Royally awkward! Olivia Colman found out Prince William isn’t a fan of The Crown as they talked about her role playing his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix series’ third season.
Colman, 45, relayed her conversation with the Duke of Cambridge on the Friday, November 8, episode of The Graham Norton Show, according to Hello! magazine.
“It didn’t go very well,” she said. “I met Prince William at a dinner, and he asked what I was doing at the moment before he quickly added, ‘Actually, I know what you’re doing.’ I was so excited and asked, ‘Have you watched it?’ His answer was a firm, ‘No.’ But he was very charming and very lovely.”
The Oscar winner added that she did “nothing” to prepare to play 1970s-era Queen Elizabeth. “I did have a movement coach, but still I walked like me, or rather, like a farmer,” she quipped.
The Emmy-nominated TV series covers decades of real-life drama from the monarch’s reign as Queen of England, though Buckingham Palace communications secretary Donal McCabe called it a “fictionalised interpretation of historical events” in a statement to The Guardian in September. “The royal household has never agreed to vet or approve content, has not asked to know what topics will be included, and would never express a view as to the programme’s accuracy,” McCabe said at the time.
In 2017, a royal source told the Daily Express that Elizabeth watched the show at the urging of her son Prince Edward and his wife, Countess Sophie. “Happily, she really liked it,” the source added, “although obviously there were some depictions of events that she found too heavily dramatised.”
Colman is succeeding Claire Foy in the role, with Outlander star Tobias Menzies taking over for Matt Smith in the role of Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter playing Princess Margaret in Vanessa Kirby’s stead.
On Friday’s installment of The Graham Norton Show, Carter, 53, elaborated on her earlier claim that she sought the late Margaret’s permission to take the part. “I actually went to see a friend about something else, but she has a talent for mediumship and she suddenly said, ‘Margaret is here. Does that mean anything?’” she explained on the show, per Entertainment Tonight. “I hadn’t actually said yes [to the part] yet, but thought I’d ask her if I should take the role, and she said, ‘You’ll be better than the other one.’”
She went on: “There was actually someone else up for the part, and it’s typical of Margaret. I’d met her a few times and you never really knew where you were with her. She had a way of complimenting and putting you down at the same time.”
The Crown season 3 starts streaming on Netflix on Sunday, November 17.
