‘Pride and Prejudice’ cast woke up at 3 a.m. to watch iconic dawn scene

Rosamund Pike and the rest of her Pride and Prejudice costars were bewitched, body and soul, by the romance drama’s iconic dawn scene.

The star reunited with her former onscreen sister Keira Knightley to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary for Vanity Fair, sharing fond tales from Hertfordshire when the topic turned to Knightley’s chemistry with Matthew Macfadyen, who played the Mr. Darcy to her Elizabeth Bennet, and the memorable scene in which Darcy walked to the Bennet household at dawn to declare his love for Elizabeth.

“What about the chemistry with you and Matthew?” Pike queried. “You must’ve met a few Darcys — not that you’re going to discuss that now.”

Knightley said, “I wouldn’t dream of discussing that. But yes, there were a few Darcys, and it was very clear that it was Matthew from the get-go. He’s just such a nice man.”

“Remember when you did the dawn scene, where he’s coming across the lawn? We all got up with you,” Pike shared.

An incredulous Knightley replied, “You all got up with us? Everyone got up at 3 a.m.?”

“Yes!” Pike said. “We did!”

Knightley then encouraged the cast of Netflix’s upcoming Pride and Prejudice series to take the same approach while filming.

“See, the people that are doing the new one for Netflix — if they’re not all doing that, then they’re missing out,” she said. “You’ve all got to be there for all of the scenes, guys!”

Emma Corrin and Jack Lowden are set to play Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in the streamer’s limited series adaptation, while Olivia Colman has been tapped to play Corrin’s onscreen mother Mrs. Bennet. Brenda Blethyn played the matriarch in the 2005 adaptation with Knightley and Macfadyen, which hailed from director Joe Wright and featured Pike in the role as the eldest Bennet sister, Jane.

Carey Mulligan, Jena Malone, and Talulah Riley rounded out the rest of the Bennet sisters in Wright’s adaptation, which also starred Tom Hollander, Simon Woods, and Judi Dench.

Knightley called Wright, also her director on Atonement and Anna Karenina, the filmmaker who shaped her most as an actor. “We worked together three times,” she told Pike. “I was a teenager the first time, and then sort of in my late 20s by the end of our working relationship. So I think the confidence I learned, and just the fact that at that point somebody was believing in my ability, was such a major thing for me at that point in my life. And that he really stuck up for me.”

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The duo also reminisced about the late Donald Sutherland, who played their onscreen father, and retold the memorable anecdote about how he showed up to a party in a gas mask to avoid exposure to cigarette smoke.

“He had it in his contract that nobody on the set was allowed to smoke anywhere near, and you couldn’t smell of smoke,” Knightley recounted. “He was like, ‘I want you to all be able to smoke. And I wanted to come to the party.'”

“I have to say, most actors have been a disappointment since then,” Knightley said, to which Pike added, “Donald was pretty legendary. We did have dinners with him sometimes, and he told us some pretty wild stories which cannot be shared.”

Watch the rest of Knightley and Pike’s enchanting reunion above.