BritBox’s Outrageous puts a fresh spin on the lives of the six Mitford sisters — but there are a few core differences between the real socialites and the actors playing them.
“We made a very conscious decision early on not to do their voices, because if you look at any interviews of the sisters, they speak very clipped, and it’s very inaccessible,” Bridgerton alum Bessie Carter, who plays eldest sister Nancy, exclusively reveals in the latest issue of Us Weekly. “We knew that would alienate the audience because that’s not the important part. How they sounded is not important, it’s what their lives [and] what unfolded in their lives that’s important, and the tension between the six sisters and watching that drama play out.”
She adds, “For Nancy, there [are] loads of photographs of her. They were all splashed all over Vogue, Tatler, all over the papers. There were a lot of visual aids, which was mainly sort of taken up by our amazing costume designer, who really defined all of the six sisters fashion-wise very specifically to what they actually were like, and then we put our own personal touches on it to make them distinct and our own and very lived-in.”
The Mitfords were infamous in the 1930s just before World War II, with Nancy finding acclaim as a novelist. As Carter, 31, brings her to life onscreen, she wanted to make sure her portrayal felt authentic to the character and time period.
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“With Nancy, we made certain decisions of, ‘OK, that’s her windbreak cardigan.’ You know, when you go home to see your family for Christmas, you have that one cardigan that stays at home that you’d never be seen dead in when you’re with your friends, but at home, you will put it on?” Carter tells Us. “So, we made conscious decisions that they had their favorite sweater, their favorite going-out dress, and they would wear the same outfits like we all do. So, that was a lot of the ingredients to making it our own show.”
The Mitfords, whom Carter equates to versions of modern-day “influencers,” have a storied history in textbooks based on their love lives and political affiliations.
“I suppose the beauty of any time you make a drama is that all of the events and the facts that take place happened,” Carter says. “It’s based [on Mary Lovell’s] really forensic book, which was brilliantly researched. But what [our TV] writers can do … is imagine how they felt about these things, and that’s what I think we all want to see, that’s what we relate to. When we watch television, you’re drawn in by the very human emotional connection, and that’s what she’s done so well.”
She continues, “We know the headline things that the sisters did, but we haven’t looked at, ‘What were those first few steps that they took into the grown-up world that led them to making such different decisions that had sort of horrendous global scale repercussions?’ I think that’s fascinating.”
Outrageous, in particular, examines the dynamics of the six Mitford sisters pre-WWII as they start discovering different beliefs. (Carter acts opposite Joanna Vanderham, Isobel Jesper Jones, Zoe Brough, Shannon Watson and Orla Hill.)
“What’s amazing is [the show] really is a love story between six sisters, where there are romances that come and go within the show,” Carter explains to Us. “The main relationships we look at is these six sisters and how they are uneducated, however, they had all this drive and passion and curiosity about the world. I mean, if you read any of the books about them, they’re so funny. You know, they were stealing books from the library and reading up about sex because they wanted to know about sex.”
She adds, “They had all this pent-up energy and nowhere to put it. And so, what we explore is if you don’t listen to people and you don’t give them a valued role and don’t make them feel heard, they’re gonna find a place to feel heard. And unfortunately, in this case, these six sisters, [it’s like] that when your sister does something, you want to go the opposite direction. It’s kind of like Succession, how these familial dynamics get played out with huge consequences, and they didn’t really think or care about what the global consequences were. They were just driven by, ‘Why can’t I do that? I have an intelligent brain and I want to put it to use.’”
Carter further explained that her version of Nancy is the “narrator” of the series.
“Nancy is your lens … because our writer thought, ‘Well, who else would be better to tell the story than the writer in the family?’” explains Carter, who previously narrated the real Nancy’s Power of Love audiobook. “Nancy very much takes you on the journey.”
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Carter’s journey playing Nancy also earned the approval of her parents — she is the daughter of actors Imelda Staunton (The Crown, Harry Potter) and Jim Carter (Downton Abbey) — every step of the way.
“I actually rehearsed [my audition] with my mum, which I don’t do very often, but I was just like, ‘Oh, can you just run these lines with me’ because my audition scene was a big monologue and I’m introducing everyone,” Bessie recalls. “I got her to run it through with me and she was like, ‘This is great and I think you got this.’ I was like, ‘I think I got this too’ and not in an arrogant way. I was like, ‘Yeah, I can relate to Nancy.’ So, that gave me quite a skip in my step, and I bounced off to the audition feeling quite good.”
After Bessie officially landed the role, both of her parents were “thrilled.”
“It’s my first proper lead role on television, and so when I called to tell them I was at a bus stop in Brixton,” she says. “They’re always the first to know about any job. So, they were jumping up and down and were very, very pleased for me.”
For more from Bessie, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.
Outrageous airs weekly on BritBox.
