“I don’t really know these people. We’re making a drama out of reality — some of the facts we know, and the rest of it we’re making up.”
Olivia Colman, 46, is talking from her home in south London about season four of The Crown, which streams on Netflix from November 15. Since taking over the role of Queen Elizabeth II from Claire Foy in the previous series, Colman has won a Golden Globe Award for the role, and this time, critics have pointed out, she portrays the Queen with considerably more bite.
The series continues to captivate its enormous audience, with major cast changes every two years and sharp dialogue that rings true even if it is invented. This season sees the addition of two major characters: the young Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin), so eager to become a princess, and Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), a prime minister known for her difficult relationship with Buckingham Palace. The season spans the 11 years (1979-90) of Thatcher’s own reign.
It’s clear that Colman relished exploring the relationship between the two very different, very headstrong women, as scripted by Peter Morgan, the show’s creator (who also wrote 2006’s The Queen). “On the face of it, Elizabeth and Thatcher should get on,” she says. “They are the same age, they have the same drive, the same devotion to their fathers, the same work ethic. And yet they don’t, which, I think, makes the show more interesting. It’s not the beautiful friendship that the Queen hoped it was going to be at the beginning.”
With the two women’s attitudes so much at odds, the Queen’s constitutional imperative to remain silent was pushed to the limit. In Colman’s hands, it’s a masterclass in tight-lipped restraint. Morgan, she says, wrote some “terrific exchanges” between the Queen and Thatcher, but that it was sometimes hard work for the actors. “The Audience room scenes with Gillian Anderson had some very heavy lines. In one location, we had to shoot all those scenes one after another. But Gillian is incredibly easy to work with. Every now and then I would get a proper chill, because she was so like the real thing. And then, the moment we cut, she was able to grin and be silly with me.”
Laughter is clearly important to Colman. An actor of extraordinary versatility, her early successes were in comedic roles, and this has continued with another award-winning turn as the acid-tongued godmother in the hit TV series Fleabag. She also won acclaim for playing it straight in the crime drama Broadchurch and spy thriller The Night Manager. But it was with The Favourite, in which she played a wildly eccentric Queen Anne, that she emerged as a major international star, winning the Oscar for Best Actress last year. Success looks set to continue with a performance alongside Anthony Hopkins in The Father, a drama about dementia, which could be her Oscar card next year.
In the meantime, playing the Queen, a character who evolves over the years, has presented its own challenges. As time goes on, there is more anxiety under the calm surface: “She continues to struggle with changes in the outside world. It’s a constant worry for her of whether or not the Royal Family are losing touch and not moving with the times.”
And while in the third series the royal marriage was often turbulent (with Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip), now, she says, “You will see a much more settled Queen and Philip, with a switch of focus on to the cracks appearing in the grown-up children’s relationships.” To say, as she does, that the Queen suffered “some self-doubt about her mothering skills when she was younger” is probably an understatement.
Regarding the other significant new relationship for her character, that between Elizabeth and her future daughter-in-law, she says: “The Queen is very aware of Diana’s youth and inexperience. She is unlike any creature Elizabeth has come into contact with before. There are ways of doing things: head down, don’t complain, come to an agreement, etc. But Diana doesn’t play by the same royal rules and it makes things very difficult for the Queen.”
As Diana’s popularity grows, her relationship with Charles continues to fail and “behind closed doors”, Colman says, “the Queen watches the deterioration of a marriage, which she thinks might threaten the monarchy itself”.
Colman holds that what kept the Queen steady during those tumultuous years was her unwavering sense of duty. “She has to remind herself that she took a vow to devote herself to her role. She takes such things seriously. Her endurance is aided by her faith, which means she is not willing to let anyone down.”
The sense of duty to one’s calling is something that Colman herself seems to understand and appreciate. She describes herself as “a well-behaved” actress: “I pretty much do what I’m told. I’ve never called Peter and said, ‘I won’t do it’. OK, I’ll admit, sometimes I hated it when the speeches were too long, but that’s it.”
As those who have seen her award acceptance speeches don’t need telling, Colman is known for her self-deprecating sense of humour, and this extends to The Crown. “This season there is a bit of grey coming into the temples, and less in the eyelash department. My natural ageing might have helped a bit with the make-up.”
She has also found time to revel in the series’ lavish surroundings. “One of the job’s greatest privileges was the access to the most beautiful places. Wilton House was one of our favourites, and Somerleyton Hall was a new addition this year that I adored.” Best of all was Balmoral. “It was so breathtakingly beautiful, so friendly,” she enthuses. “Filming outside by those lochs and on those hills was thrilling.”
But Colman’s time on the throne is coming to an end. In the next season, the Queen will be played by another distinguished British actress, Imelda Staunton, best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake. “I haven’t spoken to Imelda, and I wouldn’t dare offer her any advice,” Colman says. “She is extraordinary, and she’s going to do it all much better. I’m really jealous that she’s going to have such a nice time, but I’m excited to see what she does, and I’m going to probably kick myself and go, ‘damn, I should have done it like that’.”
She is equally full of admiration for the monarch herself. “Having played the Queen, I have become slightly in love with her now. I think as far as royals go, she has such humility and a sort of stoicism that are very impressive.”
But she does not claim to know her. “I understand our version of the Queen, but I wouldn’t dare suggest that I understand the real Queen. We can imagine living in someone else’s shoes, but I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to say ‘Oh yeah, I totally know what she goes through.’ There’s no way.”
And there is, of course, life beyond The Crown. Already this most prolific and industrious of actors, whose 20-year career boasts dozens of credits — and in which she has somehow found time to have three children with her husband Ed Sinclair — has two more films in post-production. Next year will see her play Mrs Niven in Eva Husson’s adaptation of Graham Swift’s novel Mothering Sunday, and she will also star as Leda in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, adapted from Elena Ferrante: two literary pieces that should showcase her intense style to perfection.
Despite all this activity, Colman is leaving The Crown with mixed feelings. “As an actor, I’m of course excited to play many other roles, but I have enjoyed this job so much, and I will miss sitting and laughing with everyone on the set. We really were having the time of our lives, and that group of people will be a very hard act to follow.”
Season four of ‘The Crown’ is on Netflix from November 15
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