 Hi, this is Matt with CalTV Entertainment News and I'm here with the ever-exquisite Kate Beckinsale talking about her new film Love and Friendship. I want to start off talking about your character, Lady Susan, because I find that in many modern films, even if it's a sci-fi blockbuster or more of a dramatic film, they have this quest to create these strong female characters and they end up just writing it as if it's a man and then casting a female character. But this isn't even a modern tale. This is Lady Susan, this patriarchal society that she seems to seamlessly navigate, although sometimes unscrupulously. So what was empowering about playing this role and what in general drew you to the character of Lady Susan? I mean I think it was, it's really surprising when you feel, you know Jane Austen and her characters in her world and all of that, to find this kind of exquisite little unfinished, very funny, very naughty and rather subversive novella that she wrote and find it kind of extraordinary that she written such a kind of complete anti-Heroine who I think even in the modern audience kind of pushes the envelope a lot. I find that really surprising and I think, you know, she's very much a product of the period, you know, with all the constraints and limitations that a woman would have. She's found a kind of way of navigating that in the most kind of deliciously naughty manner. And it's lovely to be part of a novel from that romantic period where this sexually rapacious, very naughty woman doesn't end up being burned in a fire or getting syphilis and dying or, you know, that's what usually would happen with those novels. So it's quite nice to be that naughty one that got away with it. Yeah well I'm from Berkeley so we're always on the side of the revolutionary. I also study rhetoric at Berkeley so it was fun to see you take a character that traded in your swordplay for some wordplay. Do you think you have any of Lady Susan's rhetorical prowess? I think so. I'm much much better with all that stuff than I am with this sword. I mean really I'm faking it with the other stuff. That was the whole kind of action thing was having done so much period work and being English. When I was starting to find work in America they'd all say well you know she's not good but there's a whiff of crumpets and she seems a bit fragile and things like that. So I thought well I'd better do something that gives me a bit more edge and of course that went completely out of control. But it's not my comfort zone at all. It's something I sort of did as an experiment that's now turned into a kind of monster. And you've previously worked with both the director Woods Stillman and Chloe Sevignier. What was it like redeeming with them? It was great. It was fun because I was very much the fish out of water on the on the first movie. I'd never really spent any time in America. I was playing this extremely specific American character with very specific accent and I didn't know anything about that whole movie which Witt is an expert on. So obviously I mean I went to Oxford studied literature a lot and I felt I was a little bit more okay now that it's a bit more of an even playing field on this one. Well thank you so much for being with us. Again this is Matt with Cal TV. Love and Friendship hits theaters on Friday May 20th. For more videos go ahead and hit the subscribe button.