Olivia Colman won an Oscar for playing Queen Anne in 2018’s “The Favourite”; now, she’s ready for her next royal role as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown”.
The actress, who most recently won raves and an Emmy nomination for her supporting role on “Fleabag”, takes over from Claire Foy on the Netflix series. In the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Colman dishes about playing the British monarch.
“I don’t really enjoy research. But for this, I have to accept it,” she explains. “I can’t just sit like me, I have to sit like her, and look like pictures of her. They have been teaching me how to walk – I’m really terrible at that, I have no physical awareness. I walk a bit like a farmer, one of the directors said.”
RELATED: ‘The Crown’ Transitions From Claire Foy To Olivia Colman In Season 3 Teaser
Sitting like the Queen wasn’t the only thing the 45-year-old actress had to master. She also had to perfect her accent.
“I thought that general ‘posh’ would do it, but apparently not,” she says. “Really unusual vowel sounds. If you’re saying ‘yes’, you say ‘ears’. It’s fun to do, isn’t it? Very hard to stop. ‘Ears’.”
Colman is likely to garner awards attention for “The Crown” next year, and though it’s been nearly eight months since she won the Best Actress Oscar, she reveals her big win still hasn’t quite sunk in.
“I can’t register that it’s happened! It’s bonkers!” she exclaims. “It’s in our sitting room, on the sideboard, and we keep laughing at it. It looks fake, it’s so shiny. And it’s really heavy! I could do some amazing weight-lifts.”
Up against stiff competition in the form of Lady Gaga in “A Star Is Born” and Melissa McCarthy in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, Colman says she fully expected Glenn Close to win for “The Wife”.
“She was sitting right in the middle, wearing gold, so I thought she must know something,” she says of Close on Oscar night.
Read Colman’s full interview in the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar, on sale October 3. Season 3 of “The Crown” lands on Netflix November 17.
