Woman's Hour - Anya Taylor-Joy: the latest actor to take on the role of Emma

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Emma is one of Jane Austen’s most adapted books. It returns to the big screen this Friday. The new film is directed by Autumn De Wilde and stars Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role. Why's the story still so relevant today? After a recent discussion on ‘period power’ and the importance of getting to know your own menstrual cycle, listener Dearbhla McKeating got in touch. She doesn't have a monthly bleed and wanted to discuss the impact it has n your life. She joins Jenni alongside Consultant gynaecologist Pradnya Pisa. The Museum of Youth Culture is currently touring their exhibition “Grown Up in Britain”, which showcases artefacts from teenager culture throughout the decades. To celebrate we’ve been hearing from you about what it was like to be a teenager from the '60s to the present day. Today we hear from Teresa, who was a punk in the 1970s. Plus Yvette Cooper on why she's called for political parties to “draw up a new joint code of conduct against intimidation“, to make clear that “violent threats must have no place in politics in all parties”.Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest Autumn De Wilde Guest; Anya Taylor-Joy Guest; Dearbhla McKeating Guest; Pradnya Pisa Guest; Yvette Cooper

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 12th of February. Good morning. You may be aware that a new film of Jane Austen's Emma opens on Friday, Valentine's Day. What's the continuing appeal of the thoughtless meddling matchmaker? The second in a series of teenage history, today the 70s, Anne-Theresa, who became a punk. And as menstruation has become a subject that can be spoken about in polite society, what about the women who feel they're less of a woman because they don't have a period? Earlier this week, a Conservative activist, Joshua Spencer, was jailed for sending offensive and menacing communications to the Labour MP, former Cabinet

Minister and Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Yvette Cooper. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has apologised for what she has had to put up with and insisted there is no place for threats and intimidation in society or public life. Well, Yvette Cooper has called for all political parties to draw up a new joint code of conduct against intimidation. Yvette, we've heard this morning that Ofcom will be asked to police technology firms as part of a new crackdown on online harm.

How helpful might that be in cases like yours? Morning, Jenny. Well, I think it is a good thing because we have seen a growing wave, really, of increased intimidation, violent threats, both in public life but also online more broadly. And, you know, there's no doubt a lot of that is linked to what's happening online and people's willingness to say things about each other behind screens that they wouldn't necessarily say in person. And I do think the social media companies need to do more, particularly to remove dangerous and illegal content from their pages

and from their sites, which they don't do. So I think this is a step forward. We've not seen the details yet, but I hope that this is the right thing to do. How much online abuse have you suffered? Well, all MPs get a lot, sadly, and I've certainly had my share of it. And, you know, some of it is, some of it passes a criminal threshold and some of it there are cases where the police has taken action often in those cases interestingly people do back down pretty quickly and apologize and say well they've been really stupid in some cases they don't and those are the more serious ones but you also get the kind of heightened tone and

and some of the I think both sexist and racist abuse that's been targeted, particularly at black and minority ethnic women MPs and people in public life, is a real problem because it can chill public debate, it can discourage people from getting involved in politics and in public life just at a time when you need as many people as possible coming forward with new ideas. What effect did the threats that Spencer made have on you? So they were different because this was actually, it was that he'd said that he had paid somebody

to beat me up. There weren't, threats weren't sent to me directly, but did, Werger sent a copy of them and in this case because this was somebody who didn't immediately apologise, didn't back down and in fact denied that he'd been responsible, he was also somebody we knew that I'd helped through local constituency casework and had been involved in organising a protest outside my office at which somebody had also been heard calling for me to be burnt. So this was a very different case from previous ones that we dealt with and truth is I mean I'm always optimistic, I'm always inclined to think the best of people and to think in the end people don't really mean it but we weren't in any position to actually assess what the scale of the threat was and so that does have an impact as a result on on my office my staff who you know have to deal with the things that come into the

office all of the time uh and with everybody else we know spencer was at your election count in december how aware were you that he was there to be honest honest, I wasn't, actually. Nobody warned you? No, but that's my way of operating, is to figure I am never, ever going to let threats or intimidation or, you know, attempts at intimidation ever stop me from doing my job. And so it was not something I was thinking about. We did anticipate he might be there. We had to inform the police, the electoral returning officer, but it wasn't something that I was thinking about in the slightest. My disappointment about it had been that I had raised this case when it first emerged back in May of last year.

I'd raised this with senior Conservatives because this individual was the Deputy Chairman of the local Conservative Association. I'd raised it with the National Party and there he was still representing the party in an election count in December. So I really welcome the apology from Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, but I was really disappointed about the way that the Conservative Party had responded earlier, or had failed to

respond earlier, and also at the failure last week of the chairman of the Conservative Party to condemn the threats as well. Now, you've called for a cross-party joint code of conduct against intimidation. How would that work? So it's not a silver bullet, but I think there is something symbolic about all parties coming together to say that we should not have, nobody should be using violent threats or violent language. Nobody should be targeting somebody's children

in the way that we treat an opponent, a political opponent, just as the way we treat members of our own party. And I do say, I think this is for all parties to take action on. The Labour Party has a serious problem about antisemitism that has not yet been dealt with and absolutely must be. The Conservative Party also has to face up to their problems around Islamophobia. All parties, I think, have to do more. And there would be something important

and symbolic about parties coming together to agree a joint code of conduct and bringing a bit more kindness and respect, I guess, back into our politics. The SNP's Justice and Home Affairs spokesman was sceptical about this. I know, you know, you've been an MP since 1997

and a high-ranking one. And yet there are some people who've said the kind of abuse that you and others have suffered is just part of the rough trade of politics. What do you say to that? I sadly it has got worse and i think part of that is the this online um the social media kind of nature of debates that happen some of the closed facebook groups that you get which can have huge numbers of people in all escalating the animosity and egging each other on to violent threats and abuse and that kind of thing. And I just don't think we need it in politics.

It's a bit like road rage when you're behind a windscreen, that people say and do things they would never do in person. You can have great political arguments and routes and debates without having to descend into violent threats. But of course there was violence. And I know your daughter Elise has spoken about the impact the murder of Jo Cox had on her in 2016. What do you remember of your reactions on that day? So there was nothing that could prepare you for that. There was nothing that could prepare you for that there's nothing that you

could um i could ever have imagined would ever happen to lose a friend in that way and a colleague in that way because she was involved in politics and for ellie and for our kids i remember you know ringing ellie to tell her what had happened because you you just want them to hear it from us first. I didn't manage to reach Joel, our middle one, and he'd heard it, I think, on the radio or on the television that a Yorkshire MP had been shot. And so the impact that that has on your family as well as on all of us, I think, was a huge, huge shock. It's the sort of thing you just never think would happen in Britain.

And I suppose that's why we just can't ignore the rising climate of abuse that there has been and why I think all of us have a responsibility to stand up against it, to be really firm against it. It is particularly focused at women. It's particularly focused at people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Luke Pollard's had homophobic abuse and threats and violence against his constituency office as well. You have to stand firm against that. How do you deal with children who are frightened for you and know there's a panic button in your house yeah and so this is the kind of thing that all MPs now have which is the um it's the system of alarms that um uh you know home

alarms and office alarms that that you need to have and it's I think it's hard as well because what you always want to do is protect your kids and we've always been really firm about never having our kids in photos of us in politics or using our pictures of our kids on leaflets because we've been always so keen to keep them well away from all of it but it is hard for them and you also want to be able to say look the vast majority of people are really nice and we shouldn't forget that. Most of the people, even people who strongly disagree with you, and they might want to have a bit of an argument with you, but they're actually still really nice and really kind and they'd help you if you ever got into trouble.

And we shouldn't ever forget that. And it's keeping that faith in the strength of who people are and not being deterred by the poison. You did publish a book in November of speeches by women called She Speaks. And you warned there in the introduction of women being silenced and giving up politics because of intimidation throughout the centuries. How do you convince them now to stay? Because I think it's so important and there's so many amazing things that you can do

the striking thing about when I was putting together this book and it was supposed to be a celebration of women's speeches through the centuries from Bodicea to Greta Thunberg international from Malala to Michelle Obama all sorts of people what was really striking when after I'd chosen the speeches and was going through these amazing women's biographies was quite how many of them had been subjected to violent threats or abuse. We had Josephine Butler, who was a Victorian campaigner in my constituency 150 years ago, speaking against prostitution laws at the time,

was so targeted by opponents, they set fire to the barn that she was speaking in and she had to escape out of a barn window. we have had these kind of threats of violence through the centuries women have always been strong enough to stand firm against it and there are more of us than ever who are doing that now okay one more question labour is engaged in a leadership election at the moment you're backing Keir Starmer why a? Why not a woman? So I had to think really hard about this because, you know, I think this is a really important part. It's something that the Labour Party has to do.

And in the end, and I think I came, I thought very hard about supporting Lisa Nandy because I think she's very talented as well. In the end, I decided to support Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, because I think as a combination, they both of them could reach out right across the party. And also it was Keir's experience as a former director of public prosecutions as well. But it's a hard one. It's a really hard one. Yvette Cooper, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And we will watch that election closely.

Thank you. Well, last week, we talked about what it was like to be a teenager in the 60s as part of a series inspired by the Museum of Youth Cultures exhibition Grown Up in Britain, which shows artefacts from teenage culture throughout the decades. Today we hear from Teresa, who was a punk in the 70s. When did I first become a punk? Well, I think my eyes started opening to punk, I suppose, when I was about 12. And that's when I remember on the William or the Bill Grundy show, they had the Sex Pistols on there.

And there was lots of swearing and it was on the BBC BBC and it just kind of hit all the front page of the newspapers and I just remember sitting up looking at these people thinking, wow, that's fantastic. There was quite a big transition from 70s girl with a great big curly perm and then I just had this massive epiphany, I think. I went to a school disco and saw some sort of young punks pogoing around. They were slightly older than me. And I went home and I just cut all of my hair off and then dyed it pink

and started growing what was to become a very, very impressive Mohican, even if I say so myself. It wasn't without its pains. It was a lot of backcombing went into the mohican and lots and lots of hairspray which was fine and then but when you went to sleep you had to put one head on the pillow and sort of keep sort of flattening your hair down on one side and then you'd have to turn over on the other and flatten it down but then when you went into when I went into deep sleep I had a really horrible 70s rattan headboard and sometimes my mohican would get caught up in in the headboard and

my boyfriend then used to have to unpick my hair and I remember once going to Amsterdam for a sort of punk gig and we sprayed our hair with all the hairspray and because we hadn't sort of bargained for how damp the air was was in Amsterdam and we were sleeping in a tent and when I woke up, my hair, rather than pointing upwards, had gone into a horrible flat flying saucer that was a bit like fibreglass. It took us hours and hours to comb out our pride and joy that was our mojito.

I saved up all my pennies and I think my really favourite piece of clothing was there used to be an amazing clothes shop on the King's Road two ladies called Khan and Bell and I bought this amazing pair of tartan jodhpurs that had all studs down the outside

and I used to wear big sort of buckly boots and just loads of torn clothes but my little trademark that I loved was I used to wear sort of big sort of buckly boots and just loads of torn clothes. But my little trademark that I loved was I used to wear a great big black line around my lips with red lipstick. And I remember once a job I was temping at, my boss said he found my lipstick highly offensive. So I went in the next day with, still had the black line, but a nice sort of pretty pink in the middle instead.

And he didn't actually tell me off off he let me get on with it. King's Road was kind of like a bit of a meeting point really at the weekends there used to be a bus from Reading where I live up to London and we used to sort of pile on this bus and and much to people's sort of shock and horror that these sort of things were getting on the bus. And then we'd just hang out in King's Road and people, tourists. Well, it did become quite a good tourist hotspot, I think, because lots of tourists would turn up and the punks would actually charge tourists to take their photograph. And then we'd sort of walk down to the other end of King's Road where obviously Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood had their shop at World's End. Looking back, it was sort of like the 70s version of promenading on the pier.

It was like the sort of... The 70s Victoriana of going out and promenading. I am an anti-coaster! Thinking about my own journey was I'd gone from, you know, wearing school skirts and having this big sort of girly perm to sort of chopping it all off and actually being quite masculine in some ways, I guess, because I was wearing sort of big trousers and kilts and safety pins.

So it's almost like the sort of anti-feminine look, isn't it, really, which was part of the appeal and also really, really liberating as a teenage girl. My parents absolutely hated it. I mean, I think they were just really, really embarrassed that they had this daughter walking around in all this sort of torn up clothing and bright pink hair. But I think secretly, particularly my dad dad I think he was actually quite proud and and funnily enough I've actually I actually found some photographs the other day that he'd actually

taken of me with my big pink mohican and he kept hold of them so maybe he wasn't that ashamed after all he was he was kind of like an old beatnik himself so I guess I was just sort of carrying on them the mantle in many ways I was brought up know, in a house full of music and it was always Bob Dylan and he really liked Frank Sinatra and all the old crooners. And then when I first bought Sid Vicious's version of My Way, which was just fantastic, my dad heard it. And I think that's the first time I think I've ever seen my dad cry because he just couldn't believe like what had happened to his one of his favourite records he's going but why why i think that people always thought that you were going to be really quite aggressive um and i remember once sitting on a bus um next to a nun actually and it was just

the only spare seat and we had a really nice chat it must have looked great actually mustn't it this punk with this great mohican chat into a nun. But then when I got off she said, oh I didn't imagine you'd be so nice and friendly dear. And that was Teresa the 70s punk. Still to come in today's programme, the new film of Jane Austen's Emma.

Autumn de Wilde directs and Anya Taylor-Joy plays the meddling matchmaker. And the serial, the eighth episode of 24, Kildare Road. Now, you may remember last year, some of you told us about family secrets. There were stories about affairs, parents, hidden sexuality and mental health. All of a sudden, it was just like, boom, everything changed. It was like, oh, my God, is this what real life is? Is this the way adults are supposed to be?

Am I now an adult? Yeah, I was just so angry. Just like, why? How? Like, you have such a good life. Like, with my dad and the things that you do and the way we are, like, why would you want to have an affair? This has grown to be one of the big, if not the biggest thing in my life because it's about my own identity.

It's about me and who I am. It's a primal thing. I have to know. I can't rest who I am. It's a primal thing. I have to know. I can't rest till I know. Finding out that my parents had kept a secret from us for so long, that was the hardest thing. So not the secret itself? Not the secret itself.

Well, speaking for myself, and I think my brothers would probably say the same thing, it was finding out that my loving parents had kept a secret from us for so long. I just got to the point where I needed to talk to my parents about my life. I didn't feel I could continue not being honest with them. What did you say? I think I just alluded to the fact that I didn't come home

very much and I didn't really talk about where I was or what I was doing some of the time and did she ever think that was a bit strange? She was just oh no you're busy you know you're busy with your job and you know you're busy having fun and and I said well there's a bit more to it than that mum and I just eventually turned out to call my mum gay. And I said, you don't know what it's been like. And she just spun round and said, I think I do. And it was like, oh. And I think I said to her, have you had a relationship with a woman?

And she just said yes. Even by five or six, I was very, very aware of things I was allowed to say. When we were kids, probably quite little kids, playing, you know, playing out in the street. And I think I must have had an argument with another child who just came back to me and said, Your mother's mental. It's the time I remember thinking that it wasn't just our secret, or that actually it wasn't a secret, and that we hadn't contained it in our household.

You heard Moira, Ellen, Liz, Prue and Jess, and next week we'll launch a new series of secrets. We'll hear from four more of you. Now earlier in the week you may have missed a whole programme about loneliness and the first in a series of conversations about friendship. Don't forget if you miss the live program you can always catch up. All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app. A couple of weeks ago you may have heard a discussion about what's been called period power and how familiarity with your own menstrual cycle can be

empowering menstruation it seems has become a subject once ignored and now able to be talked about even in polite circles but how does that affect women who don't have periods well Pradhania Bizzal is a consultant gynecologist Devla Makhising wrote to us to say it makes me feel less of a woman and she joins us from Glasgow. Davla why does it make you feel less of a woman that you don't have periods? Well I'm 35 years old and whilst I love that there's all this conversation around periods I haven't had one in more or less a decade so when I hear these conversations around it, I feel like I'm less of a woman

because whilst I should be included in the conversation, I should be having periods, I don't get them and I feel quite sidelined. Pradhania, why do some women not menstruate? So there are various causes of lack of menstruation in women. The commonest sort of underlying, underpinning cause is that they're not releasing or ovulating or releasing the egg each month. And if that doesn't happen, then the resultant kind of cycle is prolonged

and it can just go on and on and on. The cause of anovulation or the causes of anovulation are many. The commonest one being polycystic ovarian syndrome. We have other causes which could be because of hormonal imbalances, so problems with the adrenal glands, or it could just be something as simple as somebody who is really exercising a lot, has lost a lot of weight or has put on a lot of weight so changes in weight and exercise that can affect the rhythm of ovulation so these are some of the commonest causes there's plenty more. Davila how did you

find out what was causing yours? So I first went to the doctor when i was 25 um and the doctor had just said well are you trying for children now and i said no and he said well look we don't need to worry about it then and then a few years ago um when i was getting a smear test i was speaking to a nurse and just relating this to her and she said you need to go and get this checked out now because when you turn 35 the nhs isn't going to be interested in investigating this for you get yourself referred to a gynecologist and so i got myself referred um and it turned out that i had polycystic ovary syndrome um because i wasn't having periods and also because i had little cysts on my ovaries. And how does that affect you, apart from obviously not bleeding every month? Within day-to-day life, it doesn't affect me,

but as I said earlier on, there are times that I do feel like less of a woman when there are conversations around periods, and people will be like, oh, you're so lucky, you don't have to go through this pain, and you don't have to go through X, Y and Z, but I can't help how I feel because it is quite natural to just want to be the same as everybody else I'm not the same as a lot of other women unfortunately. How generally Pradnia does polycystic ovary syndrome affect a woman who has it? So there is a huge variation in what it appears like in women in terms of the symptoms.

So the commonest symptom is, like Devlin explained, is lack of having periods. Sometimes they are delayed cycles or sometimes they can be complete lack of a period altogether. But women can have other what we call as androgenic symptoms. So they have a slight excess of the testosterone-like hormones within our circulation. And those can cause facial acne, excessive hair. There is resistance to insulin. So it affects the way our body metabolizes carbohydrates. So there is significant weight gain. Some women, therefore, then go on to have heart disease,

blood pressure problems. I would be particularly concerned in somebody not having periods at all because that could cause endometrial disease and sometimes even the risk of endometrial cancer is increased. Why would Dervler have been told that after 35 the NHS wouldn't be interested in her? I'm a bit surprised at that comment, actually. I doubt that is really the case. I work in the NHS and we would certainly see women at that age who are not having regular cycles because there is a significant, in fact, the risk of endometrial disease increases as you get older. And so I would definitely be interested in investigating somebody.

How do you deal with it now? I just accept it. I'm just a big believer in these things happen. I don't let it get me down and just get on with life, stay positive. But has anybody suggested that there might be a treatment that might help you no no nothing at all um i have done some research into different lifestyle changes that you should take because of um polycystic ovary syndrome but i haven't had any professional advice on it pradney what advice could you give so the the first and most important thing is that you should have or you should shed your endometrium.

We call the period as a period, but actually it means that you're shedding the lining of the uterus. And it is healthy to do that if you have polycystic ovaries. You should be shedding the endometrium at least four times a year. So you should have a period at least four times a year to keep the endometrium healthy and prevent the risk of endometrial cancer. And how do you achieve that if your body's not doing it naturally? So that can be done easily with medication. It would usually mean taking some kind of hormonal tablets, either in the form of a pill or just a small course of progesterone tablets three or

four times a year. We now very successfully use the Mirena coil, which is a progesterone coil, which will prevent periods again, but will at least protect the endometrium. So I think that is probably the biggest message to give. But also, I think you should have a yearly checkup because you're at a risk of developing diabetes and hypertension so you should have a yearly check-up for that in addition to your routine sort of regular smears etc that you have. So I think I would actually get this checked out and you should probably have an ultrasound scan to check the lining of your uterus. Dabla, are you going to do that? I absolutely will be doing that, yes. Thank you for the advice.

Dabla McKeating and Pradney Opiezal, thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. And of course, we'd like to hear from you if you have a similar problem to Dabla's, do let us know about it and let us know what you've done about it. Now Jane Austen said of Emma, I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like. She introduced her as Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home and a happy disposition and had lived nearly 21 years with very little to distress or vex her while judging by the number of films television stage and fictional adaptations they've been it seems austin may have been wrong about no one liking her character on friday valentine's day a new film will open in the cinema so what is the appeal of Emma? Well, here she consoles her father, Mr Woodhouse,

as they make the journey to the wedding of their former governess to Mr Weston. Papa, Mr Weston is such a good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man. He thoroughly deserves a good wife. You would not have had Miss Taylor live with us forever when she might have had a house of her own. A house of her own?

Where is the advantage of a house of her own? This is three times as low. It's entirely unnecessary. Poor Miss Taylor, poor Isabella. My sister married seven years ago, Papa. You must be reconciled to it by now. That was a terrible day. Shall always be a matter of great joy to me that I made the match myself. Everyone said Mr. Weston would never again, but I did not believe it. Emma, you shall not make matches or foretell things.

Whatever you say always comes to pass. You must not make any more. I promised to make none for myself the past. But I must indeed for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world. Bill Nye as Mr. Woodhouse and Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma. Anya joins us together with

Autumn DeWild who directed the film. Autumn, what is it about Emma that made you desperate to make a film of it? Well, I was asked to pitch on it and I got the phone call from Working Title Films and I thought, oh my god, is this real? It really was a dream

come true. My mother's English and I grew up in Los Angeles and I think there's a part of me that always wondered what would have happened if I was raised in England. And so I ate anything British for breakfast, lunch and dinner from so far away in America. So it just was kind of, it's corny to say, but it was a dream come true, you know, to be able to dive into like one of the most important books ever written. And Anya, why were you keen to play the character Austin thought no one but her would much like?

I think it's because she's so complicated. There's so many different facets to Emma and in every single scene it felt like I got to play up certain emotions and then we'd get the opportunity to go again and I could find something different. And I sort of, I think people like her because she seems more real.

She's not just good. She's not just bad. She's a very interesting mixture of everything. And I just wanted a chance to take a crack at it. Autumn, you stay very close to the book. Why were you keen to stay really pretty true to the original? Well, I think that this book is so well written that it could be interpreted, you know,

so many different ways till the end of time. But I find Jane Austen very funny. And I think that she was, you know, a really brilliant satirist of small town life. And because of that, it really translates to high school, which is why Clueless was so brilliant and our lives in offices, you know, in those contained environments where you feel like you could never get out. And so I really wanted to try and add a screwball comedy element, but try to stick to the complexities of the relationships that Emma has

with everyone in the town. Because to me, that was sort of the more fascinating part of the book, how many clues were laid in by all of the people around Emma. And she is the main character in the book, how many clues were laid in by all of the people around Emma. And she is the main character in the book and the star of our film. But because of our ensemble, I felt it would be a way of really lifting up this character. Whenever I read it, and I have read it many times, it was my O-level set text, or see the film or whatever, that the scene where she is so horrible to miss Bates at the

picnic always chills me to the bone what was that like for you to play when it's been done so many times before oh it was awful because especially we all became very very close when we were filming and you know we've remained very close and miranda and i had a very special relationship miranda heart yes sorry um and so it was awful but it was i really felt like i was supported by the cast around me because whenever emma had to be cruel because they were my friends i did go up to them and i said this feels horrible and they were like no it's working like it's so good please keep going so um I had somebody to to hug after being so nasty and to Anya's credit you know I asked her if we could really tailor some of these key moments and do you know cruel intended cruelty accidental cruelty

you know and just you know cruelty due to vanity and you know and social pressures and so she really often did these really key moments three different ways so that we had choices in the edit room as we shaped Emma's anti-hero character. It was an acting dream. Not easy for you to do, to do the same scene three different ways.

Oh no, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. It was a challenge and it felt... There's something about somebody asking you to do something in a way that maybe you haven't thought about it before that's so liberating. And I loved those days when I'd get the opportunity to do. There's an argument between Emma and Mr. Knightley that I think Autumn just left the camera rolling. And I did it about, I don't know, 12 times, something like that.

Just back and back and back. And I really, I adored it. She's such an intelligent actor, you know, that I knew she could handle it. It wouldn't have been an effective tool if her performance would be diminished by switching the intention. But it just got stronger. And the exploration of Emma, I think, got stronger because of Annie's remarkable intelligence as an actor.

So how would you describe your... She's smiling. Sorry. I was like, thank you. But how would you describe your Emma then? I think she is the product of somebody that's grown up very privileged. I think she's very, very intelligent. But I also think she's desperately lonely.

I think she wants to have people around her and she's not quite sure how to keep people and she doesn't want to leave her father behind so when she you know starts exploring this friendship with Harriet even though at the beginning it seems like she's you know quote-unquote improving her and it's a project I think she's really desperate to not be left alone again and she's trying with everything in her arsenal to keep the people she loves around her. Yeah, the house, her house in that town is her dollhouse. You know, and we were talking about how the matchmaker thing is. There's a lot of emphasis put on the matchmaker part of Emma's character,

but she really only matches two people. She's like, I want you to stay five miles away, Max. So you're going to marry Mr. Weston. And I want you to stay here because I've never had a friend before that wasn't paid to be my friend. So let's just match you up and then we'll be set. Why, Autumn, do you think she has had so much fascination for so many generations and it just continues?

I think because we've all known an Emma and I think few people want to admit how because we've all known an Emma. And I think few people want to admit how often they've perhaps behaved like Emma. And I think anti-hero characters, male or female in general, are very captivating. Because they exhibit the darkest sides of ourselves. And in a movie like this, in the book, Jane Austen weaves a beautiful fantasy story of love working out when you fall in love with your best friend who you're always arguing with. And your best friend, her and Harriet, Emma finding her way to become a better person and realizing she's wrong. We probably all have someone in our life that we wish would have that revelation.

Friends we've had to walk away from that were selfish and cruel. I know it's your debut as a director. How much was the music important to you? Because you've worked in music before and the score, I think, is very important. Very important to me. I really felt like all the musicians that I've worked with and been in the studio with for years,

I felt their presence listening and I wanted it to be a character in the film. I didn't want background music, and I didn't want ambient music. I didn't want music that didn't interfere with the dialogue. And so when I found Isabel Waller-Bridge, who has an amazing... Who has a very famous sister. Yes, she does. It's a very talented family. Those two sparkle. They certainly do. And Isabel

has a natural musical sense of humour, which is hard to find, I feel. And I think that one of the things that was really important to me was that there could be music during dialogue. And I love cartoons, you know, old Warner Brothers cartoons and Mary Melodies and old Disney live action films where the music was telling you a little bit how you should feel.

And so Isabel wrote the music in the key of the voices speaking. So each voice is sort of treated like an instrument so the music could wrap around it and assigned instruments to different characters. Just one final point to you. The Oscars, women, directors, how difficult is it going to continue to be to break through? I think it will always be difficult, but I'd like to answer as a photographer, if that's okay. Having documented people for so long

in helping raise their profile or, you know, create a visual identity, studios need to invest in documenting female directors and directors of, you know, from, you know, directors of color. And because we have many, many years of evidence of men directing amazing dynamic photos of Kubrick directing in Coppola. And we need to have like that storytelling in the making of a film needs to be done. I was talking to Autumn DeWild and Anya Taylor-Joy. We had lots from you on the question of women who don't have periods. The Pants Project tweeted, some women like myself don't get periods because we were born with a condition which means we were born without a womb. The online feminist

community can often be polarising when it comes to womb stroke period speak. Hope we can change this. Someone who didn't want us to use a name emailed, I was told I had endometriosis at the age of 18 and i'm now 57 i was told to get on the adoption list by the age of 30 otherwise i wouldn't be able to have any children i met my husband when i was 35 and we managed to have one child after that we tried with no luck and i tried to go back on the contraceptive pill to stop my bleeding but it was too painful. It didn't work now all my hormones are up the creek. Now in my late 50s I found some relief with the coil. And Rihanna emailed I sympathize with your guest and had similar experiences of absent periods for six months plus and being fobbed off by my GP. I was put on a contraceptive pill at 15

when I expressed concerns about polycystic ovary syndrome. I now think this was far too young and only managed to get an ultrasound and diagnosis at 24. In the intervening years the uncertainty about my fertility hung over my head being told by the GP that it doesn't matter until you're actively trying for a baby really didn't help. Now do join me tomorrow, if you can, at two minutes past ten, when we'll be talking about the half century since the Equal Pay Act was successfully introduced by Barbara Castle. We'll discuss how she steered it through against opposition and why the aim of paying men and women equally proved rather harder to achieve in practice. That's two minutes past ten tomorrow morning.

Join me if you can. Bye-bye. If you're listening to some other podcast, then stop now and listen to a good one because The Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series. And we're doing loads of things, aren't we, Robin? We're going to be dealing with the science of laughter, conspiracy theories, coral reefs, quantum worlds, and finally UFOs. I love UFOs. It's also, by the way, the UFO one available to watch on iPlayer.

In fact, all of the series that we've done are available on BBC Sounds. I must say that I wouldn't bother with the first series. I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first series. I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first two. Yeah. But we were played by different people then, I think, weren't we? Yeah. Melvin Bragg was you. You were Debbie McGee. Debbie McGee. Bragg and McGee. Now that

is a 1980s TV detective series that I will be making. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.