Thirty years after winning an Oscar for her Sense and Sensibility screenplay and performance, Emma Thompson is back in Austen’s world with Becoming Meg Dashwood, a new Audible Original released today (6 October).
Written by actor and author Rebecca Humphries (Why Did You Stay?), the audio drama imagines what happened to the youngest Dashwood sister, Margaret, now grown up and determined to carve out her own path. The result is a period drama that mixes riotous humour, female friendship, and rebellion against the social rules Austen’s heroines once had to live by.
Thompson stars as Margaret, with The Crown’s Erin Doherty playing her younger self and BAFTA winner Naomi Ackie as her lover, Nelly. The cast also includes Liz Carr, Jessica Gunning, Paterson Joseph, Greg Wise, Golda Rosheuvel and Imelda Staunton, alongside a new score by Natasha Khan, known as Bat For Lashes.
“I’m very thrilled and proud to have been part of bringing Rebecca Humphries’ extraordinary drama to life,” Thompson said. “Their vision for the youngest Dashwood sister takes us from Austen’s world into the more hidden parts of women’s lives — parts that weren’t written about at the time. I think Austen would have been fascinated and delighted.”
Humphries said her aim was to give Austen’s themes a modern charge: “The only way to honour Jane Austen was to do what she did — take the love story and push it somewhere new. This one’s about liberation, class, queerness, and all the things that on Jane’s 250th birthday we are still fighting to say out loud.”
Composer Natasha Khan described the project as “so fun to work on — bringing in modern dance elements and mixing them with more archaic melodic sounds. I really fell for the character of Meg and her cohorts.”
Set amid the chaos of Covent Garden and Soho, the story finds Margaret — now Meg — breaking away from polite society to find her own freedom through art, friendship, and forbidden love.
Produced by Polly Thomas for Thomas Carter Projects, and directed by Jo Tyabji (Bleak House, Antigone), Becoming Meg Dashwood follows Audible’s recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, starring Marisa Abela, Harris Dickinson and Glenn Close.
Becoming Meg Dashwood is available now exclusively on Audible.
