The Other Bennet Sister's Ella Bruccoleri on stepping into Austen's world and stepping away from Call the Midwife

“I love doing something different every few months.” That makes Mary Bennet, lead in the BBC’s 10-part drama The Other Bennet Sister an interesting move for actress Ella Brucolleri. Nebbish, bookish, and, at least outwardly, pious, the middle sister of Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet doesn’t have change in her bones.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that piety comes naturally to Brucolleri, who was brought up Roman Catholic but tells Radio Times she’s now agnostic. She’ll be familiar to many as Sister Frances in Call the Midwife, others might have recognised her in a small role as Sister Rosita in Paddington in Peru. Those roles don’t find her because of her upbringing, however. “I just have this kind of nun-like face!” she says.

“I maybe find it more difficult to play pious characters than would be expected because I've broken away from [Catholicism], and maybe I feel a bit of guilt because my family is still very Catholic,” she continues. “It would feel easier maybe to play a role that's more cynical of, or being worn down by, organised religion.”

Appropriately, Mary Bennet’s relationship with religion is hard to decipher, even as the BBC’s adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s novel of the same name expands her beyond Pride and Prejudice. It grants Mary a complexity lacking in other adaptations but for Brucolleri, in her first lead role, it was a new experience.

“I was filming every day, sometimes six days a week, for four months,” she says. “It tested my stamina in ways that I’d never experienced.” For which, she suggests, Call the Midwife was the perfect training ground.

Read more:

• The Other Bennet Sister star reveals why she left Call the Midwife and talks beloved Pride & Prejudice character
• Ruth Jones reveals what she told Gavin & Stacey icon Alison Steadman about the beloved Jane Austen role they now share

Drama school hadn’t prepared Brucolleri for interacting with the camera, so she learned on set. The fast-paced production of Call the Midwife – 15 seasons in 15 years – and embodying the same character for four seasons helped her “work the muscle repeatedly.” It made clear just how prepared one needed to be when coming onto set, whether that’s in Call the Midwife’s East London or The Other Bennet Sister’s shifting setting from Longbourn, London, and The Lake District (represented by the Brecon Beacons in-show).

That movement made Brucolleri’s filming experience elastic. Portraying the more morose side of Mary in Longbourn and later Pemberley, “I felt really conscious that it was slightly on me to set the tone for how filming went,” she says. “I would sometimes start to inhabit Mary a little too much on the set of Longbourn because I had all my sisters around me with these beautiful dresses and I was there in my grey monk’s robe. I sometimes felt a bit grumpy.”

When Mary’s sadness was harder to come by, Brucolleri fell back on past experience – whether that’s in her own life or watching, she says, particularly depressing documentaries. As The Other Bennet Sister transports Pride and Prejudice into a more modern understanding of family, both families of origin and choice, Brucolleri dug into her own relationships for a mirror to Mary’s complex relationship with her mother, Mrs Bennet (Ruth Jones). “I have people in my life who are estranged from their families and have had to build a family from scratch through people they trust and not blood relations,” she says. “I would think about my friends and I would get really upset, [they’ve] done an incredibly brave thing by stepping away. That doesn’t get easier.”

That contrasted with the experience of filming in London where, as Mary opens up under the purview of the Gardiners (Richard Coyle and Indira Varma), Brucolleri also lightened. This was, in part, for having children on set and that necessitating a less serious mood in between takes. “[But] they’re also like big children, Indira and Richard,” Brucolleri says. “They’re such brilliant actors, and two of our most respected actors, [but] they’re incredibly silly people.”

“One day, Richard just found an orange in his hand,” she continues,” and he was like, ‘I don’t know how this got here.’ He was genuinely shocked!”

It’s part of a broader program by Varma and Coyle to help relieve some of pressure Brucolleri felt by making “Ella regress into a million giggles,” she says. “A good reminder you shouldn't take anything that seriously.” That sense of support filters through the entire series for Brucolleri. First, with Richard E. Grant as Mr. Bennet – “he’s been wanting to play that character for a long time” – and Jones, and later Varma and Coyle.

“I had days where I felt really held by other people,” she says. Not just by her more experienced cast-mates, but also a crew she says dedicated itself to bringing Austen and Hadlow’s world to life through a vibe that often ran counter to the drudgery that Mary experiences.

“I've done jobs where I'm just showing up and doing the work and maybe I'm not insanely passionate about this, or invested in this,” she says. “I understand if other people show up and it's just a job for them. That was not the case with an ybody on that set. I was blown away by how everyone really cares and was really invested in the story and in their character, and people were putting in so much time and effort behind-the-scenes.”

Now it’s over, Brucolleri is settling back into the unpredictable rhythm of moving in and out of roles. That doesn’t mean she’s using her spare time to catch up on Call the Midwife, however. “I had best intentions of keeping up with it!” she says. “I just genuinely have not watched TV in a really long time.” Choice paralysis, she calls it, it’s too much commitment; she’s better at watching films. “I think I’m a bit of a commitment-phobe generally.”

It also makes her reticent to take on anything as long-term as Call the Midwife right now. She doesn’t rule it out – nor a return to the series when it returns from its hiatus.

“It would be nice to revisit that part of my life in a low-stakes way,” she says. Though adds that she feels she’s taken Sister Frances as far as she can. “Once I put something to bed, I do find it quite difficult to go backwards.”

An answer that might have been different immediately after exiting when, with no work booked, she did doubt momentarily whether it was the right decision. But if leaving is something Mary fears then Brucolleri has accepted the natural rhythm of a working actor that makes change a gift; albeit laced with the occasional worry when jobs end.

“I just really love variety,” she says. “I love doing something completely different.” That makes what comes next for an actress that, despite an abundance of nuns in her career thus far, has already collated a body of curious and characterful roles.

Here, however, her upbringing does have an impact. “I’d like to do more art-house cinema,” she says. “That’s the stuff I was raised on: I grew up on Shane Meadows and Ken Loach. I’d like to do more Northern stuff.”

This prompts Brucolleri – who hails from North Yorkshire – to return to The Other Bennet Sister for a final thought. As it brings modern sensibilities to regency period dramas, she takes a moment to note how the series is packed with Northern actors and, more importantly, Northern voices. It’s part of a diverse cast of voices that’s opening up a story often reserved for Southern voices on-screen.

“Growing up, I was really into Brontë because Brontë feels more about where I’m from,” she says. “I thought Austen was really posh and alienating.”

Having come to Austen later in life as a result, Brucolleri hopes The Other Bennet Sister, following in the footsteps of series like Bridgerton – in which Brucolleri has also appeared – might erode some of the barriers past voices may have erected around period dramas. Whether it’s Northern actors still speaking with received pronunciation – “We were all a bit taken aback by how many Northerners they trusted to do that,” she says – or those speaking in their own regional accents.

“I would like to see more regional accents on TV. I just don’t think you see enough of it. I think [Austen] feels just as much at home in that accent as it does in received pronunciation,” she says. “I do feel very proud of that – and I do feel proud of the colourblind casting, as well.”

A recent trend in modernised period dramas, combining authentic production and costuming with more modern sensibilities and ideas, offers a more accessible way into period dramas. If The Other Bennet Sister changed some minds about Austen, and the broader genre; “if this could be a gateway drug to reading more Austen,” Brucolleri says, “that would be really, really cool".

The Other Bennet Sister premieres on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday 15th March 2026.

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