Who is Frank in Netflix's My Brilliant Career? Jake Dunn came to the role straight off Renegade Nell
Frank Hawden is the Englishman quietly complicating Sybylla's marriage plot in Netflix's My Brilliant Career — and the actor playing him has one of the more unexpected résumés on the call sheet, from Disney+ swashbuckling to opera. Here's everything to know about the character and Jake Dunn.
Every period drama needs a Frank: the perfectly nice suitor whose entire narrative function is to make the heroine realize what she actually wants (hint: not Frank). In Netflix's My Brilliant Career, that thankless, delightful job belongs to Frank Hawden, played by Jake Dunn — and both the character and the actor deserve a closer look.
The character: an Englishman with a deadline
Frank is the foreman at Caddagat, the grand estate where Sybylla is sent to be civilized (lol, good luck). He's an Englishman effectively exiled to Australia with orders to find a wife before he can touch his inheritance, which makes him less a romantic lead and more a man with a very specific HR problem. He's charming, he's proper, he's the kind of guy who calls the local feminist icon a "raving suffragist" with a straight face — and he briefly gets Sybylla to say yes before she realizes friendship is not a marriage plan.
Showrunner Liz Doran has been clear that the men in this story are obstacles by design, telling Country & Town House:
"Love versus career is the umbrella under which all our stories are told."
Frank, bless him, is very much filed under "love." Wrong folder, buddy.
The actor: a weirder résumé than you'd expect
Jake Dunn's path to Caddagat is not the standard drama-school conveyor belt. The highlights:
- born in Nottingham in 2000, started out making YouTube sketches and short films as a kid;
- broke out as Thomas Blancheford, the petulant aristocratic menace of Disney+'s Renegade Nell;
- followed it with the BBC's What It Feels Like for a Girl, Stanley Kowalski on stage in A Streetcar Named Desire, and — because why not — a Royal Opera House debut;
- and, for the gossip-inclined: he's dating Nicola Coughlan, so the man clearly has range on and off screen.
From YouTube kid to Disney villain to opera to Netflix suitor in under a decade. Frank Hawden could never.
If Sybylla won't have him, casting directors clearly will.
