Yesterday’s discussion of our favorite versions of the Pride and Prejudice movies made me realize that since I’ve never been 100 percent satisfied with the casting in any version I’ve seen, I should just come up with my own cast for the major characters in P&P. I may recycle some of the actors into new roles more befitting their ages now, but I will recast each of the major roles with new actors who are currently the appropriate ages for the characters. And, because I know y’all aren’t going to agree with all (or any) of my choices, I’ll go ahead and invite you now to come up with your own dream cast!

Mr. & Mrs. Bennet have been married, according to the book, for twenty-three years. Though the book does not give us their specific ages, Austen did write that Mr. Bennet was “captivated by youth and beauty” in Mrs. Bennet—and it’s surmised she was between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one when they married. Which means that Mrs. Bennet is, at the oldest, only in her mid-forties. Mr. Bennet could possibly be in his early to mid-fifties. So, because he’s already familiar with the material (and because I’ve always thought he was too old, doughy, and jowly to be Mr. Darcy) and because she is really good at playing silly—yet conniving, too—I choose Colin Firth and Joely Richardson as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet:

Kitty and Mary Bennet don’t have very large roles in the story, but still, their casting is important. Kitty (Catherine) Bennet, who is around seventeen or eighteen, is important in that she’s her younger sister Lydia’s “follower” in everything—and Lydia discovers too late, just as Sir Walter and Elizabeth Eliot discover in Persuasion, that life isn’t quite so interesting and grand when you have no one looking up to/aping you. Mary, about nineteen, is the studious daughter—the one who practices at the piano and singing without ever improving, always has her nose in a book but has no common sense. For Kitty, I choose the aptly named Eliza Bennet (who played Meggie in Inkheart and Tora in the first Nanny McPhee movie), and who else could I choose for Mary but Hermione Granger herself, Emma Watson!

Lydia Bennet creates quite a bit of chaos in this story. And I thought I knew who I would cast in this role—until I started looking at images of young, blonde British actresses and found a specific image of a specific actress (one I was thinking about for the role of Mary, in fact). Lydia is sixteen years old. She is flighty. She is willful. She has been overindulged by an overindulged mother. And she is an unrepentant flirt. Because of the way her mother has always treated her, Lydia is determined she’ll out-do all four of her older sisters and marry first—for even though she may be the youngest, she is the tallest! For Lydia, because of this picture, I choose Evanna Lynch, better known to most as Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter movies.

Jane Bennet is the stable, sensible older sister—much like Jane Austen’s own older sister Cassandra. She’s about twenty-two years old and is starting to get to the age at which if she doesn’t marry soon, she’ll be considered “on the shelf” and passed over. Now, while I still love Rosamund Pike’s portrayal of Jane, I’m re-casting everyone, just to be fair. So I choose Annabelle Wallis (a.k.a. Jane Seymour in Season 3 of The Tudors).

Elizabeth Bennet is the key to the success or failure of any adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. So choosing someone to fill this role for my dream cast isn’t something I take lightly. So based off of having seen a few minutes of her performance in one episode of Dr. Who, and after changing her hair and eye color, I choose Karen Gillan as Elizabeth Bennet.

Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins have an important subplot of the story, so their casting is important. Charlotte is Elizabeth’s “plain” neighbor and friend who, at twenty-seven years old, represents the “old maid” all of the Bennet girls fear becoming. Mr. Collins is Mr. Bennet’s distant cousin and Mr. Bennet’s heir because of the entailment upon Mr. Bennet’s property. Mr. Collins is twenty-five years old and described by Austen as tall and heavy-set, grave, stately, and formal. Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage is a marriage of convenience, but Austen has them getting along pretty well by the end of the novel. For these two, I choose Anna Maxwell-Martin (Bessie in North & South and Esther in Bleak House) and Gareth David-Lloyd (from Torchwood—just imagine him 50-100 pounds heavier).

Lady Catherine de Bourgh brings about the apocalypse when she tells Elizabeth to have nothing to do with Darcy, then complains to Darcy that Elizabeth wouldn’t comply with her demands. This is a role that usually goes to one of the preeminent grande dames of British acting. I’m going to go a little outside the box here and choose someone who, at age fifty-nine, is the correct age to be the aunt of someone in his late twenties. (I’m in my late thirties and have an aunt who’s fifty-nine, and another aunt and uncle who are younger still than that.) So for my version of P&P, I choose Jane Seymour as Lady Catherine.

Mr. & Mrs. Gardiner are Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle who bring about the turning point of the story by taking Elizabeth to Derbyshire instead of the Lake District for their vacation. Like Elizabeth’s parents and Lady Catherine, they are usually cast with actors in their late fifties or sixties. But in the book, they are the parents of “two girls of six and eight years old, and two younger boys,” which means that the oldest Mrs. Gardiner can be is in her early to mid-forties, and since Mr. Gardiner is Mrs. Bennet’s younger brother (in most likelihood), Mrs. Gardiner is more likely still in her early thirties. So for the Gardiners, I choose real-life couple Matthew MacFadyen and Keeley Hawes.

Charles and Caroline Bingley, along with their sister Mrs. Hurst and her husband, are the very important new tenants of Netherfield Hall. Charles is in his early twenties (22–24) and I’ve always assumed, from the way she treats him, Caroline is his older sister—probably several years older, with as desperate as she is to marry and marry well. But we’ll put her in her mid-twenties for the sake of casting. I like the more comical take on his character, which infuses humor into the Bingley-Jane relationship which I think it needs. For Charles Bingley, I choose Orlando Bloom. Caroline is a desperate woman acting desperately and trying to quell any opposition to reaching her goal—marrying Mr. Darcy. For Caroline, I choose Natalie Dormer, who, as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, knows a little something about trying to catch a man.

Georgiana Darcy, in role, has a minor physical presence in the book/the films, but her part in how the story plays out is very important. She’s sixteen years old (the same as Lydia) and is away at school for most of the book. We do know she’s quite accomplished in everything she does (according to Miss Bingley, anyway) but that she has bad judgment when it comes to men. Thank goodness for her big brother! For Miss Darcy, I choose Sarah Bolger who, from her lovely depiction of Princess/Lady Mary in The Tudors, strikes me as someone who could bring that sense of naivety and innocence to the role of Georgiana.

George Wickham is the prototype for the “bad boy” anti-hero in every romance novel that followed this one. He’s handsome, he’s charming, he’s poor—which doesn’t matter, because he’s handsome and charming—and he and the hero have it out for each other and have the hots for the same woman. We know he’s not much younger than Darcy—and not older than him–so he’s probably in his mid-twenties. For the guy who’s all looks and no substance, I choose Robert Pattinson.

Are you ready for it?

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Do you have any guesses whom I might choose for the most important role in the story?
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Did you scroll down to the bottom of the post to see who it was before you read everything else? (Shame on you!)
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Are you tired of waiting?
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Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy is “a single man in possession of a good fortune” who isn’t looking for a wife, but finds one anyway. He’s approximately twenty-eight years old (which has always made me wonder what happened between his parents that there’s such an age gap between Fitzwilliam and Georgiana). He’s well-educated, well-read, and well-informed in business matters. He’s also a flaming introvert—which is why he, like most introverts, comes across to others as cold, snooty, snobbish, and/or aloof. No matter how well an introvert has been trained for social situations, we always find ourselves forgetting how to “mix and mingle” and make small-talk. Though I will freely admit that, if forced to choose, I would choose Frederick Wentworth over Fitzwilliam Darcy any day, I do still likey me some Mr. Darcy. Because I’m trying to keep these castings to actors who are around the correct ages for the characters, this one was hard. I thought long and hard about my darling parallel-universe husband, Karl Urban (yes, I know for certain that in a parallel universe, I am married to him, just like in a different parallel universe, I’m married to Oded Fehr). But Karl is too old by ten years for the role. Same with a few other actors I thought of. And the list of actors in their late twenties/early thirties I have is short and not overwhelmingly Darcy-ish. So I had to steal from my own story and choose the actor I cast as the hero of the first book in the historical proposal I have out right now. But the more I watch him on The Tudors, the more and more I fall just a little more in love with Henry Cavill, so that’s whom I’ve chosen for Mr. Darcy.

So, there you have them. I don’t know that calling it a “dream” cast is correct by any measure of the imagination. But, if I were casting a re-make of it today, that’s who I’d go for.

Now it’s your turn! While I went for “realistic” with my casting choices, come up with your dream cast—different eras, different ages, whatever you want. And though I’m certain I don’t need to give you permission, feel free to go ahead and critique my picks!