Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville appear smiling on Zoom. Both have a brilliant career in the industry. Staunton (67) won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in Shakespeare’s Love and is also known for playing the villain Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter saga. Manville (67) also has several awards under her belt and an Oscar nomination for her role in Phantom Thread. This afternoon, the British actresses talk with La República about Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, their characters in the final season of ‘The Crown’, which arrives on December 14 on Netflix.
—After the previous interpretations we have seen of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in ‘The Crown’, what was the process of building their characters like?
—Lesley Manville: We are not hired to imitate Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter, but to do our version of Queen Elizabeth and Margaret. That does not mean that we have not seen the previous seasons, we saw them and we respect them, but we are not in the line of copying, but of demonstrating our versions of those women. That was our mission actually.
—Imelda Staunton: I think it is also the luxury of having previous castings, of different ages; Instead of doing makeup, you only hire people of the right age and that is rewarding for us, both for Olivia Colman and for me, because we don’t have to act old or young, you just have to be in your skin and in the skin of the character.
—What aspects of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret’s personalities do you most identify with?
—IS: I loved it very much when I discovered the queen’s destiny and how important it is to her, I think that gave her a great amount of internal strength. I loved playing her strength, her serenity and her sense of responsibility because she didn’t talk about it, she did it. She was a stoic and constant person and that was very interesting to play.
—LM: Many people have opinions about Margarita, you know, she was advertised with many names, she was wild, exotic, but I have been able to interpret her at a time in her life where she was more silent, less of a party animal, the other side that perhaps people haven’t seen that much. Margarita was a bit of a loner and she was a bit sad about the trajectory her life took her.
YOU CAN SEE: ‘The Crown’ season 6, cast: who are the actors and characters in the Netflix series?
—How admirers are you of the British crown and its members in real life?
—IS: I think that when you play a character within that family you only have the interests of those characters in your heart, I don’t look completely, you discover it. For example, how hard this person worked all her life, and Queen Elizabeth did. Some people will say, “Well, she was living in a palace”; but somehow he showed up and was present, doing his job every day. So now I admire, from my point of view, this character, at the moment I can only be subjective about her.
—LM: Certainly, I have a lot of admiration for the queen, for the same reasons as Imelda.
—If in a hypothetical case they had belonged to the British crown, do you think they would have been able to endure that life? What things would change?
—IS: I think you are talking to two women who have worked very hard throughout their lives, so yes we probably could have assumed it.
—What are you going to miss most about a production like ‘The Crown’?
—IS: I will miss working with all the production areas, even from past seasons. Everyone is still there and when you work with people who want to do the job as well as you do, that is a very satisfying feeling and you know that is not always easy. And when your work makes everyone else’s work possible and enables everyone to do their best, that only happens once or twice in a lifetime.
—LM: I can only repeat what Imelda said, because I saw in this team that everyone worked at a high level.
#Imelda #Staunton #Lesley #Manville #queen #princess