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Steven Knight’s production of Great Expectations, starring Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham, is taking a ‘darker’ turn.
In the upcoming series of Charles Dickens’ classic novel, The Crown star will join Fionn Whitehead and Shalom Brune-Franklin as Pip and Estella, respectively.
‘What I didn’t want to do – and I think Dickens never sought to do – was make anything explicitly political,’ said Peaky Blinders creator Knight, who has previously adapted Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
‘He was never banging the drum; he was just explaining, “This is what’s going on,” and people were free to take their own conclusions. Some aspects of sexuality, criminality, and rebellion against the queen and state were prohibited in Dickens’ day.’
‘What I tried to do was picture if Dickens was writing the narrative now and given the opportunity to go to those darker realms, what would he do,’ he told The Daily Mail. If he had been able to write about the topics he wasn’t allowed to write about.’
Speaking about one scene, which sees Matt Berry spanked as he plays Mr Pumblechook, Colman said: ‘The first time I read Steven Knight’s script, I thought it was much darker than what I had remembered from school. Quite a few bottom-slapping moments, which I did not recall from the original Dickens! There were quite a few changes and I found it quite gripping.’
Mistress Havisham, whose creepy visage has previously been teased, is also an opium addict in the adaptation.
Knight makes further references to the British Empire’s involvement in the slave trade, and the first episode opens with Pip considering suicide rather than being accosted by Magwitch.
The chilling trailer begins with Miss Havisham warning Pip: ‘When I was young, I was blinded by love, now look on what remains of me.’
Olivia’s Miss Havisham, dressed in her fated wedding gown and hidden in the darkness of her devastated home, interviews Pip before seeing him grow.
The video then switches to an adolescent Pip becoming closer to Estella, from playing games together as kids to learning ballroom dance moves in each other’s arms.
‘Innocent, seconds before the big corruption,’ interrupted Miss Havisham’s hair-raising voice.
When Pip falls in love with Estella, he is exposed to the world around them, and he is forced to confront violence, poverty, and everything he had previously avoided.
Meanwhile, he must woo Estella, who has been educated not to love men, while she remains Miss Havisham’s ‘weapon of love’ and ‘prized creation’.
Great Expectations will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer later this year.
Source My Celebrity Life.
