Interview with Lesley Manville: “Princess Margaret had the devil in her”

“I adore her deadly spirit”: Lesley Manville in London Photo: Rii Shroer

Although she doesn’t like it Oddly enough, Lesley Manville can't resist telling me a story about David Bowie, Gary Oldman (her then-husband) and her engorged breasts — for reasons that will become clear. Location: Mustique; 1988

«We were there with our newborn baby, staying at David's house, and I came down with severe mastitis,» the 67-year-old actress says matter-of-factly. “No one on the island knew how to treat it, so I had to fly home for emergency treatment. The next day David called and said, «It's a shame you had to leave because there was a party last night and Princess Margaret played the drums all night.» She is laughing. “So I missed it for 24 hours because I had mastitis!”

Manville's inability to meet Princess Margaret in the flesh didn't stop her from becoming one of the breakout actresses on The Crown, playing the sister of the late queen, who died in 2002. the younger Margaret — first Vanessa Kirby in series one and two, then Helena Bonham Carter in series three and four — in the penultimate and final series (the final four episodes of which will be released on Netflix on Thursday), Manville gives us Margaret in her old age. Although she is still a great mixture of idle glamor and sharp wit, she is also resentful, embittered, increasingly drunk and suffering from poor health.

As the royal drama reaches its climax, we see Margaret suffer a stroke at a party and the subsequent humiliating rehabilitation she must endure to regain her mobility and speech. We are also shown the horrific moment when she collapsed in a bath in Mustique and catastrophically burned her feet. Throughout it all, Manville's Margaret continues to smoke, drink, and fly off to her favorite island with furious pleasure, a feisty, cheerful girl almost to the last, at least outwardly.

“I love her deadly spirit,” says Manville, whose performance beautifully reveals the damaged, lonely soul behind the decadent façade. “In her prime, she was the Diana of her age – she appeared on more magazine covers than Diana ever did – but now she is a princess without a portfolio. She hated it when the diary was empty — and there was a devil in her. That's partly why I love her.”

Manville's Margaret is exactly the tonic that The Crown needs after the first half of last month's final episode failed to impress critics. (For The Telegraph's Anita Singh, it was nothing less than a «destruction of the late queen's image» that turned Imelda Staunton's Elizabeth II into a «sour old boot.») In her final conversations with her sister, we see a softer, gentler monarch; In the eighth episode we see an incredibly moving sight: Elizabeth reads the story of Jeeves and Wooster to the sick Margaret, sitting next to her in bed.

«She and Margaret were very close,» Manville says. “From everything Imelda and I read, it was clear that they talked most days if they could. They had a real connection that began in childhood. And yet, when Elizabeth suddenly became queen, then — wow! – their lives scattered in different directions.”

I can't help but wonder if playing this relationship made Manville think differently about the obvious tension between Princes William and Harry; Is one sibling destined to be the center of attention while the other is always the backup? «I don't want to talk about Harry because I don't know enough about him and I don't want to make judgments,» she says. “Besides, who really knows? That's what I love about The Crown: all Peter [Morgan, series creator] can do is wonder what happens when the palace doors close.»

We're in a room at the luxurious Langham Hotel in London, where Manville, fully made up for a photo shoot and wearing brown leather trousers, is surrounded by bustling publicists. She has always been a stunning actress, but over the last decade she has become an unstoppable actress at the very peak of her powers. She particularly excels at revealing the suffering of often comically prickly women: be it as the tormented Mrs. Alving in Richard Eyre's production of Ibsen's The Haunting, for which she won an Olivier Award in 2014; or stealing scenes from Daniel Day-Lewis as his calm and menacing sister in Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread (2018), for which she received her first Oscar nomination.

“She was the Diana of her age”: Manville as Princess Margaret in the final season of The Crown Photo: Justin Downing < p>Her recent on-screen successes are too numerous to mention: a widow who tentatively finds love again in BBC sitcom Mum; the guileless, cheerful cleaning lady from Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris; another emotionally devastated widow in James Graham's TV crime drama Sherwood. This year it was also directed by two titans of world cinema: Luca Guadagnino in the upcoming William Burroughs adaptation Queer and Alfonso Cuaron in the television miniseries Disclaimer.

It is a common belief that roles for female actors dry up after reaching a certain age, rather than multiplying madly like mushrooms in the night. Could Manville's booming career be another sign that the industry has finally gotten over its obsession with youth and is realizing the true value of older actresses?

“Absolutely, because there are enough of us these days defying the call to inject ourselves, cut ourselves, push, pull and make them bigger or smaller,” she says. “There's definitely a wave of older women moving away from this preoccupation with youth. Women in their 40s and 50s, because there are a lot of women their age now to watch [on screen], they think, you know what, I'm fine. But besides that, I'm happy with the way I live; I'm much more interesting now than when I was 30. There's more life in our bones.»

«I'm much more interesting now, than I was at 30. There's more life in my bones»: Manville in London last month. Photo: Rii Schroer for The Telegraph

Manville grew up in a council house in Hove, the youngest of three sisters. Her mother was a former ballerina, her father was a taxi driver. A talented dancer herself, she left school at 15 to attend the Accademia Italia Conti and then moved to London the following year. She attributes her amazing work ethic to having to manage on her own from such a young age, as well as being a single mother for most of her career. She and Oldman separated three months after the birth of their son Alfie; She was also married to actor Joe Dixon from 2000 to 2004. Early in her career she juggled the West End, Emmerdale and the Royal Shakespeare Company; then, in 1979, during a make-or-break meeting, she met film director Mike Leigh, with whom she would make eight films. She said Lee was the first person who made her feel like she had talent. Does some part of her still connect with this insecure 20-year-old actress, unsure if she can make it?

“I think about that feeling all the time,” she says. When she performed alongside Jeremy Irons in the West End production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 2018, she says: “I tried so hard because I thought I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. . I'm like that in everything. If I'm baking a cake, of course it won't be a disaster if it doesn't turn out well, but I want it to be really good.»

While performing in Long Day's Journey, she was also filming the television drama Hookers during the day and flew to Los Angeles in the middle of the day for the night to attend the Oscars for Phantom Thread. (Oldman, with whom she remains friendly, won the same year for his role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour.) “I'm not at all happy with young actors who complain about being tired,” she says sharply.

But she watches with horror the social media-fueled celebrity cycle into which rising stars are now regularly dragged. “Oh my God, I wouldn’t want to go through all this,” she says. “Today, young actors are forced to think: “I need to do Instagram and self-promotion, I need to be everywhere.” I want to scream: “No, don’t!” It doesn't matter if you're on the cover of a magazine or a brand ambassador: the only thing that matters is the job. When I was 20, no one thought about going to America, and I say this with great gratitude. You were here, you did the work, you played in the theater as much as you could.”

Nevertheless, the celebrity came looking for Manville — and found her. “It’s funny that people recognize me now,” she says. “These tend to be wealthy, middle-class places like Marylebone. And the National Theater.» She calmly attracts attention — but only up to a certain point. “The other day a woman came up and very gently said, ‘Lesley Manville, I just love you as a mom.’” I was so touched that I wanted to suggest they go and have a cup of tea,” she says. “But if I'm on a train and people shout, 'Hey Leslie!', which sometimes happens, I feel very awkward. I just want the earth to open up.»

The final episodes of The Crown will appear on Netflix from December 14.