One Nightstand With Daisy Edgar-Jones

In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

The new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility begins with a completely black screen and a distinctly British sound: a wood pigeon cooing quietly while leaves rustle in the background. “When I was at the UK premiere, it was the first time I’d watched the film with the sound properly mixed, and the moment that wood pigeon came on, I started crying,” recalls Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Elinor in Georgia Oakley’s new adaptation. “I was like, ‘What the heck?’ What is it about that sound? It so was my childhood.”

The 28-year-old actress is earning strong reviews for her performance as the elder Dashwood sister, opposite Esmé Creed-Miles as the headstrong Marianne. The two previously acted together when they were teenagers, so reuniting felt like a homecoming. “So much of sisterhood is a shared history, and to have such an image in my head of Esmé’s 17-year-old face as I met her again at 25 and as we chemistry read was such a gift,” she says. “She is so phenomenal, and there’s just a wildness to her that is so enigmatic on screen. We really get on, and I feel very protective and very sisterly over Esmé.”

Edgar-Jones was also protective over the book itself, having read Austen’s first novel as an adolescent. “When I read Elinor Dashwood in my teenage years, I always felt I really understood her,” she says. “I really love characters like Elinor that are often overlooked or misunderstood.” The script was written by first-time screenwriter Diana Reid, who as a best-selling novelist herself took care to ensure the heart of Austen’s book remained front and center.

“There was a quote in the book that was kind of my North Star, which is that ‘her feelings are strong, but she’s learned how to govern them,’” says Edgar-Jones of Elinor. “That was everything, because I think that her restraint doesn’t mean a lack of passion. In fact, she’s somebody who has this deep, deep, deep well of love and pain and she’s taking on all of the pressures of everybody else’s heartbreak and the financial situation that they’re in and making sure Margaret stays educated. She’s kind of this parentified child who’s become very adept at putting herself aside to support others.”

Edgar-Jones is something of a book adaptation queen. She broke through alongside Paul Mescal in the 2020 adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and has since starred in Where the Crawdads Sing, Under the Banner of Heaven opposite Andrew Garfield, and On Swift Horses alongside Jacob Elordi, which she also executive produced. She also chased tornadoes with Glen Powell in 2024’s Twisters, which involved months living in the Southern United States. “I remember in Oklahoma calling the receptionist saying, ‘Excuse me, could I have a kettle for my hot water bottle?’ and honestly, it was like the concept of a hot water bottle was confusing,” she says, laughing. “The concept of having an electric kettle in the hotel room [was confusing].”

In January, she’ll begin filming as Sadie in Siân Heder’s adaptation of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which tells the story of two mismatched childhood friends who go on to create a hugely successful video game, and in turn puts extreme strain on their friendship. “I get to play so many video games to prep for this job,” she says, citing Zelda as her current game of choice. “The script is so beautiful, and it’s a big book to adapt. It spans 30 years, and there’s so much that happens. But what I love about it is it’s exploring the romantic relationship in our life that is platonic.

“It's about this friendship, this complicated friendship, and the pain of artistic collaboration and how is there any intimacy more extreme than creating something together like a game? But also how painful it can be to have that kind of dynamic with somebody. And I just love the character of Sadie. I think that I really relate to her. In the time of the book, in the ’90s, she’s working in a very male dominated arena, creating these big worlds.”

Keep reading to discover four of Edgar-Jones’s favorite books.

Her first selection is Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan, the iconic YA fantasy series about a 12-year-old who discovers he’s the demigod son of Poseidon. “I have so much to thank for it because it really got me into classics and Greek mythology and it became my favorite subject in school,” she says. “What I loved about it is it made the world of the gods and that history and those stories really accessible. I remember I ripped through the series and became so obsessed with the fact that in Greek mythology, the gods are quite flawed and they're quite malicious and jealous.”

In interviews, Rick Riordan has said he wrote the series for his eldest son after he had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. His intention was to frame those differences as superpowers instead of flaws. “It kind of celebrates outsiders and the idea of finding your community and people that understand you,” she says. “And I think a lot of your 20s is learning to love the parts of yourself that, when you’re a teenager, you find really embarrassing or awkward or that you want to kind of move away from. But actually all our quirks and oddities are what makes us human and special and unique.”

Her second pick is Booker Prize-shortlisted 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Turkish author Elif Shafak. The novel takes place shortly after sex worker Leila has been murdered, when her heart has stopped and her brain is still active. “It’s so immersive and sensory and immediate. I felt like it was one of those books that I put down and it had so many images seared into my brain,” she says. “I love the way it explored that memories aren’t justified by, or life isn’t just defined by time passing, but rather these moments of taste and smell and vivid memory.”

The book is a love letter to finding a chosen family. “It’s so Austenesque. There is a theme in the books I’ve chosen that ultimately life is about the connections you make, and it’s about the people that come in and whether it’s a season or a lifetime, it can change the course of who you are,” she says.

Shafak’s descriptions of the end of Leila’s life resonated. “I have an Irish family, and death is dealt with in a very interesting way. In Ireland it’s kind of a celebration,” she says. “Death is the only thing we know will happen to us all. It’s the only guaranteed thing. But it’s something I’ve always been quite frightened of as a concept. I found the way it handled grief and death made me feel really free and liberated. ”

Her third choice is If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor, a Booker Prize-nominated novel following a group of disparate characters living on one street over the course of one day.

“It was interesting reading this and then experiencing COVID, and suddenly I became so aware of the street that I was sharing with a group of strangers that I likely will never meet,” she says. “To the person across the road, I’m the girl with the fringe that walks past for her newspaper at 9 a.m., and that’s how they'll know me. And this idea of the fact that we are the main characters in our life, but actually we’re surrounded by so many different journeys and how we can come in and change each other. I found it so poetic.”

It also helped her think about life’s small, beautiful moments. “I think in a world that really celebrates, I suppose, celebrity culture and the shiny things, to realize that actually within the day-to-day of a human life, whether it be stumbling home with your friends at 2 a.m.and the giggles that you share on a night bus and waking up and hearing the sound of a wood pigeon or what it is to hear your baby cry for the first time, all these things are beyond magic,” she says.

“It felt a little like cheating to choose Normal People,” she says, laughing, about her final selection. “But [it’s] my favorite book. I mean, I was so changed by it just from reading it and then obviously changed by it from being a part of an adaptation of it. Speaking of a modern Jane Austen, I feel like Sally’s themes are so transcendent — I can see her work being adapted time and time again, and I hope it is 200 years from now.”

While working on the BBC adaptation that launched her into stardom, Edgar-Jones says she and Paul Mescal kept their copies of the book on set. “[Rooney] was there at the read-through, which was so exciting and terrifying because I love her brain so much and I was such a fan of Conversations with Friends and Normal People,” she says. “She was 26 when she wrote the book. And so at 21, I was like, ‘You are just so impressive,’” she says.

She’s only rewatched the series once. “[Paul Mescal] and I did a fundraiser where we did a screening in a cinema of all 12 episodes. I don’t know why I sat in because the show’s quite intimate,” she says. “I will say, surround sound watching that was not fun. It was hard enough with my parents, them constantly getting tea every five minutes, us all having so much tea watching that series.”

She’s still happy to talk about Normal People despite being asked about it at nearly every junket and interview. “I have a lot of people who say that they go back to it and they re-watch it,” she says. “And for me, if I can continue to make rainy day Sunday autumn projects that people revisit time and time again, the way I revisit the 1995 Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice or hopefully our Sense and Sensibility, that’s the dream.”

Watch the full episode below: