Nothing is immune to the Taylor Swift effect. Not even Hallmark Channel movies set in the Regency era.
In a sneak peek at Saturday night’s Loveuary debut, An American in Austen, librarian and author Harriet (Eliza Bennett) makes a special plea after being transported from the present day into the center of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Looking out the window intending to pray, Harriet begins, “It’s me. Hi,” before laughing to herself and completing the line from Swift’s song, “Anti-Hero.” “I’m the problem, it’s me.”
As an aside, she adds, “She really is the voice of a generation,” and pauses to contemplate Swift’s talent. “I’ll get back to it,” she says, before turning back to the sky and admitting, “I’ve messed everything up, and I really don’t know how to fix it.”
In the movie, Harriet believes that no real man could ever compare to Mr. Darcy — and she’s given the opportunity to find out if that’s true when she can’t answer her boyfriend’s proposal, falls asleep in the back of a cab and wakes up in England in the early 19th century. Thrown into the center of Austen’s classic tale, she manages to catch Mr. Darcy’s eye when he should be eying Elizabeth — so she’s not wrong when she says she “messed everything up.”
“I thought that the answer to everything was Mr. Darcy, that one day some man would just fall into my life and make everything perfect,” Harriet says. “But maybe love isn’t about finding some magical puzzle piece or writing the perfect book. Maybe it’s about the moments between the pages.”
Eventually, Harriet must choose between the real Mr. Darcy — or her real man back home in the 21st century.
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