Hallmark‘s Loveuary salute to the works of Jane Austen continues this week with what may be one of the network’s biggest swings: a straight-forward, PBS-caliber retelling of Sense and Sensibility. It’s not a cheeky update about a big-city exec looking for love on the countryside. There are no Tyler Hynes cameos. No inside jokes. Just the displaced Dashwood siblings surrounded by high-end production values, top-tier period costumes and hair, stunning locations and a clear adoration for that Regency Era energy.
In fact, the only new here is that the cast is primarily Black. And this long-overdue approach to reimagining Austen’s 1811 tale was “the perfect solution” for Hallmark Media’s SVP of Development, Toni Judkins when she set out to define Hallmark Channel’s Mahogany brand.
Hallmark Media
“When they announced that the Mahogany initiative was going to come to fruition, I had a little window where I was able to visualize in my wildest dreams what I wanted to create,” she states. “And within that window, I brought Sense & Sensibility to the floor, I put it into development and got a script. I felt that this was the perfect project. One, everyone loves Jane Austen. Two, Hallmark is ‘Where Love Happens’…so this would be safe, it would be familiar, it would be disruptive and it would be noisy.”
It’s also a lovefest as much behind the scenes as it is on screen. When Judkins and the S&S crew gathered at the Television Critics Association press event in Pasadena, the all-Black, all-female “A-team,” as executive producer Tia A. Smith puts it, couldn’t contain their joy— both at working with one another and on a project that means so much to them and Black viewers. Watch the video interview above.
Hallmark Media
“It was an honor,” raves Smith. “For me, it was about making sure it was authentic…and that it would be exciting to see a person of color have these tones of being vulnerable and being strong. That voice is needed, that visual and that representation is needed.” Helping amplify that voice with as much legitimacy as possible was historical fiction author and Regency Era-consultant Vanessa Riley, as well as costume designer (and Project Runway icon) Kara Saun and Beyonce‘s very own hairstylist, the inimitable Kim Kimble. The combined superpowers of this collective—Riley’s tireless research! The wigs Kimble created! Saun’s sewing costumes right onto the actors!—has resulted in not just a period-authentic, aesthetically sumptuous film, but also an unforgettable on-set experience for Deborah Ayorinde, who stars as eldest Dashwood daughter Elinor.
As any Black actor will tell you, there remains a lack of hair and makeup artists working in film and television who know how to work with Black skin and hair. “Obviously, people who look like me have gone underserved in the industry for far too long,” she agrees, heaving a huge sigh of relief that it wasn’t the case on S&S. “To be able to focus on my job and not worry about things that are not my job? That felt, for me, like, “OK, this is how it’s supposed to be.’ And hopefully that becomes the norm.”
Spoken like the forward-thinking kind of lady Austen would have loved.
Sense and Sensibility, Move Premiere, Saturday, February 24, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
