Daisy Edgar-Jones Dazzles in Chloé at the ‘Sense and Sensibility’ Los Angeles Premiere

Some premieres feel like obligations. This one felt like a party.

On Wednesday night, the United Artists Theatre in downtown Los Angeles turned into Regency-era central as the cast of Sense and Sensibility took to the red carpet — and Daisy Edgar-Jones, as she so often does, stole the whole evening with a single look.

The 28-year-old Emmy nominee showed up in a floral-print Chloé corset paired with a long, flowing silk skirt in a deep shade of purple. It was romantic without being costume-y, which is exactly the line this whole press tour has been walking. You could spot the Chloé influence a mile away — soft, a little bohemian, very much in the spirit of the film she’s promoting — and she carried it the way she’s been carrying every red carpet since Normal People turned her into an overnight sensation six years ago.

And let’s be honest: she has become one of the most reliable red-carpet presences in her generation. There’s rarely a miss.

A Crowded Red Carpet

Daisy didn’t walk alone, of course. The premiere pulled in a proper ensemble crowd, which makes sense for a film that’s fundamentally about sisterhood and the people orbiting it.

Her co-lead Esmé Creed-Miles was there too, looking striking in Simone Rocha — a choice that feels pitch-perfect for her. Rocha’s slightly gothic, doll-like aesthetic has been having a moment, and Creed-Miles wears it well. The two of them posing together gave everyone exactly what they wanted: the two sisters of the story, side by side, dressed by two very different but very buzzy designers.

Also in attendance: Frank Dillane, Stacy Martin, Herbert Nordrum, Bethany Slater, and Caitríona Balfe. It’s a genuinely interesting mix — veterans and rising stars, people you recognize instantly and people you’re about to. Balfe, in particular, is one of those actors whose presence lends a project instant credibility. From Outlander to Belfast to The Cut, she’s been quietly building one of the most interesting filmographies in the business, and her involvement here says a lot about the quality of the script that drew her in.

Dillane, meanwhile, will be familiar to anyone who watched Fear the Walking Dead, and Stacy Martin has been doing quietly excellent work in European cinema for over a decade. Herbert Nordrum comes with serious arthouse credentials. It’s the kind of cast that suggests the filmmakers weren’t just filling seats — they were building something with texture.

What the Movie Is Actually About

For the three people who somehow missed this in school: Sense and Sensibility is Jane Austen’s 1811 novel about the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, who are left more or less penniless after their father’s death and have to navigate love, money, and social survival in early 19th-century England. Elinor is the sensible one — restrained, rational, keeping her feelings locked down. Marianne is the romantic — passionate, impulsive, wearing her heart on her sleeve.

The new version, from Focus Features and Working Title, is being pitched as a charming, witty, and deeply relatable take on that story of love and sisterhood. Edgar-Jones plays Elinor; Creed-Miles plays Marianne.

Now, here’s the thing about adapting Austen in 2026: it’s been done before, and done well. The benchmark is still the 1995 film — Emma Thompson’s script, Ang Lee directing, Thompson and Kate Winslet as the sisters. That movie won Thompson an Oscar for the screenplay and remains one of the most beloved literary adaptations ever made. So why do it again?

Honestly? Because the themes haven’t aged a day. Two young women trying to build lives with limited money, limited options, and unlimited opinions from everyone around them — that’s not a period problem. That’s a right-now problem. A new generation discovering this story through a new cast, with a new director’s eye on it, isn’t redundancy. It’s just good timing.

Behind the Camera

The film was written by Diana Reid and directed by Georgia Oakley, and that pairing is one of the most exciting things about the project.

Oakley made a serious impression with Blue Jean, her 2022 debut about a lesbian PE teacher navigating Section 28-era Britain. It was quiet, precise, and devastating — the kind of first film that makes people pay attention to whatever comes second. Handing her a Jane Austen adaptation is a smart move: she clearly understands repression, longing, and the enormous drama of small gestures, which is basically the entire engine of Austen’s writing.

Reid, meanwhile, is a bestselling Australian novelist (Love & Virtue, Seeing Other People) making the jump into screenwriting. Her novels deal with young women, desire, power imbalances, and the messiness of modern relationships — all of which map surprisingly well onto Austen’s world, if you think about it. Austen was writing about power imbalances and messy relationships too. She just did it with better bonnets.

Focus Features and Working Title backing it completes the picture. Working Title basically invented the modern British romantic comedy, and Focus has a long track record with prestige literary adaptations. This isn’t a cash-grab remake; it’s a considered one.

Daisy Edgar-Jones Keeps Winning

It’s worth pausing on just how well Edgar-Jones has played the post-breakout years. Normal People in 2020 could easily have typecast her — the sad girl in the chain necklace, forever. Instead, she went and did Fresh, a horror-comedy where she was funny and feral. Then Where the Crawdads Sing, which made an absolute fortune. Then Twisters, a full-blown summer blockbuster. Then On Swift Horses, a slow-burn queer period romance that premiered at TIFF.

That’s range. That’s someone choosing interesting over safe, again and again.

Elinor Dashwood fits right into that pattern. It’s not the flashier sister — Marianne gets the big emotions, the dramatic swoons, the grand gestures. Elinor’s work is interior: the restraint, the watching, the feeling everything and showing almost nothing. It’s the harder part to play, honestly, and it’s the kind of role that wins awards when it’s done right. Emma Thompson won an Oscar for writing it; the performance side has its own quiet power.

At 28, Edgar-Jones is also at exactly the right age for it — old enough to carry the weight, young enough to be believable as a woman whose whole future is still unwritten. And the Chloé corset on the carpet? A little nod to the character without going full costume. Clever.

Esmé Creed-Miles Deserves Your Attention Too

If you don’t know Esmé Creed-Miles yet, fix that. She broke out as the lead in Amazon’s Hanna, carrying an entire action series as a teenager, and she’s been picking fascinating projects ever since. Marianne Dashwood is a gift of a role for a young actor — all passion and impulse and terrible decisions made beautifully — and Creed-Miles has the kind of intensity that could make it sing.

The chemistry between the two leads is going to make or break this film. Austen’s story lives or dies on whether you believe these two women actually love each other — as sisters, as opposites, as the only people who truly understand each other’s particular damage. Everything else is set dressing.

The Austen Cinematic Universe Rolls On

There’s something funny about how Austen keeps coming back. Every few years, someone declares the period drama dead, and then another Austen adaptation shows up and does great business. Emma. in 2020 was a hit. The Persuasion discourse — well, let’s not talk about Persuasion. Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice series is on the way. Austen is basically the Marvel Cinematic Universe for people who own tote bags.

And there’s a reason. Her novels are structurally perfect romantic comedies with genuinely sharp social commentary underneath. The dialogue crackles. The stakes — marriage as economic survival — are real even if the setting is distant. You don’t need to know anything about 1811 England to understand what it feels like to love the wrong person or to watch your sister make a mistake you can’t stop.

A new Sense and Sensibility with this cast, this director, and this writer has every reason to work. The only question is whether it can step out of the 1995 film’s very long shadow. That’s a big ask — but the Wednesday night crowd in Los Angeles certainly looked like they believed it could.

When Can You See It?

Mark the calendar: Sense and Sensibility hits theaters on October 16th. That’s just over a week away, which means the press tour is about to kick into high gear — expect more red carpets, more designer looks, and probably a lot more of Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles talking about sisterhood in interviews.

If the premiere is anything to go by, they’re going to be very good at it.

Source: Just Jared