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On the day that Queen Elizabeth II died<\/a>, Lesley Manville was in hospital.<\/p>\n The actor was filming an episode of the final season of \u201cThe Crown\u201d in which her character, <\/span>Princess Margaret, is visited at her sickbed by her older sister Elizabeth, played by Imelda Staunton. When the two actors were briefed that the real queen \u201cmay well pass today,\u201d Manville recalled in a recent interview, they told the crew they\u2019d like to carry on filming the emotional scene.<\/p>\n They wrapped at 4 p.m., Manville said, \u201cwhich we later found out was around the time she died.\u201d<\/p>\n In the sixth and final season of \u201cThe Crown,\u201d it is Manville\u2019s character that is approaching the end. Margaret was one Windsor family\u2019s more rebellious members, and as a young woman, she fell in love with the divorced air force officer Peter Townsend, though she was not allowed to marry him. In the show, this heartbreak casts a shadow over the rest of her life.<\/p>\n Still, that pain never dulled Margaret\u2019s sparkle. Manville, 67, who speaks with the command of a seasoned stage actor, described Margaret as glamorous and alluring, \u201ca woman who was never off the front pages of the newspaper in the \u201950s and \u201960s \u2014 the Diana of that generation.\u201d<\/p>\n On \u201cThe Crown,\u201d Vanessa Kirby initially played Margaret (Seasons 1 and 2), followed by Helena Bonham Carter (Seasons 3 and 4), and by the time Manville took up the role for Season 5, the princess was in her 60s. Over the decades, the show presents Margaret\u2019s glitzy lifestyle in stark contrast with Elizabeth\u2019s years of quiet duty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But much of Margaret\u2019s earlier glamour was stripped away after she suffered three strokes between 1998 and 2001. Manville was drawn to the knottiness of portraying Margaret \u201cin this difficult and lonely time of her life,\u201d she said. When the character\u2019s illness also takes away her looks, her identity is shaken, too. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t know how to function,\u201d Manville said.<\/p>\n \u201cRitz,\u201d the eighth episode of the new season, depicts the strokes and Margaret\u2019s decline. The princess defies her doctor\u2019s orders and continues drinking and partying on the Caribbean island of Mustique, where she suffers a second stroke. Ahead of filming, Manville met with several stroke victims, she said, to accurately show the physical and psychological aftereffects. The challenge was to balance the realism of a drooping mouth and slurred speech with \u201cspeaking coherently enough,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n During this period of ill health, Margaret\u2019s planner was no longer full \u2014 \u201cShe didn\u2019t like that,\u201d Manville said \u2014 and her royal engagements were less frequent. \u201cWhen you had all of that, and then you just see it ebbing away, that\u2019s fascinating to play,\u201d Manville said.<\/p>\n Meriel Sheibani-Clare, who co-wrote Episode 8, said that in this episode, the show\u2019s creators wanted to reframe Margaret by celebrating her support for her sister. Manville played her as \u201cbrittle and spiky,\u201d Sheibani-Clare said, while still conveying vulnerability so \u201cshe sometimes feels like a little girl.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Manville said \u201cthe uniqueness of the series\u201d was that it allowed her \u201cto do my Margaret,\u201d quite separate from Kirby and Bonham Carter\u2019s performances. But running through all three performances, Manville noted, has been a thread of naughtiness. In one comedic vignette from Episode 8, Manville\u2019s Margaret, banned from smoking by her doctor, ransacks the palace in search of a cigarette and takes a hungry, exalted puff. If she had played Margaret without a sense of humor, Manville said, \u201cthat would not be picking up the baton very successfully.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Manville, who has been a fixture of British stage and screen since the mid-1970s, said she has never wanted to be \u201ca personality actress who just plays themselves all the time.\u201d When she accepted the role of Margaret in 2020, she was about to portray a \u201950s cleaning lady in the feature \u201cMrs. Harris Goes to Paris<\/a>.\u201d The contrast between playing that role and a \u201creal blue blood aristocrat\u201d was \u201ctoo tempting for words,\u201d Manville said.<\/p>\n Staunton, another British actor with a long r\u00e9sum\u00e9, said she and Manville were \u201cold friends\u201d and had bonded during \u201ca hilarious time flying around on harnesses\u201d while making Disney\u2019s 2014 live-action film \u201cMaleficent<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Crown,\u201d the actors channel their offscreen relationship through gentle sisterly banter. But in Episode 8, an intimate scene in which Elizabeth reads to the ailing Margaret in bed at home is a rare opportunity to see the queen\u2019s stiff upper lip quiver. Elizabeth softens and grows wistful, while Margaret\u2019s wit crackles in the face of her own mortality.<\/p>\n In her last episodes of \u201cThe Crown,\u201d Manville said she wanted to amplify \u201cthe pain of life without a partner\u201d and Margaret\u2019s loneliness, which she said was present even when Kirby played her as a young woman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the show\u2019s creators didn\u2019t want to define Margaret by her love life. \u201cThere had been so much out there by the tabloids and biographers about poor, sad, tragic Margaret,\u201d Sheibani-Clare said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut right to the end,\u201d she added, \u201cshe spoke to her sister on the phone every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n