Forget the men, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles carry the true love story of this film

A decade before anyone put them in bonnets, Daisy Edgar-Jones met Esmé Creed-Miles on the 2017 Yorkshire set of coming-of-age drama Pond Life. “I was so blown away by her,” says Edgar-Jones, who was then 19, of her co-star, then 17. “[She] has this energy that is so compelling. She’s a wonderfully intelligent and sort of wild person, in the best way.”

The teenagers became fast friends and “had a really great summer of watching Love Island and shooting this indie film”.

Creed-Miles’ first impression of her co-star is equally vivid: “Daisy was unbelievably kind and talented. She put me at ease and I could tell I had a friend in her.” Admittedly, “it would be hard not to get on with Daisy. She’s just one of the loveliest people.”

Almost a decade on, the women are reunited on a much grander stage: Georgia Oakley’s gorgeous adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1811 debut novel, Sense and Sensibility, in which they star as sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. “To already have that shorthand with Esmé and to feel a sort of sisterly feeling, made it so seamless,” says Edgar-Jones.

An Austen adaptation is a world away from a small budget indie, but this is no polite costume drama either. It’s a kaleidoscope of undone hair, mud, rage and running.

“I was really trying to get into what it might have felt like to live in Devon 200 years ago,” Oakley has said of her film’s unbridled aesthetic. “Steering away from this preconceived idea we have about Austen, that everything takes place in a stuffy drawing room.”

When Edgar-Jones, 28, appears on our video call, it’s 11am in London. She’s just off a call with Australian writer Tony McNamara about Mosquito, their upcoming comedy series. What does a Gucci, Boucheron and Estée Lauder brand ambassador wear when working from home? As it turns out, a striped rugby jumper, no discernible make-up and “sports shorts” from a morning workout: “It’s not my best look!”

A few days later, Creed-Miles, 26, is similarly casual when she Zooms in just after 1pm. “I woke up quite recently,” she says, wandering around her London home, earbuds in, breaking off to answer the door: “I think it’s some food.”

Seeing the pair like this – using tech, in athleisure wear, waiting on deliveries – is faintly surreal after seeing them as the Dashwoods, physically and emotionally entwined as they braid hair, share a bed and absorb each other’s heartbreaks. With apologies to Edward Ferrars (George MacKay) and Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum), they’re the heart of the film and its true love story.

“I’m really glad that you say that because I remember that being such a clear piece of direction that Georgia, our director, wanted to follow,” says Edgar-Jones. Growing up an only child, she “had to outsource that sisterly or that familial sibling bond to friends”, and found it here. “It’s just a really lovely thing that the love story is the two women and how much they gift each other.”

To Oakley, the Dashwoods “represent these two opposing forces that a lot of women have within themselves that are always at war”. For Austen-era women with few ways to support themselves and little control over inheritance, says Creed-Miles, “the bond of motherhood or sisterhood becomes more prescient”.

“It’s just a really lovely thing that the love story is the two women and how much they gift each other.”

DAISY EDGAR-JONES

In Austen’s world, marriage was survival – do it or sink. So in 2026, when women have careers, best friends and their own front-door keys, what is romantic love actually for? “It’s a great question, and I think it’s one we’re always asking,” says Edgar-Jones.

In a relationship with photographer Ben Seed for nearly four years, Edgar-Jones says she “loves love” and that modern romance is “for friendship and companionship and support”. But her longer answer is pure Elinor: “What Austen does so well is explore the variety of love we can experience in a life – be it platonic, familial, romantic – and how valuable all of those are. The same exists today. It’s so magic to cultivate love in all those different areas of your life if you can.”

Asked about the same topic, Creed-Miles admits defeat – “Oh gosh. Literally, that is just too big a question for me”. There is romance in her life, though, in the form of an engagement to musician Daisy Maybe – yes, another Daisy. “I love going for a walk with my fiancée,” she says. “We take our dog to the park. We might cook some nice food and watch a bit of telly and chill out. Very simple.”

In real life, which of the pair is sense and which is sensibility? Edgar-Jones says she is “probably a mixture, honestly”, adding “I don’t fall in love very easily” while admitting to being “a massive romantic”.

Creed-Miles, gloriously vulnerable and untamed as Marianne, leans “more towards sensibility, internally. I definitely experience that sort of crushing depth of feeling.”

“Perhaps the thing I love most in the world is a good bit of hardcore yearning.”

DAISY EDGAR-JONES

Marianne is the kind of woman Creed-Miles always wanted to be, someone “outgoing and with a passion for life who took risks”, whereas she describes herself as “quite reclusive”. That introversion is something she’s “constantly reconciling” with her other day job as singer and guitarist in UK duo Cusk.

Edgar-Jones is a devotee of Ang Lee’s 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility, describing Emma Thompson’s Elinor as “one of the most beautiful performances in cinema”. The successor to Kate Winslet’s Marianne, Creed-Miles has never seen the 31-year-old film, but says the new incarnation will “hopefully do [Winslet] and Emma and Ang Lee proud”.

The storyline, of course, is awash with yearning: Elinor and Edward for each other, Colonel Brandon for Marianne, Marianne for Willoughby, mothers and relatives for weddings. It’s a mode Edgar-Jones perfected as another Marianne, opposite Paul Mescal’s Connell in the 2020 smash TV series Normal People, which made her a household name and garnered her Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.

Does she ever wish we’d forget Normal People? “Oh no, I’d be so sad if that happened,” she says. “I love those characters so much, and I love that show. I mean, perhaps the thing I love most in the world is a good bit of hardcore yearning, and I do think Sense and Sensibility and Normal People really tick that box.”

MacKay’s Edward also extends a streak she copped to in Elle last year: “I have worked with basically all of the internet’s boyfriends,” she said, citing Mescal, Sebastian Stan and Jacob Elordi. “Just Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler left!”

Born in London to Wendy, a film editor, and Philip Edgar-Jones, a television executive, Daisy acted in school plays before studying at the National Youth Theatre. Teenage TV roles in Cold Feet and Silent Witness led to Normal People, then Where the Crawdads Sing, Under the Banner of Heaven and Twisters.

The daughter of actors Samantha Morton and Charlie Creed-Miles, Esmé made her showbiz debut at seven as a tiny Shirley Temple impersonator in Harmony Korine’s 2007 film Mister Lonely, before moving on to three seasons of snapping necks as the title assassin in Amazon’s Hanna and a role in Kristen Stewart’s 2025 directorial debut, The Chronology of Water.

Both women talk glowingly of the fun and shared knowledge on Sense and Sensibility’s female-led set: director Oakley, writer Diana Reid, a cast including Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve, Andor) and Caitríona Balfe (Outlander).

Were gossip and tips swapped around the catering table? “It was wonderful to learn from Fiona and Caitríona, but I think less to do with the industry and more just to do with their attitude towards life and storytelling,” says Creed-Miles. “Even if it was like a squeeze of the hand or a moment of eye contact, to feel like you were held in those spaces was really precious.”

The shared experience extended to the costumes. Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles raided each other’s on-set wardrobes, just like real sisters, and covet each other’s actual things. Edgar-Jones– whose off-duty staples are jeans, a “really good” white T-shirt and a “woolly jumper” – loves her friend’s vintage loafers. What would Creed-Miles steal in return? “Daisy is the chicest,” she says. “Probably one of her really cool coats.”

The day we speak, Edgar-Jones is heading to a pub to see Creed-Miles’ band, although Esmé says that Daisy, a fan of Sarah J. Maas fantasy novels and personalised stationery, is the better after-dark girl. Edgar-Jones laughs at that. A DJ, she runs through what makes a great party – “the lighting has to be dark” – while on the decks “I’m still obsessed with Charli XCX. But then, I love a bit of Motown.”

The film’s PR tagline is, “No one knows your heart like a sister.” Creed-Miles says it’s true, adding, “Daisy is family to me. That kind of sisterhood is really important in this world and in this job. I’m very grateful.”

Marriage plots come and go. This is the love match that stuck.

Sense and Sensibility is in cinemas on October 15.

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