Spoilers below for The Other Bennet Sister through episode nine
In the penultimate episode of The Other Bennet Sister, Mary Bennet (Ella Bruccoleri) does something that will shock anyone who has been rooting for her. Standing on a rain-soaked mountainside set in the Lake District in northwest England, with a storm closing in and two men pulling her in opposite directions, she sides with the wrong one.
Filmed last summer at Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales, the sequence is one of the most dramatic in Janice Hadlow’s source novel, and the production did not soften it, both in terms of dramatic and practical effects. “We got off the mountain, and there was a day where we were meant to film the scenes at the mountain where it was really stormy, sunny, all of the storm,” Bruccoleri tells T&C. “And those days we had a storm, and then the days where we were meant to be in the storm, we had beautiful weather. So it was so annoying. We had all these huge rain machines. I don’t think any of it is CGI; it’s all the rain machine.”
At the start of episode nine, the cast of characters set out from the inn on a group expedition up Scafell Pike, instigated by Mr. Ryder’s (Laurie Davidson) fanciful notion to follow in the path of William Wordsworth, whose poetry was often linked to the Lake District. However, just as in the novel, not everyone in the traveling party has an easy time making it up the hill. (Not to mention 19th-century daytime wear isn’t exactly what you see sold at REI now.) When the Hursts (Lucinda Dryzek and Fergus Craig) struggle on the ascent, the Gardiners (Indira Varma and Richard Coyle) escort them down, leaving Mary, Mr. Hayward (Dónal Finn), Mr. Ryder, and Caroline Bingley (Tanya Reynolds) to continue to the summit.
After reaching the summit and enjoying lunch there, Hayward pulls Mary aside to confess his feelings, only to be abruptly interrupted by Ryder over a financial matter. Upon return, Hayward’s mood shifts entirely, leaving Mary bewildered. When a guide warns of an approaching storm, Ryder tells the group they should stay, while Hayward sides with the guide. Mary appears torn, but when pressed by Hayward, she decides to stay with Ryder. Not wanting to leave Ryder and Mary alone, out of jealousy rather than concern, Caroline stays back as well.
As predicted, the weather turns fast, so the group leaves in a panic and rushes down the hill. Caroline slips in the fray and traps her foot in a boulder, with only Mary to help her out. Hayward comes back for them to help them down the mountain, but when they reach the inn, Ryder is already there, having left everyone behind.
This episode put Mary in physical danger while also being one of her most emotionally exposed moments. After several episodes of will-they-or-won’t-they, she believed she was on the verge of a marriage proposal from Hayward, only for him to go inexplicably cold when he returned from his conversation with Ryder. When Hayward then attempts to move the group off the mountain, the manner of it is the problem. “He’s kind of being like, ‘I said we all need to go down the mountain,’” Bruccoleri explains. “He thinks he’s being helpful and trying to potentially save their lives, but he’s being really patriarchal about it. He’s kind of like, ‘I’m putting my foot down, so we should all go down the mountain.’”
Mary’s decision to side with Mr. Ryder and remain there is not, Bruccoleri is careful to say, simply recklessness: “I think it’s almost a slightly self-sabotage act, where she’s kind of like, ‘Fuck it,’ basically. Like, ‘You’re being a dick to me right now, so no, I’m going to side with your friend and I’m going to stay up the mountain, and I couldn’t feel any worse than I feel right now, so I’m going to stay up here and get completely soaked if that’s what happens.’”
What Ryder offers, however imperfectly, is the one thing Hayward has withheld. “At least Ryder speaks his mind, says how he feels,” Bruccoleri says. “In that moment, Mary’s desperate to achieve that from Tom. She’s like, ‘Please, just speak to me. Why has this gone wrong? Just speak to me.’ And he’s not that kind of character.”
Hayward’s exit line—that he was fond of “the old Mary”—lands as its own kind of injury. “It feels like a guilt tactic. It feels a bit controlling, maybe, to get her to do what he wants her to do,” Bruccoleri says. “I’m really painting it as a very nasty thing. I know that all he wants to do is make sure to protect her. But I don’t think she quite sees it that way in that moment. And then as soon as they start almost slipping down the side of the cliff, she suddenly gets it. And that’s why she apologizes.”
The scene connects directly to what Bruccoleri sees as some of the show’s central themes. “The nice message in the show is that Mary initially thinks she’s very unappealing and undesirable, and that she probably needs to change in a certain way to turn the tide on that. But she doesn’t really know how to change, so she really struggles with it,” Bruccoleri says. “And then when she moves to London, you see that the very things people told her in her childhood were flaws are the things that people are drawn to and are really charmed by, because it’s real and it’s unfiltered, and she’s not trying to attract, really. She is just being herself.”
Source: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a71434672/the-other-bennet-sister-episode-9-ella-bruccoleri-interview/