Eliza Bennett is entering her Regency era!
The 31-year-old British actress is starring in Hallmark Channel‘s newest flick An American In Austen, which is all about a a devoted Austenite gets the chance to live out her Pride & Prejudice dreams all thanks to one wish on a star.
“I’m so excited [for people to see this film],” Eliza tells Celeb Secrets host Juliet Schroder exclusively in a virtual interview. It’s always a bit daunting because you’re just sort of making something in secret and there’s like no expectations yet. So obviously I hope people like it, but it’s also fun to sort of have it out there for people to hopefully fall in love with these characters.”
An American In Austen follows Harriett (Bennett),an American librarian who feels that no man can quite live up to Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. When her longtime boyfriend surprises her with a proposal, she isn’t sure of her answer and flees. Exhausted, she falls asleep on the car ride home only to wake up inside her favorite novel. Once there, she befriends her literary hero Elizabeth (Nell Barlow) and the rest of the Bennett family and wows them with her uncanny knack for predicting what will happen next. Soon, her peculiar behavior beguiles none other than Mr. Darcy (Nicholas Bishop) himself.
As Harriet’s presence disrupts the story she loves most, she starts to question the fantasies she once held of Regency-Era life. Now, Harriet must choose between this unexpected chance at love with the man she’s always dreamed of or her imperfect life back in the real world.
“I definitely think, especially in this day and age, people say the grass is always greener, but it’s just that you’re not watering the grass on your own side well enough, and I think that can definitely be true and especially with love and relationships, I think you can build up a list of things a man or a woman should have be this perfect partner, but then in reality, everyone’s flawed and everyone’s got faults,” Bennett says of the film’s message. “I think when [Harriett] goes back to ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and she meets Mr. Darcy — this man who is the perfect man — she realizes that he too is just a human being that’s also flawed. It’s kind of the best lesson that she could learn her boyfriend [Ethan] is pretty, is pretty perfect if you watch it.”
As for why she thinks viewers should tune into the big premiere later tonight, the 31-year-old says that the while romcom still keeps the ethics of your typical Hallmark movie, it breaks the mold of a traditional love story that will ultimately bring you on a “fun ride.”
“I think it’s a fun ride. There are multiple love stories in this… You have Harriet’s love story, but you also have, Darcy and Bingley and Jane and Elizabeth and all of those people that sort of become intertwined with one another,” she says. “There’s a lot of comedy between how the modern day is getting sort of mashed up through Harriet and how these poor people in the regency area just do not understand who this strange woman is that’s come barefoot and doesn’t know how to speak properly or doesn’t know how to eat soup properly. I think a lot of that’s fun, like watching someone, you know, in the modern times in in the wrong era.”
“There’s a lot about family in it. I really love the relationships between the sisters and how they support one another and listen to one another. Even though this breaks the mold of I think the normal Hallmark movie, I think that those aspects of it are definitely part of sort of the Hallmark ethics,” she continues.
An American In Austen is part of the network’s Loveuary with Jane Austen programming event that honors the author’s timeless legacy with new movies every Saturday during the month of February. For more on the flick, watch our full interview with Eliza below and don’t forget to tune into An American In Austin when it premieres TONIGHT, February 17th @ 8PM ET/PT on the Hallmark Channel.
