InThe Crown, Helena Bonham Carter plays Princess Margaret in her tabloid-hounded middle age.
Some of it seems familiar.
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Helena Bonham Carterlooks the teensiest bit bored.
Her role today: walking down a staircase.
(Later she will describe it as a day in which she was essentially a paid extra.)
When she clocks me from several yards away, Bonham Carter appears momentarily roused.
Standing next to Bonham Carter isOlivia Colmanin an ice-blue dress that fits her like a suit of armor.
In character as the queen, Colman seems to disappear, replaced by Elizabeths implacable steadiness.
Shes wearing an olive-drab look so unremarkable that by all rights it should render her nearly invisible.
But theres a small piece of her that remains Bonham Carter.
Margaret, though she is defined by too-muchness, by the way her image collapsed onto her inner life.
In the press, she was the misbehaving sister, painted as both more sympathetic and more shocking.
Like Margaret, Bonham Carter has often been a source of tabloid fascination.
Its something she says she cares about much less now than when she was younger.
Theres a Helena Bonham Carter who has an extraordinary life in theDaily Mail, she says.
It was just, like, two houses put together, she says.
I have never really been able to see myself with any real clarity, she says, sighing.
I meet Bonham Carterthe next day at Netflixs London offices, a narrow five-story building in Fitzrovia.
The Margaret room, Bonham Carter notes, is much smaller than the Elizabeth.
Sometimes they bring a caddie on set with all this different stimulation, she says.
Coffee, tea, Diet Coke, ginger water.
Life during filming involves a lot of waiting around, and by the time youre on, youre bored.
She consumes an amazing amount of liquid to keep from falling asleep.
Bonham Carter took her time to decide.
I dont want to play lead, in all honesty, she says.
I mean, Id like to play a lead as long as it doesnt taketoolong.
Becoming Margaret entailed stepping into the life of a complicated woman.
She turned to extramarital affairs partly as a diversion, partly out of revenge for her husbands infidelity.
Already the sibling rivalry.
Like, how am I going to survive this?, she recalls thinking.
Morgan sent her the season-three finale, an episode dedicated almost entirely to Margarets marital spiral.
Once Bonham Carter read it, she knew shed say yes.
Its not dissimilar, what we do, she explains.
She deconstructs people, analyzes them.
And I do too.
I just end up pretending to be them.
I live with my props, she says, particularly with Margaret …
Her smoking stuff has to be just part of her.
She has perfect muscle memory of the weight of a really proper gold Dior lighter.
On set, Bonham Carter listens toMamma Mia!in the hair-and-makeup trailer to pump herself up.
I inflict everybody, she says.
Olivia groans at the ongoing tyranny because shes got much hipper taste.
She keeps on thinking that I like spa music.
These days, she feels much more confident expressing needs like this.
I was too polite and shy, she says.
And frightened of being a pain.
Working onThe Crown,she has adopted some of Margarets unwillingness to oblige.
A lot of the time, Morgan will send rewrites, she tells me.
Margarets convenient because I can just say no.
I can pull rank.
Its the license to be powerful.
Dont want any new lines now, mate.
You should have given me them last week!
Bonham Carter seemsmost comfortable describing herself in the context of other people.
She talks about playing characters as having a lodger living inside her who rearranges the furniture.
Elizabeth Taylor, whom she portrayed inBurton & Taylorin 2013, stuck around.
(She demonstrates this by imitating one of Taylors octave-spanning sighs.)
Violet was a diarist, a public speaker, an intellectual.
Bonham Carter wants me to know how remarkable she was, how unusual and rhetorical, intelligent and liberal.
Part of why Violet appeals to her is the way she resisted being placed in an easily labeled box.
At one point, she asks me what adjective Im going to pick to describe her.
Does she object toquirkybecause it seems juvenile?
Tim [Burton] hatedquirky, she tells me.
He found it very lazy.
Shes so inconsistent and all-encompassing.
Margaret was defined by her duality.
But she does often oscillate between the two, Bonham Carter says.
Margaret had a terrible relationship with the press and always felt terribly misunderstood, she says.
At the same time, she never had a say.
Margaret never actually expressed herself.
Meghan and Harry are never going to be the people who are just the figureheads.
Their openness, she says, means theyre going to have a much less easy relationship with the press.
Which ones are you thinking of?
Each case is different, she continues, but theyre all freaks.
She sees most cases of sexual harassment and predation as bullying, as someone taking advantage of their power.
But you cant condemn someone totally and say they have no worth whatsoever because theyve been bullies.
I think that would write off most of our culture, she says.
So many peak geniuses are fucking damaged, damaging people.
Harvey, for all thats said, hes very clever.
He did a lot of great things for the industry as well as being appalling to people.
Still, she says, he got his just deserts.
Everyones nuanced, she says.
Nothing is all black.
Everythings all jumbled up, she concludes.
As we talk about it, she sits up on the sofa and leans forward.
Her voice, which earlier was a whisper, suddenly becomes animated.
The jumble is something she seems to enjoy.
Acting, she says, is an exercise in how to stay awake.
