Vanessa Kirby: I did a lot before [being cast] because I knew how impo...

I started to really enjoy the fact that [princess] Margaret was an exhibitionist. Even on a day-to-day basis, Margaret's costumes were always so much more dramatic and bold than Elizabeth's were.

Vanessa Kirby

princess costumes facts

I watched tons of archive footage of princess Margaret and listened to the music she loved; that was really immersive and brilliant.

Vanessa Kirby

archives princess brilliant

I still get stage fright horribly. I still get nervous. I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.

Vanessa Kirby

stronger personality character

People are so much more fascinated by the royal family generally than in England.

Vanessa Kirby

royal-family people

I remember somebody saying something to me about Frost/Nixon, when Anthony Hopkins does his famous speech, and the difference in the way Anthony did it was to dramatize, essentially, what was a documentary-style version of that speech. I remember someone saying to me, "There is artistic liberty."

Vanessa Kirby

style differences liberty

That external struggle mirrors the struggle of this life force of energy that [princess Margaret] was.

Vanessa Kirby

princess mirrors struggle

[Princess Margaret] was loud, an extrovert, an exhibitionist, loved fashion, loved color, loved music, loved drama, loved the theater, wanted to be a ballerina or actress, was always the little one putting on the school plays, and [princess] Elizabeth reluctantly did it and got stage fright.

Vanessa Kirby

princess fashion drama

[Princess Margaret] was always trying to radicalize things.

Vanessa Kirby

princess always-trying trying

At the same time, [princess Margaret] had a fragility and an insecurity in who she was and her position, because her sister had always got the education ever since David [Edward VIII] abdicated.

Vanessa Kirby

fragility princess insecurity

It's this amazing combination to play, really, of somebody who's actually very fragile and hasn't really grown up properly yet - at least in a healthy environment - and has suffered immense loss with her dad - like that line where she says, [in the words of her father [King George VI], "Yes, 'Elizabeth is my pride but Margaret's my joy." She holds onto it!

Vanessa Kirby

dad kings father

My dad is a big extrovert - he's a doctor - but he always loved [William] Shakespeare and he took us to tons of theater.

Vanessa Kirby

extroverts doctors dad

I knew she was a party girl. The book I liked most on her was called [princess] Margaret: A Life of Contrasts and getting to know her, it was how conflicted her position and her internal life - or self - was. She is so fiercely royal and so fiercely "sister of the queen" or "daughter of the king" because that is her identity and it's all she's ever known. And at the same time she is struggling to push the boundaries and to break away from it, to be different or to modernize the monarchy, to turn it on its head.

Vanessa Kirby

daughter queens girl

I would argue [princess] Margaret is the tragic figure of the century.

Vanessa Kirby

princess century arguing

Some of the biographies [of princess Margaret] were really sensationalist, News of the World sorts, but they were great because they also gave first and secondhand accounts of her at home. The butlers come forward and give little moments, some of which you discard and some which ring somehow true and you use.

Vanessa Kirby

princess home giving

Once you start [filming] you have researchers who are constantly giving you information. Ultimately it isn't about impersonating or trying to be an image of somebody and more trying to capture the spirit and the soul of the person somehow.

Vanessa Kirby

soul trying giving

I watched her do speeches, but the only footage we could find of [princess] Margaret was archive footage, which was of her public presentation of herself.

Vanessa Kirby

archives princess speech

It was always said you couldn't have two sisters less alike. In a way [princess] Elizabeth was always internalizing everything and [princess] Margaret was always externalizing everything, so that became the basis. The storyline becomes about these two sisters: they're fighting for their position or trying to establish their identity in the world alongside each other and in relation to this establishment which only those two were a part of.

Vanessa Kirby

princess fighting two

Marking the differences between them was really important. It just became second nature. When we were choosing pajamas or something, instantly you'd be able to spot: those are [princess] Margaret, those are [princess] Elizabeth. It became this sort of language, really, of the two sisters.

Vanessa Kirby

princess differences two

Everybody has an image of [princess Margaret], to a certain extent. But I felt it would have been harder if we were playing them as they are now. In a way, I don't know how much of a living memory we as a collective have of them in the '50s, when Margaret was 21 and this sort of Elizabeth Taylor. You don't think of your grandparents as being teenagers. You just can't - your brain just can't go there!

Vanessa Kirby

princess teenager memories

[Queen Elizabeth] is just the granny queen! She's our granny queen who shakes people's hands!

Vanessa Kirby

queens hands people

I did a lot before [being cast] because I knew how important it would be for playing somebody real, or attempting to - to show the team [the role] was something I would be fascinated to do. I read a couple of biographies and I watched everything I could find [about princess Margaret].