For most folks, working with a close relative sounds like a recipe for disaster. But for mother–daughter writing duo Kate and Angourie Rice, it has been a dream.

You might recognise Angourie for her roles as Cady Heron in the latest adaption of Mean Girls, Siobhan Sheehan in Mare of Easttown and Betty Brant in the Spider-Man series. Kate, meanwhile, is an award-winning playwright who has also dabbled in acting over the years. They’ve just released their first novel together, Stuck Up & Stupid – a modern twist on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that is set between a fictional Australian coastal community and Los Angeles. The story follows Lily, a level-headed teenager who lives at Pippi Beach with her mum and sisters. When a group of young Hollywood actors and influencers decide to spend their Australian summer at Pippi Beach, the local community is starstruck. But Lily finds the A-listers to be shallow and snobbish – particularly the most famous of them all, Dorian Khan. (If you’re familiar with Pride and Prejudice, we probably don’t need to tell you how the story plays out.)

Angourie came up with the idea for the novel in August 2020, while rereading Pride and Prejudice during Melbourne’s pandemic lockdowns. “I thought, ‘I want this to be made into a teen comedy. I want it to be made into something like Clueless or Bridget Jones's Diary’,” Angourie recalls. “So I brought it to my mum and I said, ‘Can you write this for me?’ because I just wanted to read it. And she said, ‘Let's do it together.’”

Kate actually had a similar idea decades ago, so when Angourie came to her with the concept, Kate was “absolutely thrilled”. The duo quickly got to work. From their Melbourne home, Kate and Angourie plotted a solid outline of Pride and Prejudice and their own novel, chapter by chapter. “And then, over summer, Kate bought three notebooks and two mechanical pencils and we wrote the first draft longhand with alternating chapters,” Angourie explains. “So I would write a chapter, give it to Kate, she would make notes, write the next chapter, give it back to me, I’d make notes, write the next chapter. And we did that for about a month.”

The first draft of the novel was completed in January 2021. Fast-forward a couple of years to the book hitting shelves in late 2023. It’s an unusually speedy timeline for the publishing industry, but it seems the stars aligned for Kate and Angourie. Plus, they just work so well together – there were no arguments about plot points or character developments, just support. “It’s funny because a lot of the feedback we’ve had or what people really want to ask is, ‘Did you fight?’ or they say, ‘I could never write a book with my parents. We’d just fight all the time.’ And it's really interesting to hear that because for me, I can’t imagine writing alone. I also can’t imagine writing with anyone else,” Angourie says.

Like many authors, Kate and Angourie drew on their own experiences when writing the book, including Angourie’s time in Hollywood and the holiday destination the Rice family have been visiting for decades. “The little beach community that we’ve been going to every summer for 20 years is very much like a Jane Austen world,” Kate says. “Everybody knows everybody. Everyone’s peeking in each other’s windows. A boat turns up and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, he’s got a new boat.’ It is very much like that.”

One thing that Kate loves about Pride and Prejudice is “its commitment to change”, and she hopes that readers feel the same way about Stuck Up & Stupid. “You can change your mind; you can change your attitude and you can change for the better,” she says. “And part of changing is admitting you’re wrong.” Angourie agrees, adding: “What I love about Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice is that she is open and is able to admit when she’s wrong and say sorry. She’s a really stubborn character in that she holds on to what she believes in, but she realises that she still can be wrong sometimes. And I think those are two really good qualities to have: sticking with what you believe and also realising you can sometimes be wrong.”

The duo also hopes that, one day, the book is adapted to a series on screen. So, could we potentially see Angourie play Lily? “The slight problem is I’m quickly aging out of that age group. But yeah, I would love to play Lily. And as for our Dorian, I guess we just have to find him. He’s out there somewhere,” she says.

Speaking of Dorians and Mr Darcys, undoubtedly the most important question to ask any Pride and Prejudice fan is this: Matthew Macfadyen or Colin Firth? “We’re both Colin Firth Mr Darcy fans,” Angourie says. “We’re team Colin,” Kate adds, noting that she does still think Matthew Macfadyen is “lovely”.

Stuck Up & Stupid is only fresh in the world, but Angourie and Kate are already working on their next book. This new novel, which Angourie says is a bit “darker” than their debut, is based on a play that Kate wrote in the late 2000s. “It’s secret for the moment but it is for the same audience who enjoyed Stuck Up & Stupid. It’s another coming of age drama-comedy about young people,” Angourie shares.

This interview comes straight from the pages of issue 119. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.