People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction.
[Queen Elizabeth] is just the granny queen! She's our granny queen who shakes people's hands!
That external struggle mirrors the struggle of this life force of energy that [princess Margaret] was.
I watched tons of archive footage of princess Margaret and listened to the music she loved; that was really immersive and brilliant.
I started to really enjoy the fact that [princess] Margaret was an exhibitionist. Even on a day-to-day basis, Margaret's costumes were always so much more dramatic and bold than Elizabeth's were.
I still get stage fright horribly. I still get nervous. I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.
People are so much more fascinated by the royal family generally than in England.
I am endlessly fascinated by this notion that everyone has a secret. Some of our secrets are tiny, small things, and some of them are huge. Given that reality of the human condition, that's what our characters will go through. There will be some things where you'll just be like, "What the hell! How the hell did that happen?"
To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly doesn't exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of brimstone.
You are a cosmic happening rooted in a local event, NOT the other way around.
I'm definitely a child of the 21st century and I prefer texting to phone calls, but I would prefer an answering machine over all.