it's very patriarchal. We're all named after our professions. You've got the fisher woman and the wicker man but I'm the baker woman. My husband's the baker man. The men are just quite horrible. And then this man comes along, this man made out of wicker who's kind of sensitive and tender and in touch with his emotions, and he makes everyone else look really bad. And people hate that. And the women are all a bit seduced by him. It's just an interesting study of relationships, I would say. I think it's beautiful (pictured below, Buccoleri with Dónal Finn as Mr Hayward).
And Alexander Skarsgård is the wicker man?
Yes, and it's all practical effects. None of it's CGI. He's just fully in “wicker” mode the whole day and he moves his body and the wicker kind of moves with him. It's amazing. And then it's got all this weird music by Anna Meredith who composed it all just using recorders, just using wind instruments. It's a cool film. I'm excited for people to see it.
So it's no relation to that old horror film with Edward Woodward, The Wicker Man (1973)?
No, though I guess there are parallels in that there's like a weird underlying kind of pagan vibe to this as well, and it also builds to a quite unpleasant crescendo like The Wicker Man. Which I won't tell you about.
The other film is Go Away!, is that right?
Yeah. I don't know when that's coming out, but I love it so much. It's like one of those old-school British comedies. It's all set in one house and there's only a few characters, and things are spinning out of control. Me and my brother, played by Michael Socha, are growing weed in the attic. One thing leads to another and we end up in really, really hot water!
Episodes 1 & 2 of The Other Bennet Sister are on BBC One at 8pm on Sunday 15 March. Episodes 1-5 on iPlayer at 6am on 15 March
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