The Royal we
For two seasons Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville have given us the ultimate sister act: the private and public lives of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Donal O’donoghue speaks to these legendary actresses as the curtain rises on the final part o
If e Crown is, as many have argued, the story of a dysfunctional family, a central plank of Net ix’s monumental drama is the relationship between sisters: Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. rough six seasons, this thread has taken us through the public and private lives of two women, corralled or provoked by position and duty. Along the way, their sororal bond has been tried and tested but never sundered: from Elizabeth being unable to legally approve Margaret’s marriage to divorcé Peter Townsend, to the heartbreak of Margaret’s death in 2002. Some of the nest English actresses of their generation have played them: Claire Foy, Vanessa Kirby, Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter. And from season ve we’ve had Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville as the siblings in their autumn years: older, wiser but still as thick as thieves.
Staunton and Manville sit side-by-side in a London hotel, perched upright on chairs, the space behind them lled by a large poster proclaiming the nal season of e Crown. As it generally is with Zoom calls, they seem to be almost trapped inside the frame: Staunton is in a regally formal black and white ensemble, while Manville is dressed in a more Margaret-like oral dress. Both actors have worked together many times (not least as pixies in Disney’s Male cent) and are good friends.
“We have a shorthand,” Manville said a few years back – and it shows on screen, as they negotiate the love that binds and sometimes tears apart. Both have also worked with Mike Leigh (Staunton was Oscar nominated for
Vera Drake, Manville on umpteen occasions) and that auteur’s meticulous attention to detail is something they appreciate.
“From season one, you see these two young women who are just loving sisters and then boof! One becomes queen, and one remains a princess,” says Staunton of Elizabeth’s epochal arc. “Of course, the Queen is also the head of the Church of England and will not allow her sister to marry – and that, I imagine, put quite a strain on the relationship. But within all those constraints, and even throughout the tumultuous time of Margaret’s life, they remained extremely close.
“Of course, I’m sure that that they would have had huge arguments, but I believe that their love for each other was immovable. And I don’t think that it was any easier for Elizabeth than it was for Margaret. Yet she wasn’t someone to explode and say, ‘Well, it wasn’t easy for me either!’ It was an enormous strain for both and yet they managed to come through.”
Princess Margaret was famously the party girl, a regular on London’s bohemian scene in the 1950s and ‘60s, and at one time the most photographed woman on the planet.
“She is a woman of whom it is easy to draw a thumbnail, clichéd sketch, but there was, of course, a lot more going on with her,” says Manville. “Being the third incarnation of this dramatised Margaret has allowed me to look at her beyond the headlines and see someone who had to live a compromised life.
My family are Irish, from Mayo, but my mum adored the Queen
— IMELDA STAUNTON —
“ere was a lot of pain inside Margaret, a lot of loneliness and heartache at not quite having the life, and the love, she wanted. And Margaret’s character comes out in strange ways. She could be antagonistic and curt, but fundamentally she was a very witty woman. All of that was fascinating for an actress to nd.”
Imelda Staunton grew up in North London to a working-class Irish family and a mother, Bridie, who had a so spot for Queen Elizabeth.
“She was our queen from the day I was born,” says the actress christened Mary Philomena Bernadette. “My family are Irish, from Mayo, but my mum adored the Queen (laughs) for whatever reasons. I’m just extremely sorry that my mum isn’t here to see me play the Queen. Now, we didn’t go to the parades or anything like that but it’s just interesting how an Irish family had this love of the royal family. And that’s my mum’s story really, not mine.”
Manville, like Staunton a very sprightly 67, has memories shaped from the same era. “I met the Queen – well, I didn’t actually meet her, but when I was seven, she did a walk past my school. It was another world that I didn’t understand, so it has been great to ‘do’ them a bit.”
In a recent interview, e Crown’s creator and writer, Peter Morgan, said that he didn’t think it was “possible to have a sensible conversation about
e Crown in the United Kingdom.” Can Staunton and Manville relate to that? Both seem perplexed by the question. Morgan had been responding to the criticism heaped on the show, particularly from season ve, that it was playing loosely with historical fact. Manville takes up the gauntlet.
“One of the biggest challenges for people involved with the show, and not us the actors, is to say that this is a drama about a family,” she says. “And if you make that leap as a viewer then you’re OK. It is not a documentary. One of the show’s strengths for me is that I don’t know what this family would be like in private. And what drama can do in that respect is speculate.”
For the past four years, Manville and Staunton, both CBES for their services to drama, have lived in the world of Windsor.
“I found with Margaret that there was much more common ground than uncommon ground,” says Manville. “She had been through a lot, like so many people in this world. We can imagine what it’s like to have the door opened for you all the time and never having to make your own breakfast and cup of tea. We can adopt that. But take all of that away and you get the person – and that’s the common ground.”
And Staunton was surprised by her screen alter-ego’s devotion to the church. “I didn’t realise how important faith was to Elizabeth. And I do identify with her sense of duty, even if it’s just a miniscule of what Elizabeth’s life was like. If I say that I will do something, I will do it.”
e second part of the nal season of e Crown debuts on December 14, the valedictory six hours of a 60-hour behemoth. At its peak it was the nest show on TV, even if the sheen has dulled in recent times.
“ere hasn’t been anything like it before,” says Manville, who wonders if we will ever see the like again. So how does an actor follow that? She laughs. “ankfully we haven’t pigeonholed ourselves in that way,” says Manville, whose career includes an Oscar nomination for a luminous turn in Phantom read.
“Listen, I had an extraordinary time doing e Crown and could easily go back to the beginning of the show, the very rst episode, and watch it all over again. It will be always there, long a er others have faded and even when a lot of the current royal family are no longer with us.”
She is a woman of whom it is easy to draw a thumbnail, clichéd sketch
— LESLEY MANVILLE ON PRINCESS MARGARET —