"I wrote endless drafts": "Sanditon" boss on the pressures of giving Jane Austen fans closure

It took 206 years, but at long last "Sanditon" heroine Charlotte Heywood got her man, even if he's not the original one that Jane Austen may have intended. 

On PBS' "Masterpiece" adaptation Sunday night, the broody yet handsome widower Alexander Colbourne (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) pulls the Regency equivalent of chasing after someone to the airport by galloping up to Charlotte's (Rose Williams) carriage on a seaside cliff before she leaves for Ireland. After clearing up a mutual misunderstanding – neither one is engaged to other people – they're able to finally acknowledge their love for each other. 

Colbourne channels his best Darcy for this swoonworthy declaration:

"You bewitched me in the very first moment we met, and ever since my affections have not wavered. Indeed, they've only grown deeper with every second I've spent in your company. I cannot imagine how fathomless they might be once we've shared a lifetime together."

Both that scene and the ensuing declaration caused "Sanditon" head writer Justin Young no small amount of agony.

"That was one of the hardest things, writing those declaration of love moments because everyone's waiting for them," Young told Salon in a Zoom interview. "Personally, I'm allergic to people saying, 'I love you' [onscreen]. I think it's very rarely romantic. Most romantic declarations of love in cinema – whether it's 'Shut up and deal,' or 'I really hate you, Harry' – they're not people saying, 'I love you' in so many words. So there was pressure, and I wrote endless drafts." 

Of course, there's added pressure that comes with this particular production. It's likely the only "Sanditon" adaptation that's had the temerity to kill off its original love interest, Sidney Parker, after actor Theo James left at the end of the first season. Low British TV ratings and that massive casting setback seemed to spell doom for Charlotte and her seaside friends.

But then the Sanditon Sisterhood stepped in, a decidedly vocal and insistent group of fans whose voices gained traction after the stateside airing of the first season. On the strength of that response, "Masterpiece" teamed up with Britbox to make sure that Austen's partial 1817 manuscript wouldn't go unfinished yet again.

That necessitated the aforementioned offing of Sidney, letting Charlotte mourn (no fickle heroines here) and introducing a suitable man who wasn't a replacement, so much as a viable love interest who could commiserate a bit with Charlotte's heartache and regrets. Fans eventually embraced the rather damaged Colbourne, and after that it all became about sticking the landing.

"The race to the airport thing is something we debated long and hard," said Young. "The big question was, did we go back to those cliffs – back to the scene where we ended Season 1 with this heartbreaking, unresolved note? The reason that the show came back in many respects was because people said, 'You can't leave us there on the cliff with Charlotte brokenhearted. We need a resolution.'

"I hemmed and hawed and I thought, is that too on the nose? So we really, really, really debated – I can't tell you. And ultimately, it felt like a kind of gift and an acknowledgement of the fans who had said, 'You can't leave her here.' It felt like we were giving closure to all those people." 

Rose Williams as Charlotte Heywood and Ben Lloyd-Hughes as Alexander Colbourne in "Sanditon" (PBS)Not all online fan campaigns are as successful, much less acknowledged so openly. Young has made no secret of how he enjoyed their responsiveness and support. While the creation of "Sandition" was a collaborative effort among "Masterpiece," historical consultants and an inclusive writers' room, Young acknowledges the impact that the Sanditon Sisterhood had on him as a creative.

"It's easy to try and stress, particularly with a show like this, to treat it as an intellectual exercise," said Young. "To go, 'Well, this has to be really clever and this has to work on a number of levels.' But one of the things I was reminded of was, first and foremost, audiences need an emotional response. That's what I've gotten from the Sanditon Sisterhood and from those fans. I would rather make people feel something than have them think that I'm really clever. You're not trying to impress people, you're trying to move them."

Check out the rest of Young's interview in which he discusses why there are so many damn couples this season, the ways "Sanditon" breaks with Austen (but not history) and musings for a fourth season that absolutely will not happen.

The following has edited for lengthy and clarity.

This season I found that the language for the declarations were eerily reminiscent of Austen. Colbourne's climactic speech halfway gave me Darcy vibes. But there was also one direct quote as well. I'm thinking of the "Persuasion" phrase "pierce my soul," which Edward (Jack Fox) uses in a letter. How difficult is it to give nods to Austen and yet not lift from her directly?

I've seen people online saying that those are all conscious nods, and in all honesty, I don't think we would consciously be that on the nose about it. Prior to starting this, I read every single Austen novel. You do start thinking in a certain way, and there are certain words if you're thinking in that headspace that come to mind, like the word "bewitched." I know people have picked up on that, but "bewitched" is the word you would use in that mode.

As for "pierced my soul" – we all had "Persuasion" on our mind because for a lot of us on the production it's our favorite novel of Austen's, and we wanted Season 3 to have a slightly more grown-up "Persuasion" feel. So I can only think that someone had absorbed that, and . . . I will cop to the fact that I wish I could have gone back and gone, "That's just too close, and let's tweak that." We were under such pressure, sometimes we were rewriting stuff the night before. 

But actually, it kind of works because Edward is not somebody who will have his own material; he's somebody who would borrow from somebody else. But anyway, I hope people will forgive us.

Since "Sanditon" is no longer dipping its toe into the overt sex pond, it adds weight and tension to the smaller moments, like when Charlotte and Colbourne touch the back of their hands at the recital, which is more in keeping with Austen. What went into creating these unspoken moments?

In talking to "Masterpiece," who were incredibly collaborative and helpful, they really felt they needed those romantic moments and they were really keen that we needed something as early as possible, to remind the audience to get the audience believing in that chemistry. In Episode 2, there's a moment where she drops a glove. Then there's the moment of the recital. I was wary. I thought it's a little bit much. If it was down to me, I probably would have just had them six feet apart for the season. But this is why you work with clever people. Looking back on it, I'm very happy to concede I was wrong.

And because we had this really intense schedule, the actors were called every single day for  six months. They were working, working, working. In an ideal world, we would have had more time for Charlotte and Colbourne to be together, and we just couldn't. So we had to really make the moments where they were together count, to try and sell them as hard as we could to the audience as a viable romantic love story with the amount of space that we had.

Crystal Clarke as Georgiana Lambe in "Sanditon" (PBS)Moving on to Georgiana Lambe (Crystal Clarke), when her inheritance is threatened, she enters into this legal battle, during which she discovers that the story she was told her whole life was a lie. It turns out that her wealthy white father didn't have this great love for her mother, someone he had enslaved, but in fact sold her to an American. Why was that revelation important for Georgiana to have this season?

One of the things we really shifted with Season 2 and 3 was trying to make sure we had people of color on all behind the camera. We had directors, in the writers room, researching across the board. That was a storyline where we referred to our advisor, S.I. Martin, who's an expert in Black history. Then Robin French, who is writer of color of ours, we asked him to take the research and go away and think about what that story could be. We knew we wanted some kind of revelation in the court case that would drive the second half of the story for Georgiana that would basically make her think that marriage to the wrong man would be protection for her. And so again, really, it came down to the nature of the story we wanted to tell.

One of the interesting things that came out of dealing with Black history is how different one's perception of slavery is as an American and as a Brit. We've both got a really shameful history, but it's a subtly different perspective in that, as a white Englishman, I grew up believing we were the good guys. The history we were taught in schools was that yeah, we abolished slavery – and the reckoning that has been happening in our country over the last five years that's been long overdue, is that actually, it's far more complicated than that. All of these big houses that we've all watched in period dramas were built on the proceeds of slavery. All of these big rich, ostensibly good Englishmen were often slave owners or benefited from slavery.

So the story we wanted to tell took a bit of trial and error. We didn't want it to feel preachy, we didn't want it to feel like a history lesson. But it would have been disingenuous to say there was a white slave owner and he treated this woman terrifically. He probably didn't respect this woman. We wanted to tell a story that was about the real history of colonialism.

I don't know much about the British legal system, especially during the Regency era, but I did find it odd that Georgiana's friend Arthur Parker (Turlough Convery) wasn't called in as a character witness to say how badly Lockhart (Alexander Vlahos) hoodwinked them both. Was there a reason why that didn't happen?

If you research, just about any person of color who had money in England at that time, more often than not, they were sued by their white relatives. So a lot of that case was very much taken from reality. And I recall, there was a draft where Arthur absolutely was in court. But in that scenario, I think part of the case made against Miss Lambe was that she and Arthur had had an inappropriate relationship. That was an early draft. I can't honestly remember now 18 months later, why Arthur's involvement didn't last. But I think we needed Arthur, I think it was a combination of story and I strongly suspect sheduleding. We probably couldn't have [Turlough] on the in the courtroom on the days that we were filming those scenes.

Kris Marshall and Kate Ashfield as Tom and Mary Parker in "Sanditon" (PBS)Well, he had to stay in Sanditon to fall in love Harry.  Speaking of, this was quite the season for multiple love stories. I felt that people were coupling up more than in a Shakespearean comedy. Why did that happen this season when there were only six episodes to fit all that in?

When we first went to the actors to pitch Season 2 and 3 [which were shot back to back], I literally had to pitch every single actor their entire [arc]. And in order to persuade them to give us their time, I had to make it worth their while. I couldn't say, "You're going to sit in the background for six episodes." I had to get them. "Here is some really juicy stuff for you to get your teeth into." And when it comes to Jane Austen, there's only so many stories you can tell.

We pitched two or three stories about Tom, which got knocked back. There was one story I was quite fond of where he accidentally became the owner of a brothel. He got tricked into it by being just charming, and he had no idea what he was doing till Mary pointed out, "Those ladies are not charming ladies, Tom." But quite rightly "Masterpiece said, "Yeah, no. That's not gonna fly."

The upshot is that we get some older love stories of people who aren't just in their 20s. And in the case of Tom (Kris Marshall) and Mary Parker (Kate Ashleigh), theirs is one where they're already married. In this case, Tom is ignoring Mary's wisdom about the people in Old Town who'd be displaced by his hotel plans. How did that come about?

We did a few different versions of Tom and Mary. There was an early version, where there's an opera singer, we meet in Episode 2. She's called Elizabeth Greenhorn [Josette Simon], and there was an early version where Tom became enthralled by her and decides that he's gonna become a manager. He basically wanted to get into theater, and Mary got jealous. That felt too much like an extramarital affair story as we were developing it. We thought that just feels unpleasant within the context of our world. It didn't quite fit.

We needed a story where Mary can have her own agency. We get little glimpses of her backstory, she talks about who she was before she got married to Tom and she married a little bit later. She's a kind of feminist born a little too early. After Season 1, Mary says, you know, Tom's got two wives: Sanditon and Mary. So he's got these two wives, he's got to choose the right one, and he almost doesn't till he loses the wife that he really loves. That's his lesson really,.

That was absolutely deliberate, the older love stories. I'm in my late 40s, and I like a rom-com with young, beautiful people, but I also like seeing myself onscreen sometimes. Love stories come in every different variety, and they have just as much value as two young, beautiful people falling in love. So hopefully, everybody can see their own life reflected or their own age group reflected. I like to see James Bolam and Ann Reid [as Pryce and Lady Denham] flirting just as much as I like to see the younger characters. It's just as fun and funny and charming.

Liam Garrigan as Samuel Colbourne and Sophie Winkleman as Lady Susan in "Sanditon" (PBS)Someone who gets a love story this time around is Lady Susan (Sophie Winkleman), a widow who's also understood to be the mistress of the king. Was it freeing to be able to write for a woman who had more freedom, who didn't need a chaperone, but at the same time had to contend with the hypocrisy in how people treated her?

Oh, for sure. She was a fairy godmother in Season 1. She was there to tell Charlotte what she was thinking. But Sophie Winkleman, what she brings is that sophistication. I thought, well, what we can do here is play something that's actually really quite a sophisticated love story. When we knew that we had Samuel [Colbourne, played by Liam Garrigan] coming in – a man of the world, a man who has been around – I thought, wouldn't it be lovely to have a love story that's not about that innocence that's kind of judgmental or prudish, whatever. It allowed us to show a different flavor of love story, which was not about love's bright, young dream. It's about somebody who knows better than that, that the world is a pretty brutal place. 

We also get a queer story for Arthur. What went into creating his love interest, Harry Montrose (Edward Davis), who's a duke, a man of privilege and fully cognizant of his own sexuality? 

You're looking for how some characters intersect. If Harry's got a title but is poor, that gives him an interesting dynamic with Georgiana [who's an heiress], because they're going to need each other. That led us to the idea of them having this fake romance. The research that we did is that often people were aware of these couples, but they weren't necessarily out in a contemporary sense.

And this story was about the awakening for Arthur, a man who doesn't yet realize who he is. With Harry we thought it was about contrast. Arthur is so good and innocent, what if Harry initially at least is a bit of a rogue, a bit of a naughty boy and a bit of a player? His way of dealing with himself is just to stay up all night and get drunk and misbehave. Arthur, for him, represents a kind of odd honesty and the kind of acceptance and the kind of warmth and all of those things. 

When I very first pitched it to "Masterpiece," way back in the very first pitch, I said, "I want to write an Austen proposal but for two men. I want to see how you could do that." We went round and round, and the final scene with them – my initial intention was that Harry would say to Arthur, we were to get  the grand proposal: "Come and live with me in my house, and we'll live happily ever after." It felt in the draft a little disingenuous, a little too optimistic.  I don't know whether we should have given them the big happy ending like everybody else, but of course, they can't just kiss in the middle of the street [in that time].

Edward Davis as Harry Montrose, Crystal Clarke as Georgiana Lambe and Turlough Convery as Arthur Parker in "Sanditon" (PBS)How did you settle on pheasant and grouse as a period-appropriate metaphor for sexual preferences?

It was two things. It was loosely inspired by "Spartacus," that snails and oysters scene. But also, it was about the specific context they found themselves in. They were at a shooting party;  they're shooting grouse, they're shooting pheasant. it felt like a kind of obvious, coded way of saying that. Then funnily enough, I think somebody told me that "House of the Dragon" came up with a similar metaphor. It's a cosmic coincidence.

When I first gave them that scene, the grouse scene, I got a really interesting email from Turlough, who was concerned that it might read as comedic. And I said, "Honestly, the intention is not to be comedic at all. If you play it completely, naturally, I really don't think it'll read as that."

Jack Fox as Edward Denham and Eloise Webb as Augusta Markham in "Sanditon" (PBS)The Edward and Augusta Markham (Eloise Webb) relationship was probably the most contentious, I think, for two reasons. One, Edward's history. People can't forget that he poisoned his sister. But also last season we saw Augusta as a child in a schoolroom. Technically I think she is of age at this point. In our modern view, she's not old enough to be getting married, but of course at the time, that's probably not that big of a deal. How did you navigate this?

We really worried about this one, for all the reasons you've said. In the context and the time, that would have been completely normal. I think had we been pitching a story where we've been saying to the audience, "We want you to really invest in this as a beautiful love story for the ages," then I think it would have been a little bit different. When the first episodes were going out, people were kind of going, "Are they trying to get us to buy into this? They tried to get us to ship these people?" And I was like, "No, we're not. We're not that naive." What we were saying was, "This is a story that is uncomfortable. And she is younger than he is, but she is smarter than he is." With Edward, it was never, "Oh, let's redeem him." It was, "Can he find a light glimmer of humanity?" That's where we get into by the end of the season. He actually does have feelings for this girl, he actually does do the right thing, albeit by being brutal.

When we were having hypothetical conversations about Season 4 – but realized this really was the end – we talked about Arthur and Harry's continuing story of them, and it would be Edward as hot priest. We love the idea of Edward as a hot priest. We see him at the end, and he's now a priest, but he's still a priest with a roving eye for the ladies.

I'm glad you confirmed it, because it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. I had to rewind and look again. "Is that Edward wearing priests robes?" 

Oh, there's so much stuff that was in my draft for Episode 6, that we had to just prune because it was so much. We had the journey that got Edward to the priesthood. I wrote several scenes about how he actually had been to Cambridge University, but got kicked out for some scandal that he created. Then there was a moment where he was like, "I'm not going to be a priest." And Reverend Hankins (Kevin Eldon) said to him, "Yeah, it's it's onerous having people worship you all the time and not having to do any work." And Edward's like, "Hang on, so I don't have to do anything and people tell me I'm great all the time? And I get paid for this?" So so there was a bit more connective tissue that we didn't have space for in the end. There just wasn't too much time spent with Edward alas. I love Jack and I love what he does with that character because he's abhorrent, but gleefully so.

Emma Fielding as Lady Montrose, Alice Orr-Ewing as Lydia Montrose and Edward Davis as Harry Montrose in "Sanditon" (PBS)Harry's sister Lydia Montrose (Alice Orr-Ewing) I know was developed to create an option for Colbourne, but she became enjoyable in her own right. She's the only one who gets a love story but we don't get to meet the suitor. What happened there?

I see Lydia is one of my big regrets if I'm honest, because Alice who played her is so brilliant. I'm really proud of the character we came up with because it would have been very easy for her to just be kind of the baddie, but she really isn't. She's witty, she's funny and she's lovely. She likes horses and dogs. . . . We did have the story where we wondered about whether her love interest was in Sanditon, maybe a groomsman of Colbourne's or something. That felt too easy. I can't even remember if the scene got filmed or not, but I wrote a scene, between Lady Montrose [Emma Fielding] and her two children after everything has gone wrong. She's accusing Lydia of marrying a farmhand, and he's not at all. He's got a good estate, and he's a respectable guy, but he's just not on the status that lady Montrose wants for her daughter. So we imagined him as a nice guy who loves the outdoors, a few miles away, and they'd been writing secret letters to each other. In that scene, Lady Montrose is like, "Well, if you're not gonna find rich husbands and wives for yourself, I'll just have to do it. I'm capable of being very charming when I want to." So Season 4 could have been Lady Montrose finds a rich husband, which would have been a joy.

I like how a very full hypothetical Season 4 has already taken shape.

Let me emphasize it's never going to happen. Throughout the whole process, there were a lot of notes for a long time about make sure you leave some strands open and make sure you don't close everything off for Season 4. After we finished writing Season 3, we thought actually no, this is it. We were done. And I'm glad of that. I think it would have been diminishing returns, Knowing that it's now this triptych is quite pleasing. It's self-contained and exists. 

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You've said that you are working on other things. Anything you can talk about?

Oh, it's very early. TV development takes a very long time. I've got six or seven projects in different stages. I'm keen to kind of spread my wings, get a range of different tones. . . . You're always trying to think what can I bring to the party that maybe not every writer can? And I do quite like writing those romantic scenes with wit and romance. So we're in a golden age of romantic comedy again, praise be. So I'd love to have a go at writing some of those. One of the things I'm working on is a Christmas romantic thing, which I would love to get made. So yeah, watch this space for that.

Christmas and romance seems to go together and has created its own subgenre. Why do you feel like that works together?

Oh, my goodness, that's such a good question. Why is it? Because there's a lot of moments in "Love Actually," where people say things like, "Because it's Christmas!" and "At Christmas, people tell each other . . ."  But then you go, "Not in my house, not in my family." So why is it in movies that? I think it's because it's naturally photogenic and heightened. And you've now got this kind of incredible industrial complex of Lifetime, Hallmark movies, which I'm fascinated by. There's hundreds of them every year, and they hit the same exact beats. And that's why people love them. People love them. I have huge respect for the fact they do that. I genuinely don't know. But you're right. This is a genre in itself. But I look forward to the first person to crack the Eid romantic comedy or the Hanukkah romantic comedy or the Kwanzaa romantic comedy. Why is it Christmas gets to have the monopoly on romantic movies?