An even bigger change was made to the fall from grace of John Willoughby—one that Dillane thinks makes the case that his character is not a true villain, despite leaving a lovelorn Marianne in his wake.
“We tell a slightly different story in the screenplay from the book, which should be stressed,” Dillane explained. “It is not Brandon’s ward that Willoughby has an affair with, it is it is the widow of Brandon’s brother. And Willoughby is very clear to have not known about what happened in his absence. If he had known, he wouldn’t have behaved in such a way.”
Though he quipped, “You can, of course, take that with a pinch of salt and believe him or not.”
Emphasizing the layers he hopes the audience sees in his Austen bad boy, the Fear the Walking Dead alum told E!, “I tried to play a young man who makes mistakes, someone who loved Marianne deeply. I see Willoughby as a tragic character who definitely could have done better. My role was to betray Marianne, to play the unreliable lover, but I tried to bring as much poetry, exuberance, light, and brightness to the character as possible, and let his actions speak for themselves.”
And though he’d never “rob the audience of their hatred of Willoughby,” he also empathizes with his character’s plight.
