Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — It was an E.M. Forster novel published in 1910 and a film that won Emma Thompson an Oscar after it came out in 1992. Now, Howards End is getting a fresh take as a four-part miniseries on Starz.
The miniseries, written by Oscar-winner Kenneth Lonergan, examines issues of class and feminism in turn-of-the-century England. It focuses on the entanglements of three families — the independent-minded middle class Schlegel siblings, the rich Wilcoxes and the lower-class Basts.
But don’t let the Edwardian costumes and posh accents fool you — this isn’t a “stiff” period piece.
“I think there’s a misconception that people ‘back then,’ in whatever period we’re talking about, had this kind of stiffness about them and this mannered, austere, humorless, physicality and it’s not the case at all,” Hayley Atwell, who plays headstrong eldest sister Margaret Schlegel, says at the series’ NYC premiere.
She adds that despite the characters’ dated social etiquette, they’re all very relatable to today’s audiences.
At the series’ core is the bond between Margaret and her impulsive younger sister Helen, played by Philippa Coulthard. Coulthard says that Atwell’s “down to earth” nature made playing that sisterly connection very easy.
For Matthew Macfadyen, who plays the hard-to-read Wilcox patriarch Henry, he connected with his character’s complexity. “He is infuriating and he’s terribly unsympathetic and also sympathetic,” he says. “You know, he’s nuanced like we all are.”
The series, which has already scored a BAFTA TV nomination, premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Starz.
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