Chances are you’d never heard of Claire Foy before Peter Morgan’s “The Crown” debuted on Netflix in November, but it’s pretty much impossible to forget her now. Foy beautifully captured the burden a newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II experienced after she ascended to the thrown following the death of her father, King George VI (Jared Harris) in 1947. Her performance earned her SAG Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and she’s expect to round out those accolades with an Emmy nomination next month.
In conjunction for an article originally written for The Hollywood Reporter, Foy jumped on the phone in early May to discuss her work on the Netflix series, which Oscar nominee Stephen Daldry shepherded for the first two episodes. In between the first and second seasons Morgan announced that because the series would chronicle different eras in the Queen’s life — she’s currently 91-years-old — that Foy would end up portraying her in only the first two seasons of the series. This writer had no idea he would be talking to her the day before she portrayed Queen Elizabeth for the last time. It would not be an exaggeration to say she was slightly melancholy over it.
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Gregory Ellwood: Claire thank you so much for taking the time at the end of your day to do this.
Claire Foy: Oh, don’t worry. It’s the beginning of your day. What time is it where you are?
It’s noon. It’s not too bad. It’s halfway through the day. I’ll be honest, I was just listening to Miley Cyrus’ new single on loop while I was waiting for you, so no worries.
What a combination.
What a combination. But, we’re here to talk about “The Crown”! What were your fears and your hopes when you auditioned? What was that experience like?
There was a lot of fears in the sense that there was a lot to lose, I think, by doing it. I think all the people who are making it, have made an incredibly successful stage show and they’ve made an incredible, Oscar-winning, successful film. It felt to me, I was like, “Oh, this could be a step too far, maybe this is too much.” Then I read the script and was completely engaged with her and her family story and the story of her life. Also, all of the people who are making it are extraordinary, so any fear that I had was just erased by knowing that the people who were in charge of it were amazing. There was definitely a lot to lose, but I suppose whenever you’re making anything, there’s a lot to lose and there really are risks of everything, I think probably.
From this side of the Atlantic it seems like there have been more films and TV programs about the Royal Family or including the Royal Family over the past decade or so. Did that make it easier in a way to do the role, because so many other people have jumped into this territory?
I don’t really think that anyone has, really. I don’t really feel like there’s been an extra special amount of interest in it. I think they’re a very interesting family and they’re also an incredibly interesting reflection of our society in our time. It would be weird if people weren’t making drama about them, I think. There would be something odd going on there if people weren’t investigating that. I suppose I felt like when Helen Mirren and Kristin Scott Thomas played her I felt like they were playing her during a very different period of her life. I don’t feel like anyone had ever explored this part of her life. I thought she was such an interesting, fascinating and completely unique story. I felt like it deserves to be investigated and looked into further.
Did it matter to you whether she or the Royal Family approved of what you guys did or did you just have to go into it or hope afterward that they might like it?
Yeah, I don’t think you could ever do anything knowing that the result is gonna be that people are gonna love it, regardless of whether it’s about them or not. I would never be involved in anything that I thought was salacious or sensationalist in any way about anything. Whether it was portraying anything in anyone’s life, regardless of whether they’re Royal or not, I just couldn’t be involved in anything that I didn’t think was a drama and a story and worth making and had a purpose and a point. I always believed in its integrity and the story that we were telling. Saying that, anything that you’re portraying in any drama, someone’s gonna watch it and someone’s gonna have gone through it at some point in their life. You never want anyone to be sitting at home thinking, “That is exactly not what it was like.” It can be different, but you want people to see the truth of it. You don’t need to think that’s completely fake and no one would ever behave like that. I think the idea that they watched it or that they would have any opinion on it, was never something that we were making it for. You just want to be respectful and treat things with truth and honesty and approach things in that way, as opposed to wanting to appeal to everyone, I suppose.
I don’t know how much of the specific details of the Queen’s life is taught in English schools, but a lot of it was a surprise to Americans. The context of so many different events, in particular. When you started working on it was there anything in particular that stuck out to you the most as like, “Wow, I didn’t realize this happened this way?” Is there anything you remember being most surprised about?
Well, I didn’t know anything about her and the fact that when she came to the throne so early on in her life. That her and Phillip had never intended for this to be… That this was a surprise. I think you just always think that you expect it and you forget that in order for someone to become Queen, their relation has to die. Someone has to lose someone in order to become the monarch. I think that’s a human element that we never really think about. I suppose because you don’t really want to think that people in that position have problems or emotions or difficulties or anything. I was really surprised by the truth of her story. I found that very, very surprising. Everything else was surprising, the more you learn about them, the more you learn the way the palace works. The more you learn about them as a family, you just get to know them as people as opposed to figureheads, you get to know them as people who live their lives. Everyone’s life is interesting. That was great being able to learn that.