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Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility is one of my favorite movies. I could put it on and listen to it as background sound all day long. It came out 25 years ago, but the cast and crew still tell stories about it, which is great for the movie’s fans. The latest is this gem from Emma Thompson on The Graham Norton Show about how her husband, Greg Wise, who played John Willoughby, thought that he was going to marry Kate Winslet:
[Emma] explained: “Before he did the job, he went to see a friend of his who was a bit witchy and she said he would meet his future partner on the film. He assumed it wasn’t me because I was married and quite lot older than him so he thought it might be Kate (Winslet). He took her to Glastonbury, and she was so bored, and he thought, ‘This isn’t going to work, who can it be?’ Then things happened that probably shouldn’t have happened, and it’s been 25 years in May.”
Greg has also previously opened up about the start of their relationship, telling the Express that it was actually Kate who suggested he should date Emma instead of her: “[Kate] pointed out that we were right for each other and told me that Emma’s marriage was over. It was all meant to be, just as my friend Helen had predicted.”
Emma’s marriage to Kenneth Branagh was ending while she was writing the screenplay for and then filming Sense and Sensibility. In 2010, she told The Guardian, “Work saved me and Greg saved me. He picked up the pieces and put them together again.” I almost like Willoughby, and it’s entirely because Greg Wise seems like such a lovely man. I’m glad that he and Emma found each other. Emma also seems to have a decent relationship with both Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, with whom Branagh was having an affair that led to the end of his and Emma’s marriage. (A photo of Hercule Poirot’s love, Katherine, in Branagh’s 2017 Murder on the Orient Express, is a photo of a young Emma.)
Incidentally, Emma is, so far, the only person to have won Academy Awards for both acting and writing: the former for Howards End, and the latter for her Sense and Sensibility screenplay. And, if you’re a fan of Emma and/or Sense and Sensibility, you’ve probably listened to her and producer Lindsay Doran’s commentary, but if, for some odd reason you’ve not yet done that, it’s worth a listen.
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