Esme Creed-Miles wears Fallon Puffer Jacket Après in Glacier Azure and Sweatpants Canada Goose.
Esmé Creed-Miles has avoided watching the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility because comparing herself to Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson felt too scary. Instead, the 26-year-old actor went into Georgia Oakley’s new adaptation of the Jane Austen classic blind, playing Marianne Dashwood as a girl who feels everything at full blast. It’s a big swing for an actress who spent her early twenties quietly recovering from a very different kind of exposure, the action series Hanna , and choosing indie work that let her stay comfortably unseen. She’s ready to brave the spotlight again, starting with this chat with her friend Cazzie David , about period piece face, rebellious girls, and ghosting, then and now.
CAZZIE DAVID: It’s so hard to do this and not catch up.
ESMÉ CREED-MILES: I know. How are you though?
CREED-MILES: I’m a little jet-lagged, but I’m good.
DAVID: You must be amazing because this is the best thing that could ever happen to anyone, giving a performance in a movie like this.
DAVID: I just died for you in this movie. It really reminds me of how I felt when I first saw Pride and Prejudice when I was a teenager. It was so intoxicating and makes even a cynic believe in true love and soulmates by the time it ends.
CREED-MILES: Oh, I love that. I’m such a cynic as well, and I’m actually probably more of a Brontë girl than an [Jane] Austen girl because of that. Georgia [Oakley] was really good at making it feel not frilly with the love, which made me like it more.
DAVID: We first bonded over our shared difficulty of surviving through the modern age. Do you feel like the late 1700s suited you better?
CREED-MILES: It’s really funny, when I went into it, I was like, “I’m going to be method,” because she’s so different from me. She’s the girl at school that I really wanted to be. She loves the ball and she’s got all the boys calling her, and I had short hair and was an absolute freak. So I was like, “Oh, I need to actually be really pretentious about this and pretend I’m someone else.” And then I was on my phone the entire time when we weren’t filming. [Laughs]
DAVID: You weren’t playing with sticks and developing hobbies and skills?
CREED-MILES: No, I was constantly on Reels.
DAVID : [Laughs] Marianne’s definitely more of a romantic idealist. Would you describe yourself as that?
CREED-MILES: No and yes. I definitely relate to the extremity that she experiences emotion. I have that thing when I’m in love, it’s everything to me, but I also am not as delusional.
DAVID: What’s so amazing when you watch or read anything from that era is that it really reminds you how women have been having the same conversations about men for centuries.
DAVID: Women are still crying over the same exact things that men are doing. You were just getting ghosted via letters.
DAVID: They did that scene where Elinor’s anxious every single time the door opens because she thinks it’s going to be him. And it’s like, “Oh, that’s just the feeling of your phone lighting up.” It’s such an iconic role. Obviously, I want to know how you prepared for it.
CREED-MILES: I’m not a super conscious actor. I try to be really instinctive where I can be. I really leaned on Daisy [Edgar Jones] because she’s so well-read and was always holding the whole story for everyone. She could always locate where we were at in the arc of a character or a plot.
DAVID: You guys created such an amazing depiction of a sisterly bond. I, oftentimes, will watch people play sisters because I have a sister, and I’m like, “No, we’re not cuddling and constantly having fun. We’re usually fighting.” Do you have a sister in real life?
CREED-MILES: For a lot of our relationship, I was an adult and she was a kid, and now that she’s an adult, we’re best friends. I’m really grateful that she’s really cool. I love her very much.
DAVID: That age difference is probably helpful. Me and my sister are two years apart, and everyone our whole lives was like, “When you’re older, you’re going to get along so well.” And it’s like, “Okay, well, how old am I supposed to be at this point? 90?”
DAVID: I’m older. Everyone thinks she’s older because she looks more put together. What do you think your sister would say is your best and worst trait?
CREED-MILES: I hope she would say that I’m there to pick up the pieces when people’s chips are down. And worst is that I can be a little histrionic and that takes up space where other people need space.
DAVID: It would’ve been so fun growing up if we shared stuff, but something happened where when we were younger, I must’ve borrowed something and lost it. So neither of us share with each other, and it’s so upsetting because that’d be the most fun thing about having a sister. But it’s this thing when someone knows you for so long, they think you’re still a teenager and that you have the same qualities.
CREED-MILES: We share a lot, although I give her all of my teen reject clothes, and she’s so happy about them, and I’m so happy they’re not in my closet anymore.
DAVID: I really felt the urge watching this movie to run down a hill as fast as I could in tall grass in a dress. I recently wrote an article about the death of sitting in the grass with your lover in film and TV because of the tick situation.
CREED-MILES: Everyone has Lyme disease now.
DAVID: I know. Well, it seems like if you film something now and you’re sitting in grass, it dates it because nobody does it anymore because of the ticks. Were there ticks where you were filming?
CREED-MILES: I was so worried about ticks. Yolanda Hadid really got into my head as a teenager because I was like, “Everyone’s going to think I have Munchausen’s.” That was too formative for me to sit in grass. It’s an issue.
DAVID: You wouldn’t expect the effects of that to seep into the movies. I would say it’s that and beauty ideals for period pieces. They’ve gotten out of control, especially in Hollywood, so much that it’s started to become a problem in period pieces where you’re watching it and you’re like, “Okay, I don’t think they had Instagram face and veneers in the Regency era.”
CREED-MILES: I honestly think it’s quite flattering when people say that to me. I’m like, “I hope I do have an Instagram face. Thank you so much.”
Mira Bomber, T-Shirt, and Pants Canada Goose.
DAVID: It’s a huge compliment. I think I have “period-piece face.” You could do both obviously, but “period-piece face” is just that you haven’t had any modern work done. I always look up everyone’s age when I’m watching a movie. Do you do that?
DAVID: I watched the original Sense and Sensibility the other night and I looked up Emma Thompson’s age when she played Elinor and she was 35. I felt good about that because maybe I still have time to use my period-piece face.
CREED-MILES: I love that, especially for women, because there’s so much young success right now, and when you see people doing things not when they’re 23, it’s really cool.
DAVID: Did you watch the original adaptation before?
CREED-MILES: I actually have not seen it.
CREED-MILES: For some reason, it missed me, and I was like, “I don’t know if I want to have that in my head.” So I didn’t watch it before we shot, and I still haven’t seen it. I don’t know if I will ever watch it. I feel like it would be terrifying.
DAVID: You bring something so different, but it’s such an incredible movie.
CREED-MILES: If it was two shit actresses, I would watch it, but they’re two icons, so I don’t want to be comparing myself to Kate [Winslet] and Emma.
DAVID: When you were trying to go method, did you learn about the skincare of the late 1700s?
CREED-MILES: Not enough, let me tell you. Georgia was like, “No, we’re really going to do no makeup.” And I was like, “But come on.” I’d never done that in a movie before. I usually do a lot of “no makeup” makeup. Girls are so worried about having your normal face. Hardcore sucks.
DAVID: That’s why I would say the arrival of Clavicular really made me laugh because it was like, “Oh, guys are just feeling the way that girls have been feeling for our entire lives.”
CREED-MILES: People are really mad she has her hair down.
DAVID: Because that’s not historically accurate?
CREED-MILES: What we discussed when we made those choices was like, you had beauty conventions of the era, just like we have them now. And in the comfort of your own home, there would’ve been rebellious girls being like, “Fuck that,” just as there are now.
Almira Striped Polo, Sweatpants, and Sunglasses Canada Goose.
CREED-MILES: We don’t have depictions of the interior lives of these people because it’s all posed portraiture, and I find it really hard to believe that there wouldn’t have been some teenage girls who were whipping their ankles out to piss off whoever they did.
DAVID: But it’s so funny, you would sit for one painting your whole life. The amount of photos we’ve taken of ourselves now, it would be so crazy to tell your character back then this is what it would be like. If you could show her one thing from the modern era, what would you show her?
CREED-MILES: Location share. I think she would benefit from that.
DAVID: And if you could bring back something from that era, what would you bring?
CREED-MILES: Maybe not having location share.
DAVID: I just imagine if they knew what we do to our faces now, like, “Oh, we take blood out and we put it all over our faces.”
CREED-MILES: I love that shit. I’ve had one of those blood facials before where they dot it all over your face with the little mini needles.
DAVID: It actually feels like something from the 1800s. It doesn’t feel like a modern day type of skincare.
DAVID: Would you rather have to get everywhere by horse and buggy or send your texts through carrier pigeon?
CREED-MILES: Carrier pigeon because it would remove the obsessive controlling vibe I have about various forms of communication in my life. I’m like, “Well, it’s up to the pigeon now.” Also because I didn’t have to go by horse and buggy, if someone isn’t responding to my pigeon, I’ll just get helicopter to be like, “The fuck?”
DAVID: Do you think you’re sense or sensibility?
CREED-MILES: I am sensibility, unfortunately.
DAVID: Obviously your character suffers a really bad heartbreak in the movie. Have you learned anything from your own heartbreaks? I’d want to know what you would tell your character.
CREED-MILES: It’s weird because I came out a few years ago and I feel like Marianne could be a little gay. I’d be like, “Just hold out until you meet your girl.”
DAVID: I do think back then it’s so interesting because they really did have max two options.
Almira Striped Polo, Sweatpants, and Sunglasses Canada Goose.
DAVID: It must’ve been so much easier like, “Yeah, of course I’m going to be with this person. They’re the only person in a 500-foot radius.”
CREED-MILES: And they’re probably your relative, which means at least you have something in common.
DAVID: So many modern things about this movie, her fully crashing out over this guy. It’s the same shit that happens today that anyone could watch it and be like, “There’s no difference between girlhood now and girlhood back then besides everything else, obviously.”
CREED-MILES: That’s what we really wanted to do actually, make them feel, not modern as in trying to do something different, but just make it really clear that they weren’t at their core different.
CREED-MILES: Not about the movie because I think it’s really good, and I usually don’t feel that way. I don’t think I realized how vulnerable I would feel being in something like this so it’s this conflicting thing of not wanting to be seen and then also I really want everyone to see the film because it’s amazing.
DAVID: It’s spectacular. Working on Hanna , you probably got as much prep as anyone could ever need for anything ever again.
CREED-MILES: I mean, Hanna , I really checked out emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, and it wasn’t the success that they anticipated it to be, or that I necessarily was told to prepare for, which I think is such a godsend. I was so young and I don’t think I could’ve handled that kind of Stranger Things -esque stratospheric reception. I really have enjoyed the comfort of doing indie things and not feeling too exposed. I’ve had to stop shit-posting, and that’s been a real grief process for me.
DAVID: I’m obsessed with your shit-posting. I’ll be really sad to not see it anymore.
CREED-MILES: No, it will stay on the Close Friends, but it can’t be on main anymore. I got a lot of dopamine out of shit-posting and talking about people in the media on my Instagram because people suck and they need to be called out for their bullshit. But now–
DAVID: You can’t. It’s a really big bummer. Was Hanna based on a book also?
CREED-MILES: No, it was based on another movie that Joe Wright made.
DAVID: I was going to ask if there’s any movie adaptation that you think was better than the book.
CREED-MILES: A lot of Lynn Ramsey’s films are book adaptations. I’ve never read her source material, but she is my favorite filmmaker, and I can’t imagine anything comparing to her version of expressing an idea.
DAVID: Wow, amazing. I was going to say Divergent. [Laughs]
CREED-MILES: Maybe Hunger Games. Twilight ?
DAVID: I don’t know if Twilight was better than the book. It’s a more fun experience. This is going to be controversial. I think Normal People was a better adaptation.
CREED-MILES: I never read Normal People , but I loved the show, so you may be right.
DAVID: What’s your favorite Jane Austen novel?
CREED-MILES: I’m going to say Sense or Sensibility . [Laughs]
DAVID: I think that’s good. I’ll see you on Close Friends.
Makeup: Kate Lee using Chanel Beauty at Forward Artists.
Source: Fashion
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