Fionn and Shalom are irritatingly young and beautiful, and really good, I forget I’m not the same age as them!' And she’s using Pip as a guinea pig by teaching him how to be a gentleman, but she wants him to fall in love with Estella so that she can break his heart. She’s adopted Estella and trained her to hurt men as much as she was hurt. And in this version, she’s an opium addict.

She was madly in love with someone and she went to get married and he never turned up. I think she’s vain and her ego is massively bruised. 'Everybody plays her in a different way, that’s part of the fun. Miss Havisham is rotten on the inside.’ So the decay is growing up the dress – it’s amazing! The first time I tried on the costume, the designer, Verity Hawkes, said, ‘I want it rotten. Miss Havisham is only in her 40s, but we’ve gone for long white hair and broken veins because we think she went white with the heartbreak. There were a few changes and I found it gripping. Olivia says: 'The first time I read Steven Knight’s script, the story was darker than I remembered from school. Her version of Miss Havisham is decidedly cranky, a little bit mouldy and is seen strung out on opium, smoked through a large pipe! Taking on the iconic Great Expectations role of melancholic recluse Miss Havisham should come easily to Olivia Colman as she’s used to playing flawed characters. (Image credit: BBC) Great Expectations cast - Olivia Colman on playing Miss Havisham Estella however becomes promised to another man but the novel then explores the themes of regret, forgiveness, and redemption, as Magwitch comes back into the story while Pip is a grown man in London.įirst look! Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham and Shalom Brune-Franklin as Estella. Pip falls in love with Estella before discovering he has a secret wealthy benefactor and to help him become a gentleman in London. Miss Havisham was jilted at the alter 20 years earlier and is raising Estella to break men’s hearts as her revenge. A year later Pip is asked to become playmate of young Estella, the daughter wealthy Miss Havisham at the dilapidated Satis House.

One day, on the marshes of Gravesend, Kent, Pip meets escaped convict Magwitch, who scares Pip into stealing food and a metal file for him. The following day the convict is captured but takes the blame for the theft, sparing Pip from punishment.

Pip lives with his mean sister Sara Gargery and her kindly blacksmith husband Joe. Charles Dickens' famous novel Great Expectations tells the tale of orphan Pip but there are some differences in this 2023 version, and some characters from the novel are missing.

Great expectations book