The Crown's Jared Harris and Vanessa Kirby on What It's Like to Play Members of the Royal Family

Plus, the story behind the most touching scene in the new Netflix series.

Stuart Hendry/Netflix

We're just days away from the premiere of The Crown, Netflix's highly anticipated series about the early years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. In advance of the show's launch, Town & Country sat down with Vanessa Kirby who portrays Princess Margaret and Jared Harris, who plays her father King George VI, to talk about the show's most touching scene and why Americans are so obsessed with the Royals.

Why do you think Americans are still so fascinated with the British Royal family?

Vanessa Kirby: They really are, aren't they? I think there's two reasons. First is the magical, mythological quality to the history, of Kings and Queens and Henry the Eighth and the beheadings and Charles the First and Queen Elizabeth. These are amazing characters. I was always fascinated with them growing up, what that status gives you as a human being, what that means. You do become a myth, in a way.

And that's combined with the fact that they're the last public figures that we don't know anything about privately. You have no idea who they really are. The gates of Buckingham Palace are closed. And this series opens those gates, goes well beyond the deepest corridor of it and turns it inside out. You get to see these people play out their lives in a way that has never been seen before.

Jared Harris: Mystery. They're very good at maintaining the mystery, and it has a connection as well—there is a connection to America's past through British history, having thrown that off, but I'm sure there's still a curiosity about it. We like to know where we came from.

Alex Bailey/Netflix

Did this show change your perception of Princess Margaret and King George VI?

VK: 100 percent.

JH: Very much so.

VK: Almost a complete 180. I didn't know anything about them. And now having read so much about their lives, but particularly their early lives when these two girls were young and the King was going through the war, it's all so fascinating.

But then what the series does is help you imagine psychologically what it was like for a human being to live through those experiences. What would I do if I was a man with terminal cancer and I happened to be the King of England and have these two daughters, one of whom is going to become Queen very early on? Do I tell them? Do I not? And Churchill: Should I stay a prime minister even when I'm 75? Then Margaret: How much do I fight for the man I want to love? Do I rebel and turn against my family and become Mrs. Townsend, or do I stay a princess and sacrifice the love? Do I forgive my sister? All of these really small, human questions have made me inevitably have more empathy, and more admiration, and I've lost an element of judgement against them, which I'm really happy about. I think anything that opens my mind is a really valuable life experience.

JH: I've played a bunch of historical characters, and you run into the same thing every single time: Warhol, Lennon, Henry VIII, Ulysses S. Grant. You have a superficial, ignorant idea of who these people are, and then when you start to do the research, you realize, gah, I've had a really terrible perception. Of course they are fully realized human beings, and you dig into it, and you realize what's been kept in their story and been put out there.

For example with George the VI, it's the idea of the reluctant monarch with the speech impediment who was terrified of public speaking and never wanted to be King. What you don't know is that he took to it diligently. He very responsibly accepted the role that he was given, and worked very hard to reinvent the monarchy—what the monarch's relationship was with the public was. He created a great deal of affection with the public that chiefly came about because of the Second World War, and the example that they set. You know, there's a lot to admire about him when you start to dig into it. Untold stories.

Did you feel a lot of pressure stepping into these roles?

VK: To begin with, massively. It was really nerve wracking. I felt like there was enough time that had passed for people to not quite remember her when she was 21, so that took the pressure off a little bit. I'm sure Jared had a different set of pressures. For the first day or two you think, "Oh my god, my hair didn't look exactly like hers, and does my face look like her? And I'm too tall, and ooh do I sound like her? And then you just let it all go and enter the zone. And Claire [Foy, who plays Queen Elizabeth] became my sister, and (gestures to Jared) like my dad, and that really helped. We had so much fun, so that took the pressure off too.

What was the preparation like?

JH: Read everything you can, look at everything you can, listen to everything you can. They had seven researchers on staff. Giving stuff to [creator] Peter [Morgan] that would then be invaluable to us. You look at everything.

VK: I wrote this huge timeline of when things happen in Peter [Morgan]'s story, and what happened to Margaret in between and then she went on tour with Peter Townsend, which made her fall in love. Although you don't see when Margaret went on tour with Peter Townsend in the series, I knew where her head was. I listened to all her music, I just immersed myself in her.

Alex Bailey/Netflix

[To Jared] You've been in period dramas before—what do you like about playing historical characters?

JH: In terms of playing historical characters, there is a lot of work that is immediately available to you, rather than starting from your imagination. When you start trying to decide what they look like or how they behave or a lot of those external things are already there for you, so you can jump the process, which is great. But at the end of the day, it still is an imaginative exercise. You have to imaginatively put yourself into those positions and try to make associations and then invent the things that aren't there.

I love history, I find it fascinating, and I particularly find it irritating that we end up regurgitating the same stories over and over and over again in terms of remakes and reboots and stuff like that when there's these incredible dramas and stories that are out there that can teach us about where we were, things that we've encountered in the past that are not necessarily so unique now and that they might inform us and it's that old cliche that if you aren't aware of history you're doomed to repeat it.

One of the most touching scenes in the series is in the second episode where your two characters are singing at the piano.

JH: That was her idea.

Can you tell me a little about that scene? What was it like to film it?

VK: We were at a hotel bar filming [Elizabeth and Philip's] wedding quite early on and Stephen said to me "You only see glimpses of Margaret in the first couple episodes, and I want to show her youthful, vibrant energy." After her father dies, she becomes hard throughout the series, and things become very difficult for her without him—slowly in every scene she's smoking. And so it was very important—Stephen said, "I want to get something in that really cements their relationship."

I said, "Oh well they used to sing at the piano all the time together," which you would not have known because he was such a private person and not particularly an extrovert, but she brought it out of him. They had that, which Elizabeth didn't have. And it's that quote which I love, "Elizabeth is my pride, but Margaret is my joy." Margaret holds onto that forever. And so it's their moment of joy together.

I suggested it to Stephen and he says, "Right let's do it." I was like "wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, but I'm not a singer." And then I had to actually sing the bloody thing. I've never sung a note in my life, but I went into the studio and we recorded it, and then thank god Jared saved the day because he comes in and does this incredible performance, a very sick performance, of a man that loves his daughter. All I had to do was look at him, and it was really easy.

JH: The arranger that was recording us also had this clever idea of coming in late, and then we did that weird harmonizing thing, which worked, bizarrely, because I had one of the worst colds I've ever had in my life. A chest cold that sort of really croaky, and I was singing in like four keys at once.

VK: It was amazing—he made my voice sound a bit better because he was so ill. So I was grateful for that. I didn't mean to cry, I wasn't intending to cry, but I was just looking at [Jared] and he's such a brilliant actor, and I adore him as a person, and just the love between our characters, subconsciously knowing that he wasn't going to be here for much longer, and so that was what that moment was.

The Crown premieres November 4 on Netflix.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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