Pride & Prejudice star Matthew Macfadyen reveals that he improvised the iconic hand flex moment from the film. Most recently, the actor is best known for his role on the hit HBO drama, Succession, in which he has played Siobhan's husband Tom Wambsgans for 29 episodes. He even won an Emmy for Best Supporting Dramatic Actor for the role. However, the actor has been working for decades and first made a splash playing Mr. Darcy across Keira Knightley's Lizzy Bennet in the 2005 Jane Austen adaptation.
A fan-favorite moment from the Regency-era romance comes when the future lovers touch for the very first time. During the time period, it was not considered respectable for courting couples to touch or kiss, so small moments like this had huge import. The scene occurs about half an hour into the film when Mr. Darcy assists Lizzy out of a carriage, holding her hand for one brief moment in the process. As he walks away, he flexes his hand pensively, clearly struggling to process the way he felt when he got to touch this woman who he assumed he hated but for whom he is starting to develop feelings. Until the climactic kiss in Pride and Prejudice, this is one of the most intimate moments they share in the entire film.
While being interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, Matthew Macfadyen briefly touched on Pride & Prejudice and the impact it has had on his life. When the topic turned to that hand flex moment, the actor revealed that it wasn't originally scripted. It was just a physical performance choice he made during the scene, and he commended director Joe Wright because he "doesn't miss a trick." He noticed that subtle gesture and told his cinematographer to "get that," so they "just did an extra shot on the hand." Read the full quote below:
"No, it's credit to Joe, because he's— I think, he doesn't miss a trick, and he's so alive to things, and he saw me do it in a rehearsal take and I remember him just going, “Get that!” So they just did an extra shot on the hand."
Although many further adaptations of Pride and Prejudice have been mounted, most of them attempt to put a new spin on the story. Hallmark and Lifetime have put their branded spin on the source novel in TV movies like Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe or Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta, and other projects like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies attempt to infuse humor in with the romance. However, most filmmakers have shied away from doing a straight adaptation, afraid of having to compete with the towering 2005 romance.
The type of attention to detail that Joe Wright displayed in making sure intimate moments like that were captured on camera is part of why Pride & Prejudice has remained an enduring success. This film adaptation came just a decade after the iconic Colin Firth performance as Mr. Darcy in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice miniseries, so many contemporary fans at the time doubted it would be able to match the sweeping grandeur of that project. However, now both adaptations rank high in the firmament of fan-beloved adaptations due to their unique strengths.
Source: NPR's Fresh Air