Brenda Blethyn teams with emerging star Jessica Reynolds in a new adaptation of A Woman of Substance
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The pair play Emma Harte at different stages of her rags-to-riches story
The original TV show was broadcast in the U.S. in 1985 following Barbara Taylor Bradford's bestselling novel
For veteran actorBrenda Blethyn,playing the heroine in the new dramatization of 1980s blockbusterA Woman of Substancehad a poignant resonance.
Blethyn, who plays Emma Harte inBarbara Taylor Bradford's bestselling story and is most recognized stateside for her role as Mrs. Bennet in the 2005 adaptation ofPride & Prejudice, has roots in a similar background.
Like Emma, who starts out in life as a maid to a tyrannical family in an old country mansion, Blethyn's mother was also a kitchen maid. "Any story about someone who triumphs over adversity is good to do," Blethyn said at an exclusive screening in London.
"My mum started life as a skivvy in a big house, down in Kent [England] — it's where she met my dad — he was a chauffeur. She used to tell me loads of stories about how hard the work was. And, you know, for very little pay. She would work about three or four jobs a day to make ends meet," the actress said.
Blethyn, 80, added, "We were very, very poor growing up. But mum and dad always used to say you're as good as anybody else and if you work hard, you can achieve it," she told a screening in London. "That's the work ethic that Emma's mother instills upon her, saying the plan with the capital P is go for it, work hard."
Jessica Reynolds (OutlanderandHouse of Guinness) plays the younger version of Emma, emerging from poverty while working as a maid. Reynolds and Blethyn hadn't met until Blethyn headed to the Yorkshire hills to see Reynolds doing one of her scenes.
"Jessica came out of the house that was Emma's home, and we sort of looked at each other across the moor," she recalled adding she called out "Emma!" to her costar.
Reynolds — who calls her costar an "icon" — adds, "It really did feel quite romantic. It was a really beautiful moment. We didn't say much, but we gave each other a big hug, it was beautiful."
She talked about how she initially dismissed auditioning as she didn't think her Irish background would work for the producers. She thought there would be many other actresses who were "going up that are gonna be able to step up to that in a way that well, in my head, that I wouldn't be able to," she said.
After landing the role, Reynolds said she was "so immersed in her . . . I stayed in the accent. I was like speaking in a Yorkshire accent in my sleep, no joke like. One morning like I woke up in the middle of the night and started speaking in a Yorkshire accent."
"She was a real part of me and she, she goes through such a journey, such ups and downs." She said that her character and her were so "bound together" that she "wrote a wee note" to say goodbye to her.
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Another star of the production is the stunning and sometimes harsh Yorkshire countryside and producers have used the same country mansion – Broughton Hall – that doubled up as fictional Fairley Hall in the original TV version in the 1980s.
The eight-parter will be shown in the U.S. on Britbox in the coming months.Channel Fourwill broadcast the series in the U.K. on Mar. 11. An original adaptation of the book was an international hit in 1984 and 1985, starringJenny Seagroveand Deborah Kerr.
News of the new adaptation came in the wake of Barbara Taylor Bradford's death at 91 in November 2024.
While Bradford wasn't able to see the second dramatization of her first hit book, she had been aware of its production and took a keen interest in its early progress.
A Woman of Substancewas the book that made her a name internationally. Published in 1979, it stayed on theNew York Timesbestseller list for 43 weeks. She went on to write 39 other novels includingThree Weeks in Paris(2002),To Be the Best(1988), and her most recent titleThe Wonder of It All(November 2023), selling more than 90 million copies in total.
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The author was born in May 1933 and was raised in Leeds, Yorkshire, in northern England. A voracious reader, she was the only child in the city to be allowed two library cards, and sold her first short story to a magazine at age 10.
At 15, she left school to embark on her writing career and joined the U.K. newspaper,Yorkshire Evening Post. She became a reporter a year later and was named its first woman's editor by age 18.
At age 20, Taylor Bradford moved to London and worked as a columnist and editor on the British national newspapers. A pinnacle of her life was when the celebrated author was awarded an OBE for her services to literature byQueen Elizabeth IIin 2007.
In May 2025, much of her collection of jewelry, art — and even her typewriter — was auctioned.
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