Daisy Edgar-Jones says fields in County Fermanagh helped prepare her for Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. The 28-year-old tied that preparation to long summers in the countryside, giving the new Jane Austen adaptation a specific Irish reference point rather than a generic period-drama gloss.
Fields in County Fermanagh
“I remember big long summers when I was very young in Fermanagh in the fields which definitely helped with my Sense and Sensibility journey because I was doing a lot of the similar wandering around, with not much to do, under the big sky and I love being here,” Edgar-Jones said. She also said: “I always feel so welcome and the people are incredible.”
The film is made by Focus Features and Working Title, and that production setup places Sense and Sensibility back into a market where Jane Austen material still gets reworked through cast and location. The 1811 novel has been adapted many times, but the 1995 version with Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant remains the benchmark most viewers will reach for first.
Caitriona Balfe and Tydavnet
Caitriona Balfe plays Mrs Dashwood in the film, and her own history gives the project a second Irish thread. She grew up in a family of seven in Tydavnet, County Monaghan, and said starring in the film reminded her of her own childhood.
Balfe also said, “There was a lot of that sisterly dynamic that I recognised,” and added, “This is one of the beautiful things about this film is watching the richness of this family.”
The Dashwood family
“One of the words that kept coming to me was the resilience of them - even though they were destitute financially, what you see when they go to Barton is actually this blossoming, because they have each other,” Balfe said. That line lands because the Dashwood family is written as penniless after their father’s death, yet the film’s emotional engine sits in how the sisters reorganize around each other rather than around money.
Fiona Shaw plays Mrs Jennings and Bodhi Rae Breathnach plays Margaret, widening the film’s Irish-linked cast beyond Edgar-Jones and Balfe. Balfe said she speaks with her husband about moving back to Ireland “all the time,” while also adding, “I’m so proud to be Irish and it’s such an amazing time in Ireland right now for all the incredible art that is being produced here and to be able to bring this film here is really special,” which fits a production that leans hard on place as part of performance.
For readers tracking what changes in this remake, the useful signal is not a plot twist but a production attitude: the film is using Ireland as a lived performance reference, not just a backdrop. That makes the Irish cast and Edgar-Jones’s Fermanagh memory part of the film’s identity, and it is the clearest clue yet that this Sense and Sensibility is being built around texture, not imitation.
