The Times Magazine 39warning of upsetting scenes), it is seeing Anne,
the robust one, crumbling that brings home
the monarchy’s institutional cruelty.
“Anne’s frustrated in the first season
and the fact that she didn’t have anyone to
communicate her frustration to ended up in it
going internal, to a place where you just shut
off and carry on. But we all know, if you’re
not communicating how you’re feeling, you’re
going to crumble eventually and it all kind
of came up in that scene with her mum, and
in her marriage, I suppose. They [Anne and
Mark] are both having extramarital affairs.
It will seep out in its own way eventually.”
If Morgan really does proceed by winkling
out episodes from the royal soap that we have
forgotten, he has certainly succeeded in the
case of Anne’s affair with Peter Cross. There
is no doubt it happened. Indeed, Cross later
confirmed it had to the journalist who broke
the story, but I certainly had no memory
of it. Brian Hoey’s 1997 biography, Anne:
The Private Princess Revealed, entirely ignores
it and so does her Wikipedia entry (better
known is Anne’s extramarital liaison with Tim
Laurence, who became her second husband
following the publicity over the theft of his
love letters from the palace).
As an admirer, doesn’t Doherty feel a
little guilty about her part in disinterring
this particularly tabloid exclusive?
“Again, I’m like, well, if anyone can take
it, it’s Anne. In that sense, I don’t feel bad
because she can take anything.”
When not in digs in Chichester rehearsing
a difficult play, Doherty lives unpalatially in
a house share in London. During lockdown
it was hard. I ask if she could not now,
post-Crown, afford to buy a flat of her own.
“Oh gosh, no. That’s the reality of my
work. Who knows? Who blimmin’ knows?”
Uncertainty is integral to her profession?
“Love is what keeps you in it. I’m not in it
for money, or to buy a flat on my own. I’m in
it just because I love to do it.”
I wonder if The Crown has put her off
marriage for ever.
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m just going to be alone.
Keeping it safe. Just me,” she jokes.
But it’s not a great advert for it, is it,
The Crown?
“I know. That’s true. To have spent a year
in an unhappy marriage as Princess Anne has
kind of put me off.”
Her own parents split up when she was
about four, but she saw plenty of her father,
who “gets aeroplanes to airports or something
like that”. Her upbringing, and not just
because there was less money about (her
mother was a doctors’ receptionist), was
very unlike Anne’s. “My mum and dad were
there. They were there.” The quarter of her
childhood she resented was school, at which
she spent as little time as possible. “I just
didn’t really want to be there. I was really
bad. I bunked all the time.”
She lived for the weekends, which were
of two halves. Her father ferried her round
the region to play football matches, while her
mother drove her to stage school. She was an
exceptional soccer player, a midfielder and
team captain. For a while, it looked as if she
might become a professional footballer and
she got as far as getting a trial at Chelsea.
“I loved it and I still think about it,” she says,
but she also loved acting and, in the end,
her father told her she would have to choose,
“because he was the one driving me to
blimmin’ Bracknell or Petts Wood”. With
her “logical brain” on, she realised of the two
risky careers, acting at least had the chance
of longevity on its side. Perhaps one day,
I suggest, she will combine her talents. She
likes the idea. “I watch Bend It Like Beckham and
I’m like, ‘Oh, God. They can’t play football.’
Yeah, one day I’ll get my football film.”
The problem was finding a drama school
that perceived her ability. There was a money
problem. Many charged £50 just for an
audition. To pay for them after A levels, she
went back to work at her Hazelwick School
as a PE technician, washing football kit and
pumping up balls. There were plenty of
rejections, but not so many that Doherty
abandoned her dream. In the end, her father,
who was living in Guildford, found a drama
foundation course at the local college. From
there, she was accepted by Bristol Old Vic
Theatre School, alma mater of both Colman
and Josh O’Connor, The Crown’s Prince
Charles. At Bristol she was the Stephen
Sondheim Student Performer of the Year.
Her career is still young, but her stage
presence was noticed from the off. Her CV
boasts a string of nominations and awards.
In a 2019 Young Vic revival of the one-woman
show My Name Is Rachel Corrie, she playedthe 23-year-old American activist killed
by an Israel soldier on the Gaza Strip. The
Guardian’s Michael Billington called her one
of the year’s “great discoveries”. Up the road
at the Old Vic, she played opposite Rhys
Ifans’s Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and
stayed on to take the lead role in Alan
Ayckbourn’s The Divide.
During its run, her agent called to say
that, although her TV work had thus far been
confined to an episode of Call the Midwife and
a small role in the BBC’s Les Misérables, she
was up for Princess Anne.
She was auditioned twice by series director
Ben Caron and the casting directors Nina
Gold and Robert Sterne. The only advice she
observed was a tip she had seen on a video at
drama school given by Breaking Bad’s Bryan
Cranston, which was to prep for an audition
as if you already had the part.
At Elstree in the autumn of 2018, on
the set of The Crown for the first time, she
found the scale of the production “insane”.
Acting alongside Colman, who was about
to receive her Oscar, Helena Bonham
Carter as Margaret and Tobias Menzies
was “mind-blowing”.
“They are like prime goddesses and
gods at their blimmin’ craft. You’re literally
like, ‘Right, I just have to focus and do the
best that I can.’ I have to say, I look back and
I don’t know how I did it.”
Yet she completely acts at Colman’s level
in that key scene of theirs, I say.
“Oh, bloody hell. That’s great.”
My thought, I tell her, is that Crown
viewers have grown to love Anne so much
because the actress who plays her loves her so.
“I’d love for that to be true, honestly.
Something just kind of clicked. I was so
determined for people to be introduced to
this woman with so much to offer.”
Now, though, she has said goodbye
to Princess Anne. Another actress, as yet
unannounced, will take up her reins, literally
and figuratively, in seasons five and six. Netflix
has not said farewell to Doherty, however. In
the streamer’s forthcoming thriller Rebel Ridge,
she plays the female lead opposite the Star
Wars actor John Boyega. Filming is due to
begin in Louisiana in March. “I’m really, really
chuffed,” she says. There is another Netflix
film too, but she cannot talk about it for now.
First, there is this sharp, dark Sarah Kane
play. Rehearsals, I gather, have been intense,
but she thinks Crave a fantastic piece of writing
and attractive to her because it is the complete
opposite of The Crown – a meditation on mental
illness, sex and mordantly dysfunctional
family relationships. How unlike, I think, the
home life of our own dear Queen. Or perhaps,
I think again, not so very unlike. nThe Crown returns on Netflix tomorrow