Keeley Hawes & Rose Leslie to Star in 'Miss Austen'

PBS first announced Masterpiece was working on an adaptation of Gil Hornsby's novel Miss Austen in the summer of 2022, not long after the second season of Sanditon returned. Jane Austen has been a staple of PBS since it first premiered as a network and Masterpiece in particular, both in the enduring popularity of new adaptations of her works and in creative spin-offs like P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley and Guy Andrews' Lost in Austen. Miss Austen falls into the latter category; the 2020 best-selling novel is a very convincing but fictionalized account of Jane Austen's relationship with her sister Cassandra, which turns into a Mary Bennet-inspired take on Austen's famous Pride and Prejudice.

At the time, PBS slated the planned four-part miniseries for 2023, but a year later, it looks like that will be more like 2024 (or 2025), as filming has only just gotten underway with future dame Keely Hawes (Bodyguard) and Rose Leslie (Vigil) in the leading roles. Hawes has been cast as Cassandra Austen, famous among Austen scholars for having burned most of her sister's letters after her passing. Leslie plays family friend Isabella, who, in the novel, possesses this stash of letters from the now-deceased Jane, which Cassandra is determined to get possession of, lest they become public.

As the present-day setting of the story is 1830, over a decade after Jane's death, the author only appears in flashbacks, where she is played by Olivier Award winner Patsy Ferran (Jamestown).