The Other Bennet Sister star reveals why she left Call the Midwife and talks beloved Pride & Prejudice character

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

It was a very reserved Ella Bruccoleri I first met on set last summer inside a beautiful Georgian mansion in Wales that was standing in for Jane Austen’s Longbourn. She was polite but didn’t seem overly keen to speak between scenes. To be fair, Bruccoleri had a lot on her plate, playing the lead role of the BBC’s latest foray into the world of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — the “other sister” of the title belonging to Mary, the Bennet girl arguably most overlooked.

Eight months later, Bruccoleri laughs loudly at the memory. “That was an early day in the schedule. I was on a hamster wheel, acting in every scene, trying to prep for the next day, knowing I had to go home and sleep. I was quite insular, trying to inhabit something.”

Bruccoleri tells me she’s a rare young woman without a lifelong love for Austen’s most popular work — “I’m from Yorkshire, it’s all about the Brontës for me,” she explains. But when she did turn to the book, it was to Mary she felt drawn: “I like to think I’m a bit more confident, but then she is younger than me. I like her industriousness, which is similar to how I approach things, trying to be good at something through study rather than instinct. For Mary, it’s about practising piano every day, for me it’s making hundreds of notes about a character. That’s my comfort zone.”

Mary’s story (in Hadlow’s telling) is one of breaking out of the shadows of her sparky siblings, moving to London and finding her own way, and Bruccoleri had a similar experience in her college years with a move away from Scarborough, where she grew up. “I went to Paris with about £100 in my pocket and suddenly I was living in this world of bohemia. It was daunting, but I felt really excited and alive.”

She reflects on such parallels with her screen counterpart: “I think Mary has spent her childhood wishing she was Lizzie Bennet and it’s only when she breaks away that she realises she doesn’t have to be.”

The child of non-thespy parents — her father works in IT and her mother was a paediatric nurse — Bruccoleri nevertheless was fixed from the age of five on becoming an actor. “My mum told me not to have a Plan B, which is the opposite of most parents, but she thought I’d never do it otherwise.” Her certainty was tested over the six years Bruccoleri tried to get into drama school. While waitressing in London, she finally got in to the Oxford School of Drama on her seventh attempt and hasn’t really stopped working since.

Fans of Call the Midwife will remember her as Sister Frances, which was her first big TV role. “When I look back at my early episodes, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not good,’” she laughs. “I learnt screen acting on the job, and it was invaluable.” Why did she leave? “It felt crazy quitting a great job but I’d started getting different offers, and I realised I love the variety of different things.”

When the role of Mary Bennet came up, Bruccoleri knew it was a role she wanted. “I was reading my script on the Tube, and a girl said to me, ‘I auditioned for that months ago. They’ve seen everyone.’ I was really emotional about it. I was worried that if I didn’t get it, I would really struggle.”

Having watched the first few episodes, I can’t imagine anyone surpassing her in conveying Mary as sweet and awkward in her gradual blossoming, even if Bruccoleri admits she had to pinch herself a few times working alongside stars such as Indira Varma and Ruth Jones. “Indira is a magical figure,” she muses, “while Ruth is the master of comic timing.”

She pauses. “I was humbled by how much everyone cared about the project. It could have made me spin out, but I had to put all of that out of my head. I told myself, ‘I’m here to play Mary and that’s what I’m going to do.’”

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

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