Before Sinners, Hailee Steinfeld re-imagined Emily Dickinson as a modern rebel in Apple TV+'s Dickinson

Emily Dickinson x a Hailee Steinfeld crossover? Iconic.

Before transforming herself into a vampire in Ryan Coogler's recently released Sinners, Hailee Steinfeld put on a corset to channel one of literature’s most misinterpreted 19th-century poets: Emily Dickinson.

In Apple TV+’s Dickinson, Steinfeld portrayed an audacious reimagining of the classic poet as a nonconformist, emotionally electric Gen Z-ish soul stuck in 19th-century Amherst.

Rather than adhering to rigid ‘period-drama’ standards, Alena Smith, being the show’s creator, shattered them— merging actual historical events with unreal, bizarre, and contemporary storytelling.

Through its unique perspective, the show didn't just recount the poet’s life; it caused chaos—bringing the poet’s desire, agony, and rebelliousness alive in a way that felt incredibly relevant and refreshing.

---

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant”: Dickinson breaks the period drama mold

From its very debut episode, Dickinson made one thing crystal clear—it wasn’t concerned about playing by the rules. Apple TV+ offered creator Alena Smith a blank canvas, and she painted it with an appealing mix of old-fashioned dialogue, modern-day Lizzo, and some Victorian not-so-conventional drama.

Hailee Steinfeld’s interpretation of the 19th-century poet and author was fresh, spirited, and unfiltered—behaviors more aligned with Gen Z views than reclusive 19th-century poets. But that was the point. A re-imagined 21st-century modern-day Emily.

The show set out to disrupt how we perceive both Emily and period dramas.

Rather than a submissive person tied by rigid societal norms, this Emily drinks, voices her opinions back, has Gen Z lingo, and quite literally twerks against the patriarchy when she’s banned from visiting a lecture about volcanoes at Amherst College just because she’s a woman in the 19th century.

She is torn apart between expected responsibility and her own yearning, family and autonomy.

More than just a quirky catch, Hailee Steinfeld widely blends the various eras reflected in Dickinson’s poetry. Just like her free verses, the show is free and can be whimsical at times, but it also is gut-wrenching and thought-provoking all within the same breath.

With characters like Death embodied by Wiz Khalifa and stanzas from Dickinson’s poems reflected all over the screen, the series displayed the poet’s inner world— establishing that truth is what puts life into making a biography.

---

“A loaded hun”: Reimagining Emily as storm, not silence

For centuries on end, the poet was diminished to a cliché—a sad, always a woman in white, colorless recluse writing about flowers from her bedroom window. Alena Smith completely overturns this image of the poet from the minds of her audience.

While the actual Emily did in fact lead a life of seclusion (especially towards the final days of her life), her poetry makes known an emotional landscape so gigantic, it feels almost volcanic.

Steinfeld’s version of the poet tells Thoreau (an American author and essayist) in a haunting scene,

“Whereas everything I write I have to keep to myself. Try writing something and not showing it to anyone, then you’ll know what real loneliness feels like…”

This one-liner cuts to the very core of her truth: not silence, but true suppression.

The show deconstructs Emily not as a reclusive and secluded hermit but as a woman smothered by a world that couldn’t seem to get a grip on the poet’s true greatness.

Her love for Sue (played by Ella Hunt)—her brother’s wife—is no longer implied. ‘Queer subtext,’ who? Instead, Smith takes complete liberty in delving into the queer life of the poet, which only further adds a lot more complexity to Dickinson’s persona.

Her attachment to words and poetry is not a pastime—it’s a fixation that centuries later came through. Wiz Khalifa, as Death puts it,

"You'll be the only Dickinson they talk about in two hundred years."

Through dreamlike progressions, manifestations of her thoughts (for instance, Death), and scenes so full-blown with time travel (hello, Sylvia Plath!), the Apple TV+ show explores what it means to be a woman overflowing with cleverness that she had to sew her almost 1800 poems into secret books in a trunk underneath her maid’s bed.

---

“Dwell in possibility”: Apple TV+’s radical retelling of history

Dickinson wasn’t just another biography —it was Apple TV+’s assertion that period dramas could be courageous. Its artistic appeal —contemporary music, visuals, and modern lingo—invited younger viewers to relate to a figure most only know from school anthologies.

Steinfeld's depiction of the American poet revealed many aspects of Emily's life, including her inner conflicts and her father's shortcomings.

And yet, amid all the testing, the show persisted to be an anchor, in Dickinson’s words. Scenes and poems like “I went to the circus," “Wild nights," “I know what a volcano feels like," and “I am nobody! Who are you?" reflected her offbeat story and writing.

Each episode centered around a poem, supporting even its most ludicrous sequences in the poetic intellect that made Emily Dickinson immortal, forevermore!

---

By risking to retell the poet’s life through a modern, revolutionary lens, Dickinson didn’t just renew a key literary figure—it redefined her.

Hailee Steinfeld’s lively representation and Apple TV+’s risk-taking structure created an account of the American poet that throbs with relevance today.

Hailee Steinfeld mirrored exactly what the poet herself once did: she bent the rules, spoke the unutterable, and left behind something utterly impressive.