OLIVIA COLMAN
SHE’S EVERYONE’S FAVOURITE…
To borrow from Olivia Colman’s Golden Globes speech last month: “Cor blimey.” In an increasingly impressive career, the beloved British actress has scooped Bifas, Baftas and Globes for everything from The Night Manager to Broadchurch. She’s also played opposite Meryl Streep’s Maggie Thatcher in The Iron Lady and broken hearts in Tyrannosaur. But this season it’s different: The Favourite has changed everything.
Made with “a dollop of artistic licence”, Yorgos Lanthimos’ eccentric period piece has already won Colman Venice’s Best Actress and a Globe. By the end of February, she could make it a clean sweep – adding another Bafta, a Sag award and the all-important Oscar for playing Britain’s gout-afflicted Queen Anne. Not bad for a 45-year-old mother-of-three who lives with her husband in Peckham and started her career in TV sitcoms Peep Show and Rev.
Even before The Favourite started dominating the awards season, Radio
Times dubbed Colman ‘the Most
Powerful Person in British Television’, an accolade she laughingly calls “arbitrary, nonsensical and ridiculous”. Yet what else can she be? After The Favourite, she takes over from Claire Foy in Netflix’s The
Crown, playing Queen Elizabeth II.
“It’s a happy job. I’m having a lovely time,” she says. “The wig is amazing.”
Also upcoming in Them That Follow, an Appalachia-set drama that has just made its bow in Sundance, the Norfolk-born Colman is determined to use her increasing power into spearheading female-centric tales such as The Favourite. “Women’s stories are just as valid and important as anybody else’s stories. I grew up being told that all humans are equal, men and women are equal – that’s what I believe and
I want my children to think that.”
The one thing she won’t be doing is directing. “No way on Earth!” she exclaims. “I would be the shittest director! They’re there all day every day. Don’t need me this scene? I get to go and have a lie down. Or have a chat with someone. They’re there making decisions all day. The amount of times you see someone going, ‘Can I just ask you a question?’ If I was the director, I’d go, ‘No!’”
ETA | 2019 / THE FAVOURITE IS OUT NOW. THE CROWN SEASON 3 STREAMS LATER THIS YEAR.