Written only months before Jane Austen’s death in 1817, Sanditon, which has been beautifully turned into an eight-part series for ITV and Masterpiece on PBS by screenwriter Andrew Davies, tells the story of Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams), a spirited and impulsive young woman who finds herself at the would-be coastal resort of Sanditon, where she meets the charming but distant Sidney Parker (Theo James). While Charlotte is on her own path of self-discovery, she also finds herself on a journey to love.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, British actor Theo James talked about why he found Sanditon appealing, playing a character and complex and burdened as Sidney Parker, how much he knew about his character’s backstory, the complicated relationship between Sidney and Charlotte, and the challenge of shooting the dance scenes.

Collider: This seems like it would’ve been so much fun to do. When it came your way, did you feel like this could be a fun project to sign on for?

THEO JAMES: Yeah. The character is quite complex and he’s quite burdened, as you get to see in further episodes, but he warms up and there’s a very strong love story in it. With Andrew Davies, the writer, there’s a mischief to his writing, and that’s what I loved about his style. He has an ability to bring depth and pathos, but then, at the same time, with a twinkle in the eye, which he’s done so well with many other shows that he’s written. Particularly, for me, the touchstone was the ‘90s Pride and Prejudice, which is probably quite dated now, but at the time, was a really fresh way to adapt Jane Austen. It had all of the great mischief and complexity that she has in her writing, but he also added his own flavor to it. He’s done it for many other non-Jane Austen stories, so that was a big pull for me. And then, the character was this dangerous, guarded, but good person, and someone that I really liked the idea of playing. He’s not that likable, in the first couple of episodes. He’s not the nicest guy, all the time, which I really liked and relished. The great thing about TV is that you can really play that, over eight hours of television, where someone who seems very guarded and is quite judgmental, changes and evolves, and you get to see a different person.

It makes it more interesting, especially when you’re supposed to be the leading man in one of these stories. When it’s more of a romantic character, it tends to feel like there should be trumpets playing because everything is so nice and romantic. It’s much more complex when it’s someone that you’re not really sure what to make of, initially.

JAMES: Yeah, exactly. And that helps the relationship with the central character, Charlotte, played by Rose [Williams]. They dislike each other, then they warm to each other, and then they irritate each other, and finally, they start to fall in love with each other. I think that’s really fun and rich to play because there’s a whole gamut of emotions that they go through, before they even start to like each, let alone love each other.

Because this is a bit more of a mysterious character, in the beginning, did you have questions about who he would become? How much were you told about him, and how much were you given to read, ahead of time?

JAMES: I was given enough. There was the shape of Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 7. I could see the evolution of the character and what the idea was. From the first episode, I understood what Andrew was going for, with this very mean, dangerous person, but at the end, of the day, his, he’s grounded by the fact that he clearly loves his family. You can see that, through the course of it, he’s gonna warm and thought. What was interesting, which I didn’t know, was his backstory, which we dived into, after I came on board. That actually really helped because there’s a self-loathing that Sidney Parker has. He was indirectly involved in the sugar trade, which was funded by slavery, so he hates himself for that. The ramifications of what that meant to him and the guilt he feels all help to feed into the character to make it more interesting.

Those aspects to him are the things that you can explore deeper in a TV series because you have so many more hours than you would with a film.

JAMES: Yeah, exactly. You get to know him in a very slow burn way, where pieces of information are fed in gently. For me, that’s really satisfying. I haven’t done TV for a long time, and that’s when TV is at its most powerful. The marquee TV series, for me, is The Sopranos. That’s the touchstone. [James] Gandolfini evolves and changes you, you love him and hate him, he’s a narcissist and a psychopath, and he’s everything. That complexity, you can’t usually tell with film. You can, in some instances, but there’s the real opportunity of TV to be able to tell more complex, emotional, human personality stories.

The first episode has a lot of dancing in it, and you’re dancing while having to deliver dialogue, which seems like it would be its own unique challenge. What was it like to shoot all of that?

JAMES: It was quite technical, and I’m a terrible dancer, which didn’t help. It was quite hard, in a nice, ambitious way. The direction was that Olly [Blackburn] wanted to go from a conversation during a dance, in the same shot, to two other people having a conversation and dancing, and then have that morph into another shot of three people having an argument. That was quite hard to choreograph, coupled with the fact that you’re supposed to be speaking, but also reacting and thinking, while trying to remember these fucking dance moves, which I was terrible at. And you’re in a room, which is filled with candlelight, for the beautiful natural light that it is, and a hundred people, so it was fucking boiling. And you’d be wearing 50 layers and dripping with sweat. It was fairly off-putting. But, it was fun.

How long did you shoot that for?

JAMES: I think that that ball was four or five days, I can’t remember. It was quite a lot for probably a 15 minute sequence.

Sidney is an interesting guy because he asks Charlotte her opinion, but then judges her for having an opinion. Is aware that he’s like that?

JAMES: He’s a little bit manipulative. I think that’s what he learns not to do. He asks the question to bait her into a trap, essentially. He is intrigued by her, but also irritated by this woman who’s turned up in his family. And she seems quite opinionated and strong-willed, which interests him, but also irritates him. He’s a difficult man. That’s how I would describe him. Because of problems that he’s faced in the past, not that that’s an excuse necessarily, he’s a difficult dude.

 What is it about Charlotte that eventually warms Sidney up to her? 

JAMES: I don’t know. She realizes that all of that is a mask for his own hurt, essentially. He was hurt and damaged and, as a result, he closed himself to people and emotion. She realizes that actually he cares a lot for people and his family, and everyone. But he was a broken man, so he put up this wall, and she manages to break that down.

Sanditon airs on Sunday nights on Masterpiece on PBS.