She's wowing the world as she plays The Queen in the last ever series of Netflix's The Crown, but Imelda Staunton admits she actually felt "terrified" to take on the role and told us what her husband and actor Jim Carter made of it all too. Report by Jonesl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 been seeing queens all morning. Well, I was terrified.
00:04 How are you feeling now it's out there? It's out in the world. Is the pressure off slightly?
00:09 Can you relax?
00:10 Yeah, I think that's quite a good feeling.
00:12 Do you still get nervous when you have your work going out there?
00:17 Not really. It's too late. No, the nerves and all that is years ago when I was going
00:24 to do it. That's when you're nervous. But now it's all out of my control and then it's
00:33 in the lap of the gods. But to be part of it is just tremendous.
00:37 Absolutely. Going back to when you found out about the role, were you incredibly excited
00:42 to see those words, I'm sure, written down, 'The Queen'?
00:44 Well, I was terrified, of course. I was terrified. It was terrifying. It's funny that thing about
00:50 being terrified because I think hopefully it means that you really care, you really
00:55 want to do it well and you say you're so frightened that you won't do it well and all that. But
00:59 I think we all get that with various things. But at least I had time. If they'd said, 'You're
01:06 going to play the next Queen and we start filming tomorrow', I think I might have been
01:09 on the next bus out of town. But it was really great to have the time to work on her physicality,
01:18 her vocal quality and all those sort of, in a way, outward things, technical things that
01:26 you have to get down, if you like, and then push them to the side so you can just be that
01:32 person, hopefully.
01:33 Was there any part of you that thought, 'It's lovely, but I can't do it. It's too much'?
01:39 No, not too much because too much is what you have to do. It's got to be a challenge.
01:45 It's got to be tough. It's got to be something you think you can't do in order to do it and
01:50 to make you really, hopefully, develop as an actor.
01:56 When you get those calls or emails, whatever it was, do you still get the excitement of
01:59 when you first started in the industry?
02:00 Oh, of course you do. No, well actually, I went round to Peter Morgan's and I thought
02:06 I was going just to meet him, but I thought, well, I was at whatever time it was, 12 o'clock,
02:12 I thought, well, he's been seeing Queens all morning, so I'm on the list there. But he
02:17 actually said there and then, 'Well, you have to do this.' And I remember saying, 'Are you
02:24 sure?' He said, 'Yeah.' So that was odd. So I just left his house and just walked around
02:30 and I had to phone my husband. He said, 'I think I'm doing it. I think I'm doing it.'
02:38 And we couldn't say anything for months and months. So, yeah, of course, absolutely get
02:42 excited. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because I've been doing it for so long now and there's
02:49 still that, 'Oh, there's a call.' I mean, it's weird that you still get that excitement,
02:54 but maybe that's a good thing because it means you're still excited about doing the work.
02:59 And it's lovely that you can talk to Jim about it because he knows exactly how you feel.
03:01 He does. Yes, so that's quite good.
03:03 Did he say, 'Come home and I'll be Prince Philip when you're all practised?'
03:05 He was on holiday, thank you very much. He was on holiday. But no, I keep my work to
03:11 myself. I go up to my room. I just do it on my own. He doesn't have to suffer any of that.
03:15 That's really interesting. Has your way of rehearsing changed as technology's kind of
03:20 come forward?
03:21 No. No, I always just sit with a script and just think it through and either write things
03:28 out and things like that. So I just have to keep re-reading and re-reading. Whether that's
03:36 on an iPad or a paper script. Does anyone know what paper is anymore? I don't know.
03:43 But I still sort of work in the way that I just have to keep studying it all the time.
03:48 It's interesting how other people work. I've spoken to actors that use Autocue now on iPads
03:53 themselves and they read it and read it. It's fascinating how people do it.
03:57 No, I wouldn't. No, I think I just need to think about it all the time. That's what I
04:04 do. That's what's a bit boring for everyone else in the house. I'm going upstairs now.
04:08 Oh, she's going upstairs. Righto. And just sort of thinking about it.
04:12 How do you slip in and out of the accents and things like that?
04:15 Well, you sort of do. I mean, that's with anything. I've done American accents. That's
04:19 part of the job. But for something like this, which is so specific and everyone knows her
04:26 voice. And so, you know, it added another dimension, but still it is doing someone else's
04:35 vocal quality that is not you. So it was a bit harder in as much as I needed it to be
04:48 so specific. You can do an American accent in a musical. No one knows what that person
04:53 would sound like. But with this person, it had to be specific. And there's a part where
04:58 I do a speech after the death of Diana and I had to listen to that speech over and over
05:04 and over again. Whereas when I'm doing a scene with Philip that Peter Morgan has written
05:10 and imagined, it's just the Queen talking with Philip. But a speech that the world has
05:15 seen, you've got to be really specific.
05:18 Did you see then when you were researching the Queen that she did put the voice on for
05:22 the public?
05:24 I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And because she's first started when she was 21 years old, she
05:29 made a speech. And in those days, you wanted to speak nicely and you had to put on a voice
05:37 and everyone thought you had. And now people want to sound like themselves. So, you know,
05:42 and I think the Queen now, the younger members of the royal family don't sound like that.
05:48 She had a sound that belonged to her parents and grandparents. So, it's a very different
05:54 voice. It's a very different sort of- Everyone thought you had to speak.
05:57 Yeah. I was going to ask you, it must be difficult because there's not many people around that
06:01 are doing that voice.
06:02 No. No, not at all. So, that was- And it was great to have- And that's what's so wonderful
06:07 about William Conacher was our dialect coach. He taught me, William, Kate. So, he's very
06:15 aware of the generational differences with voices.
06:19 And in regards to when you went to Peter's house, did he give you a list of the previous
06:22 queens so you could reach out to them, ask them any questions?
06:25 Well, no. There's only one queen we all had to call on and that was the Queen. So, I couldn't
06:30 do Claire Foy's Queen or Olivia Colman's Queen. I had to just do mine. So, I had to go back
06:34 to- I'd watch them all, but I had to just go back to the real one.
06:41 I actually very fortunately met the Queen myself many years ago and she meant so much
06:45 to me. What do you feel about her?
06:49 Yeah, well, now sort of having sort of lived inside, having a little bit of an insight
06:56 to her, I'm just full of admiration for- People can be anti-monarchist or whatever, but the
07:07 people who queued up to see her when she had died, to see the coffin, I think they were
07:12 just saying thank you to someone who just did their job day in, day out, decade after
07:18 decade without- No one got to say, "I'm really tired. I just can't face it today." Always
07:26 doing her duty. And it's funny that because it seems like an old-fashioned thing to do.
07:30 You think, "No." Nurses turn up every day. Doctors have to turn up every day. And people
07:36 who just do what they said they would do. And I think her religion was so important
07:42 to her. When she became Queen, she believed she was anointed by God and she must fulfill
07:49 her duty. And I think that is sort of almost untouchable today.
07:54 I said goodbye to her. I'd queued up 14 hours.
07:56 Did you? Yeah, I did, yeah.
07:58 How wonderful was that? It was just incredible. And my grandma did
08:01 the same with Churchill, the same route. Gosh.
08:04 Yeah. It was really emotional, actually.
08:06 Of course it was. Of course it was.
08:08 My feet have never recovered. Well, well done.
08:11 Thank you. It was great to meet you. Thank you. Congratulations. You were fantastic.
08:14 Thank you. Thank you.
08:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]