Time’s Up campaigns, but she is unexpectedly vehement on the
subject. ‘I am thrilled that it’s happening, and I hope that it
doesn’t lose momentum, and people don’t get bored of it,’ she says.
‘People are so used to the norm, and they don’t want to rock the
boat – if you put your head above the parapet, you can be seen
as difficult. And if a woman’s seen as difficult, then people don’t
employ her. Deeply un fa ir...’
In her own case, she says, the discrimination was subtle yet nev-
ertheless present. ‘I wasn’t preyed on in that way,’ she says, ‘but when
you’re doing comedy, the girl never really gets the punchline... that
sor t of st u f f, which is ver y a nnoy ing.
‘I loved being part of it all, and I sort of understood, because I
hadn’t written it. But if I had, I’d have shared out the punchlines. At
the time, I was just thrilled to be working with really great people;
it’s only afterwards that you look back and go, “Oh, hopefully that
will change.”’
We talk, too, about equal pay, in the light of the revelation last
year that Foy was being paid less than Matt Smith, who played
Prince Philip. Is Colman getting as much as her consort Tobias
Menzies? ‘I bloody well hope so! It’s not
called Philip, it’s called The Crown!’ she
expostulates. Still, she admits a little
ruefully, ‘as we know, there isn’t equal
pay, so Oliver Colman has probably paid
off his mortgage, but Olivia hasn’t. The
idea is that you get an Oscar and suddenly- boom! You’re a multimillionaire! No –
I definitely can’t complain, but I’m
nowhere near the realm of paying every-
thing off yet.’
Colman lives in south London with her
husband, the writer Ed Sinclair, their
three young children, aged between 13
and three, who are ‘deliciously uninter-
ested’ in her work, and two dogs, Alfred
Lord Waggyson and Pockets. She tries
to keep her home life as normal as pos-
sible, and routinely refuses jobs that take her away for any length of
time. ‘I get homesick. If it isn’t in the school holidays, so we can all
go together, I don’t want to do it. I did a little film in Ohio for two
weeks, and that was the longest I’ve been away from Ed in 25 years.’
But the accolades and leading roles have inevitably led to a loss
of anonymity, which troubles her, despite the public’s huge and
uncomplicated affection. ‘I’m very shy and private,’ she says. ‘I find
it very, very difficult to be stared at.’ How does she cope? ‘I don’t
go out! I find that fixes it. I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a
therapist, and I said, “It’s fine, I just don’t leave the house any more.”
As soon as I said it out loud, I realised it sounded quite weird,’ she
admits. ‘It’s not what you expect, the other side of it.’
It was in a vain attempt to keep a lid on her ever-growing fame
that when she was given a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list
this year, she had it awarded in her married name, Sarah Sinclair.
‘I was thinking it would cause less fuss, and be nice and private,’
she says with a sigh, ‘but now everyone just knows my real name.’
Still, I say, trying to cheer her up, it might mean that she meets
her alter ego in the flesh... ‘I imagine she has other stuff to do,’
she says wryly. ‘I’m trying not to get my hopes up – but I really want
it to be her.’ I bet the feeling is mutual.
Ser ies three of ‘ T he Cro wn’ will be available on Net flix from 17 No vember.
‘The Oscar
is in our
sitting-room, we
keep laughing at
it. It look s fake, it’s
so shiny. And
it’s really heav y!’
Princess Margaret, played by Helena Bonham Carter, who cavorts
on Mustique with Roddy Llewellyn while her sister grapples with
drearier issues such as Churchill’s funeral, Prince Philip’s mid-life
crisis, Wilson’s resignation, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the
Falklands War... a period the monarch herself might have termed
a ‘tempus horribilis’, perhaps?
Ironically, Colman’s own existence is a good deal more glam-
orous by comparison, right now at least, following her Oscar win
this year. ‘I can’t register that it’s happened – it’s bonkers!’ she says,
laughing in disbelief. ‘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 weightlifts.’
Watching again the moment when she was proclaimed the
winner, I note with interest that she seems almost appalled to hear
her name read out. ‘I was terrified, because I was going to have to say
something in front of all these people,’ she acknowledges. ‘Ed [her
husband] sent me a text saying, “Please, just think of these points,”
but I was like, “It’s not going to happen, Eddie.” It feels unlucky to
prepare something.’ Who did she expect to win? ‘Glenn Close. She
was sitting right in the middle, wearing gold,
so I thought she must know something.’
Prepared or not, Colman’s spontaneous,
witty address was one of the highlights of
the night, as, breathless and seemingly
on the verge of tears, she sang the praises of
her co-stars Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone
- ‘the two loveliest women in the world to
fall in love with’ – and then blew a raspberry
at the continuity person telling her to wrap
it up. She also declared that, even while she
was working as a cleaner to make ends meet,
she had dreamt of such a moment. ‘Every-
body does, don’t they? ’ she asks. ‘A bit? ’
Born Sarah Olivia Colman, the daughter
of a nurse and a chartered surveyor, she had
a happy childhood in north Norfolk – itself,
of course, a favourite Windsor stamping
ground. ‘Well, they never came round our house,’ she jokes. She went
to a girls’ school in Norwich, where she discovered her love for
acting playing the title role in a production of The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie. ‘I was so shit at everything at school, but I did the play and
thought, “Oh, I like this!” I actually had the urge to do the home-
work and learn the lines,’ she says. ‘I was quite a jolly kid, but not
particularly confident, and suddenly being someone else was
amazing. And I could do things as someone else that I could never
have done as myself. But I didn’t know if I was allowed to be an
ac tor. Nobody k new how to be in t hat world.’
Instead, she decided to apply to a teacher-training college in
Cambridge, and acted in university productions alongside David
Mitchell and Robert Webb, who became her close friends. Realising
that teaching would never be her métier, she supported herself
working as a cleaner – ‘the job satisfaction was amazing!’ she
declares with sincerity – and continued to perform, eventually
winning a place at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. In her final
term there, she was asked to attend an audition for a TV show, and
arrived to find Mitchell and Webb waiting for her. ‘And then, they
were basically responsible for all my work for years...’ she says.
This bouncy summary suggests that Colman’s rise to fame was
unclouded by any of the issues highlighted by the Me Too and