So lengthy, Princess Margaret. On the eighth episode of The Crown, “Ritz,” we bid a protracted and emotionally devastating farewell to Lesley Manville’s lifetime of the get together, Princess Margaret, as her well being declined. Manville drops by Nonetheless Watching to speak about portraying the royal in her remaining years, and her real-life relationship with Crown costar Imelda Staunton.
Whereas it was tough to look at Princess Margaret’s gradual deterioration, Nonetheless Watching hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy did really feel it was becoming for The Crown to commit a whole episode to Margaret, given her significance to the sequence. “I form of knew this was coming as a result of, at this level in her life, that’s principally the most important factor left—her horrible, gradual demise,” mentioned Lawson. “It’s rather well executed, and in addition horrifying.”
All three hosts had been additionally tickled however perplexed by the episode’s framing round a younger Princess Margaret and Elizabeth II going out for a wild night time on VE day. “Appropriate me if I’m unsuitable: The nice secret of Elizabeth’s life is that when she danced in a room with a Black man?” requested Busis. “She did the jitterbug,” added Murphy, “which was unlawful again then.”
Whereas younger Margaret and Elizabeth danced until the break of daybreak, the episode belonged to Oscar nominee Lesley Manville. Manville advised Murphy that she was “thrilled” when she obtained the script for episode eight and noticed the best way wherein Peter Morgan dealt with Margaret’s decline. “It’s a really lovely examination of the sisters and their relationship and their enormous love for one another,” says Manville. “I imply, they had been in all probability the most important loves of one another’s lives.” Manville notes that whereas the queen had the help of her husband, Prince Philip, in addition to her religion, she additionally had an “extraordinary historical past” together with her youthful sister. “They had been each pushed into this life that neither of them anticipated,” says the actor. “It made their lives drift in very completely different instructions, however what an attractive episode, inspecting two very loving siblings coping with saying goodbye to one another.”
For Manville, portraying a stroke-stricken Margaret was a painstaking course of that concerned numerous analysis and care. “It was fairly powerful to suppose, ‘Proper, I’ve bought to do three strokes in a single hour,’” says Manville. Nonetheless, the actor discovered that problem to be “an actual privilege.”
