This script has been lightly edited for clarity

 

Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob, and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Since Season 1 of Sanditon, the compassionate Mary Parker has provided unwavering support to her visionary husband, Tom, even through some of his darkest hours.

 

CLIP

Tom: I have let my investors down. I have let my friends down, my family down, and most of all, I have let you down, Mary. What can you think of me?

Mary: Tom, stop that. I can’t bear to see you punishing yourself. This is a misfortune, but somehow we’ll come through it.

Tom: How can I face people after this?

Mary: I don’t care what anyone says. I absolutely believe in you, Tom. And I love you. So, there.

 

But in this final season, Tom teams up with investor Rowleigh Pryce on a project that pushes beyond the boundaries of Mary’s support—a vision for a future Sanditon that collides with Mary’s unerring belief in what is right and just. 

 

CLIP

Tom: Mr. Colbourne, a splendid afternoon.

Colbourne: Mr. Price has just told me of your scheme for the Old Town.

Tom: Oh, yes?

Colbourne: You realize that if you raze the Old Town you will destroy the last vestiges of the community that has always been the heart of Sanditon.

Tom: Well, ah…

Mary: I have to say that I agree with you Mr. Colbourne. I believe we should be seeking to improve the lives of the people who live there, not ruin them.

 

Mary holds an obligation to Mrs. Filkins, a former maid for the Parkers and an Old Town resident. Like many women of the era, Mary indulges in charitable visits, bringing Mrs. Filkins’ family food and supplies. Tom’s plan for his grand hotel would spell disaster for Old Town displacing its current residents, including the downtrodden Filkinses. 

 

CLIP

Tom: Mary, we’ll leave as soon as the meeting is over so I’ll be back in good time to welcome the Montroses and of course to meet—

Mary: How could you?! You served them eviction notices.

Tom: What did you think was going to happen?

Mary: I thought, I hoped that your conscience would stop you, that you’d realize what you’re doing is immoral!

Tom: It is merely business.

Mary: It is wrong! Mrs. Filkins is caring for a sick child. We have a responsibility. Does my opinion count for nothing?

Tom: This is all for you! Don’t you see? This is for our future, for our children’s future!

Mary: No, all I see is a man who has lost his way. You are no longer the Tom Parker I married.

 

Actor Kate Ashfield joins us to discuss how Mary Parker finds her voice by pushing against the dreams of her husband — the very same dreams she’d been propping up since Season 1 — and how that voice can have lasting implications for the little town by the sea.

 

Jace Lacob: This week we are joined by Sanditon star, Kate Ashfield. Welcome.

Kate Ashfield: Thank you. Very, very pleased to be here.

Jace Lacob: Pleased to have you. Mary Parker is one of my favorite characters on Sanditon. Jane Austen describes her as, “…gentle, amiable, sweet, tempered woman, the proper wife in the world for a man of strong understanding, but not of a capacity to supply the cooler reflection, which her own husband sometimes needed.” I’d say that your Mary breaks away from that description, entirely. I mean, her first line of dialogue in Sanditon to me is particularly telling. She says,

 

CLIP

Mary: My dear, I think we’re going the wrong way.

Tom: Nonsense my dear, this is the way. You’ll see I am right.

 

Jace Lacob: Looking back, does that moment capture Mary’s perspective perfectly?

Kate Ashfield: I think it captures both of them perfectly, doesn’t it? You’re absolutely right, that’s their marriage summed up. He definitely thinks he’s right. And even when he’s given warnings, he’s still, no, we’re on the right road, until he comes to realize that Mary was right all along.

Jace Lacob: And the carriage is now upside down…

Kate Ashfield: Exactly.

Jace Lacob: …too late to do anything about it. Austen goes so far as to sort of say that Mary is, is “useless”, which is the furthest thing from the truth. I mean, she becomes, over the course of these three series, a deeply sympathetic character who I’d say sort of attempts to balance the excess of her husband’s sense with her own sensibility. How would you describe Mary and Tom’s marriage?

Kate Ashfield: Well, I think it’s a really strong marriage. By the time you get to season three particularly, I think you feel that, that they’re in a very good place, they’re very happy together, and that they enable each other to be themselves. And so Mary does allow Tom to do what he wants in Sanditon. But she’s the moral compass behind him.

He does things that she doesn’t think are right for the people in the town, for example, you know, she will speak up and have her say, and really she’s a force to be reckoned with then. But I think it’s a really healthy relationship and I think it gets tested several times, but overall my feeling was that I think they’re a lovely couple together.

Jace Lacob: And as we see this season they are definitely tested, as you say, particularly over the future of this Sanditon endeavor, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. In that first episode, the carriage overturning is a pivotal moment that brings Mary face-to-face with Charlotte Heywood, which kicks off the entire narrative of Sanditon. Tom invites Charlotte to stay with them as long as she likes, and Mary’s quite happy to go along with this plan. What do you think Mary makes of Charlotte Heywood initially?

Kate Ashfield: I think she was very pleased to have Charlotte around and that Charlotte was a breath of fresh air really, coming to Sanditon. And she was learned and interested in being her own person, and not necessarily wanted to get married. But, Mary saw all the benefits of being married and wanted the best for Charlotte. So I definitely think at the beginning she thought she was a wonderful person to have around.

Jace Lacob: Mary becomes a confidant for Charlotte, and Charlotte for Mary. And I do see that their relationship sort of shifts over the course of these three series. Does Mary ultimately become something kind of akin to a surrogate mother for Charlotte, or by the end, have they sort of reached a place where they’re on equal footing?

Kate Ashfield: Oh, well that’s a good question. My feeling was that she was kind of a surrogate mother. But you are right towards the end, I think Charlotte really has grown up and, you know, they are definitely on more equal footing. I think you’re right because Charlotte’s so clever and there’s so much to learn from her as well.

Jace Lacob: Mary remains a supportive figure throughout the run of Sanditon, but there are signs that she can push back against Tom when she needs to. We see that in series one when she learns at the cricket match that Tom hasn’t paid the workers. She says, “For so long I felt duty bound to keep my own counsel, but I can stay silent no longer. Stop. Tom, open your eyes for once.”

How did you read that moment for Mary when you came to it? What does it take for her to finally begin to confront her husband about the truth?

Kate Ashfield: Well, I think as soon as she found that out, she felt duty bound morally to confront him. But I guess it says a lot about the times, doesn’t it, that she would sit quiet and not question his authority and his decisions for a long time. I mean, you have the same in season two, don’t you as well, when she really gets very cross with him then for what he’s done and throwing everything away and gambling just seems so ridiculous to her after the sacrifices that Sydney made.

So yeah, I mean, she gets stronger, but I guess, I guess it was indicative of the time that wives probably wouldn’t stand up to their husbands.

Jace Lacob: She says at one point to him, “I never thought you were silly or vainglorious, and I don’t think that now. I love the way you wanted to change the world.” She also says of him, “Sometimes I fear he’ll keep adding and obsessing until one day he drops down dead with the plans still clutched in his hand.”, which to me is very telling.

And I do think you’re right. I think she is this sort of regency era model for constancy in a way that most women today would be far more outspoken towards their husband for doing the things that Tom actually does. But she does represent this kind of old, regency era woman who is willing to support her husband and go along with this until a point. And I feel like we reached that point in series three.

Kate Ashfield: Yes. I totally agree. And there was another way we looked at it when we were doing season one, before we got into season two, which is that there was something kind of rock and roll about Tom, that he was trying to set up this town and it was all a bit out there. He was doing something that other people just wouldn’t do. And I think that she was kind of excited and respected that.

So I think there is an element where she doesn’t think he’s vainglorious, she doesn’t think he’s stupid, there’s just other things that he does that she thinks are wrong. But I think the whole idea of it, he has her support. They move from a lovely house in London to Sanditon, and so she’s made her sacrifices for it too—on her own with the kids and not knowing people and trying to be a good wife to him there. So I think you’re absolutely right. I think they start in a really good place and yeah, by season three things are really tough because he seems to have crossed a line.

Jace Lacob: As you say, he is this great dreamer. He has this project, he has this goal, he has this dream. His entire family has come along. They support him even as he sort of trips and falls at times and makes errors. And in series three, Tom turns to Mary for advice about what he calls his second wife, this great project of Sanditon.

And Mary suggests the ideal location for a grand hotel would be on top of a hill overlooking the Old Town. Rowleigh wants to build on top of people’s houses, and Tom says it will never happen. Does Mary believe him when he says that to her?

Kate Ashfield: I think she does. I think she’s delighted to be asked her opinion, and that’s a good example of how modern their relationship was in some ways. They do really adore each other and she wants to be involved with it. I think at that point in time, she does believe him because she’s so sure it’s the wrong thing to do. Why would anyone want to do that? And he does give her assurances, doesn’t he, that he won’t?

Jace Lacob: Flat out he says it.

Kate Ashfield: Yeah. I think she’s shocked. Shocked. But you know that thing where you are shocked, but not a hundred percent surprised. No, they haven’t done it again. That, yeah.

Jace Lacob: To me, the charitable visits that she pays to her former maid, Mrs. Filkins, paint a different side of Mary, one that is actually more worldly than Tom, who often does have his head in the clouds, and that the struggles facing the poor are visible to Mary in a way that they’re not to Tom. He sort of sees them in the abstract—that they are just sort of an obstacle to be overcome and not living, breathing human beings who are just trying to survive. But Mary is also frank about the fact that those visits give her a purpose outside of the home.

 

CLIP

Mary: It’s not just a kindness. It’s nice to find an occupation outside being a wife and a mother. Rewarding as that is of course.

 

Jace Lacob: Do you see Mary, our clever, smart Mary, struggling against those period expectations of what motherhood is or what wifehood means?

Kate Ashfield: Yeah, I think so. And I think she does get bored. She does want something that gives her a purpose. And I think as her kids grow up, and she doesn’t have a job, I think it must have been difficult for lots of women. And I think that’s what’s so great about the books that you get to, you get to see their inner life. They can read and they can paint and, there’s not that much to do, is there?

Jace Lacob: No, they have these accomplishments, whether it’s needle point or as you say, painting, that sort of fill the time, but they’re not given opportunities to be productive. And those that are, whether it’s the Brontës or Jane Austen herself, are sort of outliers for women at this time. The carriage ride after she shares her views to Rowleigh is particularly fraught as Tom chastises her for speaking out of turn.

 

CLIP

Tom: I do wish you’d have spoken to me in private my dear.  

Mary: Just because I am Mrs. Tom Parker doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my own opinions—

Tom: Instead of undermining me in front of our host—

Mary: —and I am allowed to voice them!

Tom: —and Mr. Pryce! It is business Mary!

Mary: Since when did you care only for profit?

Tom: I cannot afford to be sentimental.

 

Jace Lacob: It does seem that this is the breaking point for Mary where she’s being put second to profit.

Kate Ashfield: Yes.

Jace Lacob: She’s not willing to sort of go along with this anymore.

Kate Ashfield: That’s right. She’s been second to the business all the way throughout, hasn’t she? In what you said earlier, Tom has two wives, one is Sanditon. And she says that right at the beginning of season one to Charlotte. And she thinks she’s kind of happy with that. She’s made her peace with that. But he is an obsessive and he is his own person. But I think she does get to the point where she has played second fiddle, but she is a person who has her own voice, and Rowleigh’s vision is just abhorrent to her and yeah, she can’t, she can’t sit quietly.

Jace Lacob: There is a new sort of iciness introduced in Mary and Tom’s marriage as he feels betrayed by Mary finding her footing and her voice. At the dance he says, “I’m not sure I like the woman you’ve become.” And at the fireworks there is this sort vast chasm opening up between them. What does Mary make of Tom’s reaction and did she expect it to be quite as fierce as it is?

Kate Ashfield:  I think she probably knew she was playing with fire. I think it’s Charlotte’s influence. It is finding her agency in that sense, she’s creative, she does something and I think she knows it’s wrong in terms of what Tom would think, but I don’t think she cares at that point. I think she’s had enough. She thinks of something that Charlotte would do, she believes in it so wholeheartedly that I think she’s prepared to weather the storm of the relationship, because she has to.

Jace Lacob: I mean, she, to me, should be given sainthood for what she’s put up with until this point.

Kate Ashfield: Yeah.

Jace Lacob: A lot has been asked of Mary Parker over over three series, and I’m glad that she does finally put her foot down. She always seems to be on the side of what is “right” and I’m using that in sort of air quotes. Do you feel like there’s any area where she does fall short? Is it, until now, her unerring support for her husband as dreamy as he is? Or do you see another flaw that she might have?

Kate Ashfield: I think you’re right. I think if she had gotten a bit more involved in the accounts, for example, then I think it would’ve been a better, easier journey for everybody. Charlotte gets involved in Sanditon in season one with the architecture of it and everything. I think if Mary had been doing the books, I think it would’ve been better because they would’ve paid people on time and she would’ve known what was going on, and then Tom wouldn’t have hidden things from her. But I guess it was such an unusual thing to do at that point in time that she wouldn’t have even thought about it.

Jace Lacob: Probably not. Probably not. But if she had, I mean there probably would be no show. So, we have to be thankful for that.

Kate Ashfield: That’s true.

Jace Lacob: In this week’s episode, Mary tries to get through to Tom.

 

CLIP

Tom: Mary, for the last time, please understand. This hotel will bring prosperity to Sanditon. It will bring jobs and a better future for all.

Mary: At what cost? It is not too late, particularly when there are so many sick. You can still do what is right.

 

Jace Lacob: But it’s only later that Mary learns from Mrs. Filkins that the residents of the old town have been served with eviction notices and Tom has already sold the land out from underneath the workers that actually built Sanditon. How entirely mortifying is this for Mary to learn?

Kate Ashfield: Oh, I think it’s the worst. And I think she genuinely can’t believe it. She can’t believe he would’ve done that. She’s so shocked and horrified and ashamed. That’s the lowest point she gets to in terms of their relationship.

Jace Lacob: I compared her to a saint a few minutes ago. And I do think she is, and she confronts him about all of his actions saying that she thought he would realize his actions were immoral. She says, “All I see is a man who’s lost his way. You are no longer the Tom Parker I married.” After the fire, the bankruptcy, Sidney’s sacrifice, these very selfishly grandiose plans, how does Mary now look back and read her support of Tom over the years? Is she angry at herself?

Kate Ashfield: Maybe, but I didn’t feel like that. And this could just be me, but I felt that she kept trying, and I think the thing that he’d lost his way is how she felt, I think she felt like everything had happened along the way. I mean, yes, he’s let her down, but I think she’d forgiven him, everything up to that point that they were just things that he’d done because I don’t think she really thought things were deliberately done. Apart from not paying the workers, even then it was like, you should have told me, and we could have worked something out, kind of attitude to it.

Whereas this is a deceit, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. And so, I think it becomes a really different thing for her.

 

MIDROLL

 

Jace Lacob: With the death of Sidney Parker, Tom and Mary become guardians to Georgiana. How would you describe Mary’s dynamic with Georgiana, and how does Georgiana’s trial in series three sort of shift or crystallize that?

Kate Ashfield: I think she becomes a mother figure to her too, and she becomes very protective. I think they end up having a very good relationship. I think the trial brings them closer together and Mary goes with her and Charlotte to the court. I think it’s a window into Georgiana’s vulnerability that Mary probably hadn’t seen before. Mary’s so observant and watches everybody. She kind of gets a sense of lots of things because she just sits back a bit, doesn’t she? So she knows from the beginning that it’d be nice for Georgiana to have Charlotte there and some company and she sees the things that are difficult for her. But yeah, I think they’ve become closer as the season goes on, I think.

Jace Lacob: It’s at Georgiana’s engagement dinner that Mary falls ill rather unexpectedly falling to the floor. Were you surprised that her story would take this turn or, given the sickness that’s spreading throughout the town, is this the most likely outcome of her charitable exercises?

Kate Ashfield: No. I was very surprised and when I found out about it I was so shocked because I just asked one of the new directors, I said, what’s going to happen in the next few episodes, because we would get them bit by bit, and they said, Mary gets really ill. And I said, you are joking. I had no idea because I think we didn’t really know about what was going on in the Old Town then either, so we didn’t know that people were getting ill. But I guess it’s true. All these things did happen.

Jace Lacob: It’s only here that Tom seems to finally realize what he might lose if Mary dies. There’s one final episode of Sanditon before it sails over the horizon. What can you tease about what the final episode holds for Mary Parker?

Kate Ashfield: Well, see, if I’m not doing any spoilers, I can’t say much because I think Mary’s life is in the balance. But I think when you see Tom’s reaction to Mary being ill, you really realize that he knows he’s made a big mistake, don’t you? I think the last thing he wants to do is lose Mary.

Jace Lacob: Georgiana and Charlotte present different versions of Austen heroines, but I’m curious, looking at Sanditon as a whole, how do you see Mary Parker fitting into the pantheon of, of Austen heroines?

Kate Ashfield: Well again, she is quite strong, even though she’s quite quiet. She does sort of follow behind them in a way, because she’s from the generation before, to become a bit more independent, live her own life a little bit more. So I think she is another one of Austen’s heroines like that. Certainly she has just become it in our series a bit more, doesn’t she?

Jace Lacob: Absolutely. Your first onscreen role was in 1994 as Princess Caraboo, opposite Phoebe Cates. What do you remember of this production?

Kate Ashfield: Oh, I was so nervous. I really enjoyed it. Because it was my first job, I remember the very first day. We were shooting. It was the first time I’d ever been on camera or anywhere near a camera, so I just didn’t know how it all worked. And I had to run across the lawn and bang a gong to say that dinner was served. And as I bang the gong, the end of the gong flew off and hit the cameraman on the head.

Oh no, this is gonna be terrible! I turned bright, bright red. And I remember then the very last scene that we shot on Princess Caraboo, it was a scene where I was meant to be crying around the table because Princess Caraboo was leaving and all of the servants were sitting around the table and the makeup artist put some, there were these menthol crystals that she was blowing in my eyes to make me cry, tear stick is what they call it. That’s it. And so, she puts them in and it was the last shot of the whole film. So everyone was gearing up to kind of, you know, clap and it’ll all be over. And we were in a hurry to finish the day. Anyway, I said, oh, it’s not working. There’s no tears. It’s not working. So they put a lot more in.

Jace Lacob: Oh God.

Kate Ashfield: I just remember just clutching Kevin Kline’s arms just going, I can’t open my eyes. Quick, quick, get eye wash. And I said, I’m ready now. I’m ready now. I was just mortified. I was really, really crying by then. Kevin Klein looked at me and went, oh no, you’ve come up in a rash. I just got so bright red, my whole face, because I was so nervous and so embarrassed and you know, I was messing it up for everybody else. And then he said the sweetest thing. He went, “I’ve seen that once before on Meryl Streep.” I was like, oh, bless him. Thank you.

Jace Lacob: Bless.

Kate Ashfield: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways.

Jace Lacob: That’s amazing.

Kate Ashfield: That sums up my whole time. It was great fun and I loved doing it, but I really was learning on the job and I was very, very nervous. Yeah.

Jace Lacob: After a string of extremely intense projects, including Blasted, Closer, and This Little Life, you gave an interview to The Independent in 2003, in which you said, “Drama should make us confront our emotions.” As an actor, is that still a motivating factor for choosing the roles you do? Are you still drawn to intensity?

Kate Ashfield: I’m drawn to try and understand things more, I guess. So, understand why people do what they do or how we feel about certain things. It depends what you get given to do. But I guess it’s making everything relatable so that when you watch something, you think, it’s always this question of, how would I respond in that situation?

Jace Lacob: We got to see how you would respond to a zombie apocalypse because a year after giving that interview, you starred as Liz in Edgar Wright’s zombie romcom, Shaun of the Dead. How did Shaun change the trajectory of your career or your life?

Kate Ashfield: Ooh. Well, there’s people that really love that film, and it’s so nice to meet them. I met one the other day. I was sitting in a bar and a guy at the table next to me was saying, “It’s my favorite film.” And the people that like it really, really like it and watch it and watch it, you know? So that’s been really nice. You have no idea when you make a film what people are going to make of it. And I think it was a kind of surprise that people liked it so much, but we had such a great time doing it and making it. I guess it’s true with a comedy that you just don’t know. You don’t know.

Jace Lacob: I mean, you never know. You never know on any production. I mean you played Jools Gates in the very first series of Line of Duty, which is one of my favorite series of all time. Did you know on that, that Jed Mercurio had created a global sensation with this series? Was there a sense on the set that this was something unique or did you not know? Is it impossible to know in the moment?

Kate Ashfield: I thought the scripts were great and I thought it was a great show to be involved in, and I really enjoyed all of it. But no, I don’t think I had any idea it would become what it did become. And I think that’s the strength of the writing and the actors that were in it for the long term. It really did become so successful, didn’t it? Season by season it grew and changed, didn’t it?

Jace Lacob: It took off in such an extreme way. I mean, you mentioned the scripts and, and in addition to acting, you are yourself a writer and producer. What led you to writing Born To Kill?

Kate Ashfield: I was living in Los Angeles and my son was at school there, one of the other moms at school, we decided we’d try and write something together as we both had time there, and I think we sat by some swimming pool. It sounds terrible. And just we’re like, what would we write about? What interests us both? And we’re both really interested in psychology and she’d written lots of shows with her husband that were about crime and she had lots of crime books on her bookshelf there. So we started talking about psychopaths.

Jace Lacob: As one does.

Kate Ashfield: Yes, that’s it. And then young ones, and then imagine if it was one of our sons or that sort of age range, and you think, what would a mother feel about that? So, that was the starting point. And then we thought, yeah, let’s just see if we can write it. And we actually originally set it in America before it got picked up here. We planned to do it on the Canadian-American border where there was no one really paying Sam much attention.

Jace Lacob: You’ve now amassed quite a few writing credits including Man in Room 301, Born to Kill, which we mentioned. Is writing something you’d like to do more of in the future? Do you see yourself balancing acting roles with writing looking forward?

Kate Ashfield: Oh, absolutely. In an ideal world, yes, because there’s such different things to do. And both have positive and negative parts to them. To do both would be the ideal, I think. Yeah.

Jace Lacob: So that begs the question, what is next for you, Kate?

Kate Ashfield: There’s a couple of things I’ve just done. I just did a film in Budapest, which was great fun as well, called Stockholm Bloodbath based on a real bloodbath that happened years ago. I think it was in the 1500s when Norway was fighting Sweden. And then other things. Writing is such a long process, things are in different stages, going through that. So I don’t know what’s gonna actually be next.

Jace Lacob: I can’t wait to see. Kate Ashfield, thank you so very much.

Kate Ashfield: Thank you.

 

Next time, Mary’s illness puts life and love into perspective for those closest to her. 

 

CLIP

Charlotte: What a privilege it was to witness, the love they bare each other.

Georgiana: Tom would be quite lost without her.

Charlotte: Is that not what a marriage should be?

Georgiana: Just because you called off your wedding doesn’t mean I should call off mine. I know I’m making the right decision for my future.

Charlotte: What about love?

Georgiana: I will have my mother’s love. That is enough.

 

Sanditon stars Rose Williams and Crystal Clarke return to the podcast Sunday, April 23, to tie a neat ribbon around the final episode, reflect on what the series has meant to them as actors, and offer their final thoughts on how the story ended for Charlotte Heywood and Georgiana Lambe.