This script has been lightly edited for clarity

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

It’s a bright and joyous day in the vibrant beachside resort, Sanditon. Inside Trafalgar House, celebration fills the air as Arthur, Mary, and Tom Parker gather ‘round to present gifts to Georgiana Lambe on her 21st birthday. The heiress has reached the age of maturity and her father’s fortune — and her long-sought independence — are finally hers.

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Arthur: Many happy returns Georgiana.

Mary: They were my mother’s. I hope you like them.

Georgiana: Thank you. I shall wear them to my party on Saturday.

Tom: And of course, in line with your father’s wishes, today you take possession of your inheritance.

But as we saw at the end of episode 1, Georgiana’s hard-won wealth is not as secure as she, and her benevolent Sanditon friends, would have hoped.  

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Charles Lockhart: It pains me to ruin your celebration, honestly it does, but I’m afraid what I have to give you cannot wait.

Georgiana: What is this?

Charles Lockhart: I am hereby serving you with a writ stating that I am the rightful heir to your father’s fortune. I suggest you find yourself a lawyer.

Episode 3 opens with a shaken, yet determined Georgiana Lambe on her way to a London courthouse, accompanied by her dear friends Charlotte Heywood and Mary Parker. Now, armed with the support of Samuel Colbourne as her lawyer, Georgiana prepares to defend her right to the fortune her father left her, a fight that pits her tooth and nail against the unrelenting efforts of Charles Lockhart.  

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Georgiana: What are these letters if not proof of my father’s love? I know who I am. Whatever Lockhart threatens, he will not win.

Charlotte: And I have every faith in your lawyer.

Mary: Mr. Colbourne is impressive indeed. We owe his brother our profound thanks.

As Georgiana gets ready for a potentially life-altering trial, actor Crystal Clarke joins us to discuss how Georgiana, now of age, maintains her agency as she navigates the hurdles and triumphs of adult life. 

Jace Lacob: And this week we are joined by Sanditon star, Crystal Clarke. Welcome.

Crystal Clarke: Hello. Hello.

Jace Lacob: I cannot believe Crystal, that it is season three that we are talking about. It was years ago at this point. I remember we sat down at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to talk about season one. You came in with a bowl of cereal.

Crystal Clarke: Did I have a bowl of cereal?

Jace Lacob: You had a bowl of cereal. I think we were your first interview of the day. It was super early in the morning I remember.

Crystal Clarke: I remember the chair. I remember the room. But like, I don’t remember the bowl of cereal.

Jace Lacob: You took the last few bites. It was like you were doing a walk and eat because it was so early and then like, put the bowl down and you were like, okay, I’m ready to go.

We are talking about episode three. It’s the halfway point of the third season, which to me marks a major turning point for Georgiana Lambe. So much of her story has been about her desire for agency as she reaches the age of maturity, and with this episode, she gets control over her fortune and her destiny. How did you approach this aspect of her story?

Crystal Clarke: It’s interesting because it is one of those situations where, at least for Georgiana, it’s very much a, it’s not what you expected it was going to be.  So there was a lot, and for me as well, like there was a lot that the character learns in court that raises so many questions for her—questions about her identity, questions about her understanding of her place in society still. There wasn’t the expectation, at least from my point of view, I didn’t know that that was going to come either. Like, I didn’t know those questions were going to come, and I was very happy that those questions came as the actor, because it adds so much nuance to, it’s not even adds, but it dresses how much nuance there is in her story and there is with like, yes, she comes into her fortune, but what are the other questions that come along with that? And like, while it means that she has autonomy in society, how much of it really helps her to define who she is?

Jace Lacob: I mean, there is this sense that Georgiana’s race is on trial. She says at one point in episode two:

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Georgiana: Why is this man to be believed over a woman of integrity? Is it because he’s a white man? If so, how is this justice?

Jace Lacob: I mean, to me that felt particularly timely and relevant to 2023 in the sense that so little has changed since the regency, since a woman like Georgiana Lambe could be on trial for a fortune that is rightfully hers, only to have this white man come in and say, actually no, that’s mine.

Crystal Clarke:  Mm-hmm. Yeah. I also think that she doesn’t expect the best, obviously, but she’s already dealt with her money being in the hands of a white man; in the hands of the Parkers, in the hands of Sydney. And I think the added brutality of it is the way in which these questions are brought up, and the defamation of her character and the defamation of her mother’s character as the way of trying to take from her or deem her unworthy.

And I think that’s something that she’s somewhat had protection from up until this point, and it just is absolutely shattering and shaking. But she definitely stands there in that moment and is like, you know, straight up like, oh, so why is it my mother’s character and mine that’s in question and not these men and so on and so forth. And that is very much still a double standard. We deal with double standards very similar today.

Jace Lacob: It’s almost like very little has changed.

Crystal Clarke: Oh, I don’t know. Do you think? I think a lot has changed, but there’s also you know, human beings will be human beings. Human beings are gonna human being.

Jace Lacob: Human beings are gonna human being. Exactly. I’m glad you mentioned the point that she was a ward of Sydney’s and then the Parkers, and Georgiana really, she’s shuttled between households, she’s shuttled between countries. She has to face off against Charles Lockhart in court, who had previously betrayed and used her.

But in that moment, she finally is free of these men and then in control of her own person, as you say, sort of for the first time in her life, only to then have further questions asked about her past, about her parentage, about who she actually is. I mean, in that respect, do you see this episode as a sort of victory moment for Georgiana, or is it sort of a muted victory where she doesn’t quite yet realize, which we’ll talk about more in a bit, but doesn’t quite yet realize the damage that’s actually been done?

Crystal Clarke: It’s definitely a muted victory. It’s definitely a…it’s a safety at first. And then very quickly it becomes almost a burden of so many unanswered questions and so much to figure out for herself. You know what, it’s hard. It’s hard to be an independent person, to do adulting, it’s hard. We all know it’s hard. It sounds cute at first when you’re a kid to be like, oh, I’ve got my freedom and I can make choices for myself. And then when you start to really have to make those choices, that’s where the true test comes. And I think we start to see that for her after the trial.

Jace Lacob: She delivers a pretty blistering testimony, the one you referenced a few minutes ago, “Why is it my mother and I, whose character is called into question and not the men who have mistreated us?” Which shifts the focus onto her father onto Lockhart and onto really the British Empire itself.

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Georgiana: I, I am barely one and twenty but, I have known a lifetime’s worth of judgment and betrayal. Yet why is it my mother and I whose character is called into question? And not the men who have mistreated us? I can only think my inheritance was a bid for absolution. So surely, my lord…to give that man my fortune would only compound the sin?

Jace Lacob: What did you feel was riding on this moment where she delivers this testimony, and how important was it to you that Georgiana speak truth to power here?

Crystal Clarke: I think it’s really important that in that moment she hasn’t been overtaken by the shock of that moment, of the whole thing, really. The whole goal is to silence her, is to beat her into submission. And she allows herself to be vulnerable and present for all of it without totally giving up. She doesn’t give up and she has the fire to defend herself.

Jace Lacob: I mean I feel most of us in this situation would probably wilt under the spotlight?

Crystal Clarke: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think it would be such a scary position to be in and like to be constantly having all of this crap thrown at you and having your character attacked and who you are attacked like, that’s a lot.

And she does not, like you say, she doesn’t wilt. It gets to her, yeah, but it doesn’t stop her.

Jace Lacob: Well, she’s human and human beings gonna human being. We know that. I mean, more than just Georgiana’s fortune is at stake during this trial. Also, to me, hanging in the balance is sort of her sense of self. The Bill of Sale reveals that her mother was sold to another plantation owner by her father, which makes Georgiana question the entire relationship she had with her father. How does this shift or shatter her sense of identity of who she is and the foundation she thought she had for her life?

Crystal Clarke: It’s not great for Georgiana in the moment, but I personally love the shift. I think whatever her understanding of who she has been or her place in society up until this point, I mean, it’s been on shaky foundation. She’s a woman of color. Her father is a plantation owner. She, yes, is inheriting this massive amount of wealth, but she’s still in a time and a place where she is seen as less than, where her options are very much limited. And I think she’s not really had to deal with the nuance of those questions up until this point.

Up until this point, it’s been a missing of what was, and a feeling of isolation. But she hasn’t really had to deal with the nuances of, okay, yes, I’m a woman of color, and I’m wealthy and awesome. That sets me apart and that’s cool, and that means I can help people. But also, isn’t it interesting that my money and my wealth and my privilege comes off the backs of other peoples’ suffering?

The question of like, what was her parents’ relationship? We don’t know. We didn’t know. It wasn’t a question that she had even thought to ask or question, you know? And I think it’s where she really begins to get to do the real work of understanding who she is because the surface is just taken away and she really has to begin to look at things and I think that’s great. And I was really excited about all of that, all of those things, those questions coming up as part of the story.

Jace Lacob: In an episode that is full of, of great moments for Georgiana, my favorite scene of this episode is actually the encounter between Georgiana and Mrs. Wheatley:

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Mrs. Wheatley: Miss Lambe, I just wanted to say how sorry I am.

Georgiana: Did you not hear? I won the case. My fortune remains mine.

Mrs. Wheatley: I know, Ma’am. But I also know what you’ve lost.

Jace Lacob: Georgiana’s so fantastic at using her armor to hold the world at a distance. And she’s had to do that to survive. But this is one instance where I feel like her mask actually slips and we get to see her pain in a very palpable way. How difficult was it to encapsulate a woman’s lifetime of pain in a single expression, no dialogue, just an expression?

Crystal Clarke: What a simple question. I mean, I don’t know. I do it every day, I feel like. So, it helps that, that was like, that moment between Georgiana and Mrs. Wheatley and not having any other people of color around, because it’s the thing where you go someplace and you’re like, oh my God, are there other black people here? And you see them and it’s a moment of like, yes, community! It’s like a little bit of belonging and like, ‘I see you’, sort of thing. And this was an ‘I see you’, but in like, a part of her that she did not want to have seen. And I think that’s kind of the head space that it put me in. Yeah, it’s that ‘I see you’, but when you don’t want to be seen, when you don’t want to be perceived. And she was perceived so hard.

Jace Lacob: No. She saw her.

Crystal Clarke: She saw her.

Jace Lacob: And it is this moment where it seems really quite touching and beautiful because they’re both women of color, albeit from very different backgrounds. But they’re in a majority white society that has amassed their wealth through the sale of people who looked like them. They’re the daughters of slaves. And it could be this rare moment of solidarity in this, but as you say, she’s, ‘I see you’, but Georgiana at that moment flinches, like, she really does not want to connect in that moment, because she sees it.

Crystal Clarke: Yeah. And Georgiana herself doesn’t want to see that. She doesn’t want to see that part. Those are really difficult questions that she will have to grapple with now, and she doesn’t want to have to deal with them.

Jace Lacob: Before this next question, a brief word from our sponsors.

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Jace Lacob: You and I have talked a lot about representation over the years since, since Sanditon started, and the parallel stories of slavery that Georgiana and Mrs. Wheatley share feel very vital in 2023. To you, was it essential that Sanditon should grapple with the aftereffects of slavery with the sugar trade, without flinching away from it? That there should be a moment like this which is deeply uncomfortable for the participants and hopefully for people at home?

Crystal Clarke: Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100%. And I felt like I really appreciated having the character as representation for the first season and whatnot. But I think what I didn’t want lost was everything that came along with that in terms of the nuances of it and the fact that, you know, she’s a wealthy woman, a wealthy woman of color.

And while that sounds great also, what’s the negative of that? Where did that money come from? How do you process that as being a person whose family’s wealth was amassed from slavery? How do you process that? Even just mentioning it, and just the fact that like, okay, cool, Georgiana is treated this way, but do we have an example of how somebody who is of color who does not have her wealth would be treated? Like how would she treat that person?

Because she’s not super warm to Mrs. Wheatley. She’s not like, oh, hey girl, let’s go hang out. You know? And I really liked that moment for that fact because it alludes to her privilege and her, her possible disconnection from other people of color around her. Those are big questions. I think it’s really interesting.

Jace Lacob: I think the following scene shows the weight of that. Georgiana prepares to leave Heyrick Park, and everyone is looking at her as though society itself is sort of staring at her, this curiosity to be examined. And she is the only woman of color other than a servant in the room that is full of white people.

To me that sort of sums up or is maybe the best depiction of her lived-in experience—that this other woman who’s there, this woman that she could connect with as you say, there is such a chasm between them, between the privilege that Georgiana has, that she can’t connect with this woman.

Crystal Clarke: Yeah. There’s so much of their experience that is similar and then so much of it that’s different and so much of Mrs. Wheatley’s experience that Georgiana wouldn’t understand.

Jace Lacob: So, I want to unpack a couple of other things from this episode. Georgiana, she knows that Lord Harry Montrose is gay. She catches him kissing another man, but they come to this arrangement to get everyone off of their backs and pretend to be courting. Does this courtship of convenience help to get fortune hunters off of Georgiana’s scent, even if Montrose is himself financially ruined? Does she see that he could also be a problem in that respect?

Crystal Clarke: No, I don’t think she sees him as a threat in that respect because, I don’t know, I really love that scene where she comes to him after she sees him kissing his little fling on the beach. I love that moment between them of like, I think there is definitely an understanding and there’s a respect there that we don’t get to explore too much. But I don’t think she sees him as a threat because she understands that there are things that are probably more important to him than amassing her wealth, you know?

Jace Lacob: I feel like in that respect, she can find solidarity with someone from another marginalized group who is of her same socioeconomic, perhaps level…

Crystal Clarke: Yeah. Yeah. Precisely.

Jace Lacob: …in a way that she can’t, with Mrs. Wheatley. My question as someone who loves the friendship between Georgiana and Arthur is, did it never occur to Georgiana to propose a similar scheme with Arthur Parker, who is not the marrying kind either, as it were?

Crystal Clarke: No, I think it definitely occurred to her, but I don’t think Arthur would ever let her do that, like he just wouldn’t. He wants her to be happy. He wants to be happy. Like, he knows that that isn’t the thing that would make her happiest.

Jace Lacob: I’m curious too, the courtroom scenes in this where Georgiana comes face to face with Lockhart and he defames her. They’re interesting to me because I can’t think of any courtroom scenes in Jane Austen’s work, and this episode becomes a legal drama in a way that the show typically isn’t. I mean, what did you make of these courtroom scenes and did they feel different to you in terms of tone?

Crystal Clarke: Oh, it was so weird. It’s so weird. Like, there’s so many important moments and so much raised in those scenes that I love, and I think are amazing and really explain the direction Georgiana then goes into for the rest of the season. But it was so bizarre to be like…Jane Austen in a courtroom! The only things that I could think of was feeling like I should be in like, I don’t know, 1776 or something. I don’t know.

Jace Lacob: That’s so weird.

Crystal Clarke: I know, it’s very weird. It’s very weird because I never put, like you said, I never put Jane Austen and courtroom together. So you know what, we did something fresh and we did something new.

Jace Lacob: We did. Coming next season on MASTERPIECE, it’s Jane Austen Mysteries.

Crystal Clarke: Law and Order, Jane Austen.

Jace Lacob: I would watch that. I would watch that. There is a rather beautiful scene between Georgiana and Otis in which she tells him about Lockhart and she admits that she thinks about Otis every day. What does she make about Otis’s return into her life, and why does she close herself off to the possibility of them reuniting romantically here?

Crystal Clarke: Because she’s smart, you know? She’s smart and she’s also been through it, not just Otis betraying her that first time around. But also, you know, after all of this with Lockhart and then even with learning about her dad. Come on daddy issues. Who she’s supposed to trust? And yes, she knows him, they have history, but for him to come back, there’s a certain level of safety and a certain level of trust that has to be rebuilt. And I think that’s all it is, is she has to see that before she feels comfortable letting him in again.

Jace Lacob: I love the fact that he posits a future in which she loses her fortune.

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Georgiana: What if I should lose, Otis? A young black woman with no money. What would I do? Who would I be?

Otis: You’d simply become Georgiana. You could live the life you choose. Free from the fortune hunters and the gossipmongers. Free to marry someone who loves you for who you truly are.

Jace Lacob: What would that mean to her to lose her fortune? Can she see, perhaps, what she might gain or that her fortune is a cage that is keeping her in check?

Crystal Clarke: A gilded cage.

Jace Lacob: Oh, Crystal. The most gilded of cages!

Crystal Clarke: A gilded cage methinks. Very much so, because yeah, it offers her freedoms and safeguards that she would not have otherwise. It definitely does. There’s a block there in where she can go in terms of defining herself. There’s still a block there in terms of what she can do and who she might spend her time with, like Otis said. So, it’s very much a gilded cage. And I think it’s something that takes her a while to realize. It’s not something that she easily realizes or initially realizes or, you know, even when Otis says it, I’m not sure it’s something that she’s…it just doesn’t seem like there would be any other option that makes sense because survival is what’s so important to her.

Jace Lacob: The fact that Otis has returned to the narrative after all of this time and played a pivotal role in Georgiana’s trial against Lockhart makes me believe that maybe we haven’t seen the last of him. Is there a possibility that Otis and Georgiana’s story might not be done?

Crystal Clarke: I mean, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?

Jace Lacob: Hmm. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Crystal Clarke, thank you so very much.

Crystal Clarke: Thank you.

Next time, Tom Parker and Rowleigh Pryce move forward with their hotel development in Sanditon’s Old Town, despite Mary Parker’s desire to preserve the neighborhood.  

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Mary: I promise I’ve not given up on my endeavors. I believe the Old Town can be saved—

Mrs. Filkins: I’m afraid we need rather more than your goodwill, Mrs. Parker.

Mary: When did you get this? I did not know—

Mrs. Filkins: That your husband has already sold out the land from under us?!

Actor Kate Ashfield joins us Sunday, April 16th to discuss Mary’s quest to find her own voice after three seasons of propping up the dreams of her visionary husband.