When Love & Friendship writer and director Whit Stillman began the task of adapting Jane Austen’s short epistolary novel Lady Susan for the screen, he knew it would be a long labor of love. But he was so captivated by the story (which was never published in the writer’s lifetime) and its sharp comedy that he kept it as a side project and worked on it in between paid gigs. Over a decade later the finished product, Love & Friendship, stars Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny and is being praised for its authentically Austenian charm and wit.

Lady Susan (Beckinsale) is, however, not your typical Austenian heroine. Beautiful but devious, the young widow is irresistible to men. On a search for a new husband for herself and one for her daughter, she heads to her in-laws to let the rumor mill die down about her possible involvement with a married man. Delightfully risqué for the times, it’s easy to see why Stillman was so taken with the story and spent the time needed to ensure it was written properly.

Creative Screenwriting spoke with him about the project.

Whit Stillman on set of Love & Friendship. Photo credit: Bernard Walsh, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

When did you first come across the story of Lady Susan and what form was it in?

It’s actually been published several times since 1871. Her literary nephew (James Edward Austen-Leigh) wrote a memoir of his aunt – A Memoir of Jane Austen – and he added a lot of the fragments and unpublished manuscripts that she had left to its second edition.

Apparently there was a dispute in the family about whether he should publish Lady Susan or not, because it wasn’t considered proper. We’re talking about the Victorian age, so they were very circumspect about what they printed. But it was published and it has been in different editions since then.

I personally saw it in an edition of Northanger Abbey – they put the fragments of Lady Susan behind the story to bulk up the edition. And in the novel I wrote, which is based on the film, I bulked up my edition by adding the original Lady Susan as the second half.

What kinds of challenges did its epistolary form present you with? What was the adaptation process like?

I knew that to do it well, it would take me a long time. I didn’t want to sweat over it and stress over it – I wanted to view it as something lighthearted and gay. I was doing paid work on other things and had this as my fun project, my lark – and I would slowly adapt it.

I pretty much did a quick dramatization of the letter material; shuffled it as dialogue scenes and encounters and did a very rough sort of edit of everything. I then worked from that very long, dialogue-heavy screenplay manuscript, so as not to be too overwhelmed by the original book itself.

How long did the process take from start to finish?

Very long – but it’s not as if I was working all the time. It took about ten years.

Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan Vernon. Photo credit: Bernard Walsh, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

Austen had such a sharp, yet subtle, wit. Did you have to adapt your writing style to match the flow and tone of her writing?

That’s really interesting. I guess I’m so influenced by her. For example, when I was writing my first script (Metropolitan), if I wanted to take a break I’d read part of one of her novels, like Mansfield Park or Pride and Prejudice, as a palate cleanser. Three paragraphs of Jane Austen, then back to work.

I love editing and rewriting – that’s sort of my background, more than primary writing. And so I was editing her sentences to try and make them suitable for dialogue.

This book – although she didn’t finish or publish it, and among many people it’s not very highly regarded – has in it some of her best written sentences and paragraphs. And some of her most beautifully funny constructions. There are a lot of gems. And maybe as a whole it’s something that hasn’t been fully baked, but it’s just absolutely wonderful material and has some great observations.

I didn’t see that much difference between the way I write and the way she writes. She’s a master and I guess I’m trying to write that way unconsciously! I don’t think people could tell the difference, particularly.

The broader comedy in the movie does come from what I wrote, because of the actors who were really good at performing that. So I was more writing for the actors, and that’s where we get away from Jane Austen.

Xavier Samuel as Reginald DeCourcy, Stephen Fry as Mr. Johnson and Jenn Murray as Lady Lucy Manwaring. Photo credit: Bernard Walsh, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

Did you have the opportunity to add in any new characters?

Yes. For instance, we have Mrs. Cross, her friend “who packs and unpacks”. Mrs. Cross was just invented so that the information that was normally imparted in letters to her friend Alicia could be imparted directly in person in conversation.

We can’t have Lady Susan running back to London to speak with her friend every two days. No, she’s going to be in Churchill. So then having this impoverished person who comes with her to be exploited and treated as a servant in Churchill was necessary.

The cool thing about that is that it starts as something that is just a functional gimmick to get some material into the film, but then she becomes her own character.

And then Mr. James Martin is a character who’s very important in the film. He isn’t really shown in her novel. He’s mentioned and he’s important, because he’s this kind of “opportunity and threat character” (opportunity of having a big income, but the threat of actually being stuck with him as a husband).

He’s described as a fool and it’s mentioned that he laughs inappropriately all the time, but what he says and what the matter is isn’t really there. So that character came in. And Tom Bennett, who played it, did such a brilliant job that I thought had to have more of him, scene after scene.

Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan Vernon and Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin. Photo credit: Bernard Walsh, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

We’ve become accustomed to the name “Austen” as synonymous with romance. This film tells such a different type of story with a different type of heroine. What did you most enjoy about working with this material?

That’s it. I wish less of the adaptations of Jane Austen veered towards conventional romantic fiction where her comic essence isn’t really being well-represented. Sometimes they’re done as very broad comedies of a certain kind…that’s not actually my kind. Like slapstick – that isn’t exactly what I think is the right way to go. Usually it’s these sort of conventional romantic stories; but this allowed us to have a “super essence” of Jane Austen comedy.

Almost all of Jane Austen’s writing has some comic element. She has a very cool, clear gaze that can be quite funny. The texture is just delightful. But this one is something different. It’s out and out comedy.

It’s really pretty extreme and pretty stylized. It’s not aiming for any kind of reality or for similitude with this character. We brought that back a little bit and made her more within the realm of possibility. But that was exciting – to have such good comic material.

Love & Friendship boasts some interesting portrayals of women – not just Lady Susan, but also many of the supporting characters. They all have a bit more of an edge than their male counterparts.

They have more of a brain too! They’re great.

Maybe we haven’t had a woman president yet…but women had avenues to power. They had ways of dominating things. Lady Susan is a character like that.

Chloë Sevigny as Alicia Johnson and Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan Vernon in Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship. Photo credit: Ross McDonnell, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

Tell me about the decision to change the title from Lady Susan to Love & Friendship – another of Austen’s unpublished works. From what I understand, it was also a sort of parody of romance that she wrote when she was quite young.

Yes, she had the title Love & Friendship for a very insignificant short story. As far as we know, she hadn’t titled this project. And I hate the title Lady Susan; it’s not a good title for cinema.

For me, deciding against the title was the first thing that happened. I really liked “Love & Friendship”, I think it’s much more Austenian and reflective of the direction she was going.

At this period, she was occasionally beginning projects with character names, but she almost invariably ended with very impressive titles, very impressive nouns or very impressive place names – like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey…those started out as “Elinor and Marianne” or “Susan” and so on. So I think it was really in keeping with the whole trajectory of what she was doing.

When I started, I said “well I just like this title and I want to use it, even though it has no relation to the story I’m telling”. But in finishing it, I really think it does relate to the story. I think that the friendship between Lady Susan and Alicia is very important and is an interesting one – it kind of defines the story. So I think it really is “Love & Friendship”.

Featured image: Chloë Sevigny as Alicia Johnson and Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan Vernon in Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship. Photo credit: Ross McDonnell, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

Before You Go

If you’re finished here, why not check out Austen’s Lady Susan on Amazon?