Lesley Manville on Princess Margaret’s Rekindled Romance in The Crown Season 5

As difficult as it was for Britons to deny the magnetism of the glamorous Princess Margaret in her heyday, it might be harder still to reject Lesley Manville’s. Playing the 60-year-old royal in the latest season of The Crown, Manville is a delight, juggling Margaret’s indulgent melancholy as effortlessly as her wicked wit. Not given anywhere near the screen time her talent merits, the Phantom Thread actress nevertheless eclipses as many scenes as she can pop her head in, sweeping Timothy Dalton’s Peter Townsend along the dance floor and dragging Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth through a thorough verbal indictment. In a silk negligee with her trusted cigarette holder tipped between two fingers, Manville’s Margaret is a seamless transition from Helena Bonham Carter’s and Vanessa Kirby’s before her.

And her stalwart sense of humor is much needed amongst season 5’s otherwise grim series of events. (When, in one scene, she calls Elizabeth to tell her she loves her, she ends the conversation with a sharp intake of breath: “God, that was middle-class. Promise me we’ll never do that again.”)

Still, what is most likely to entice viewers to revisit the real Margaret’s biography is episode 4, “Annus Horribilis,” in which the aging second sister rekindles—though briefly and innocently—a romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend, to whom she was denied marriage at the age of 23. Manville’s scenes with Dalton’s Townsend are gentle but electric, even if Manville herself has some differing opinions on what really went down behind the scenes. Below, the actress discusses relaxing into her role, Margaret’s confrontation with Elizabeth, and whether the princess’s forbidden love with Townsend was truly her undoing.


When did you first find out showrunner Peter Morgan wanted you for this role?

It came really out of the blue. It wasn’t something that was being discussed or debated for a long time. My agent called me, she said, “Can you go and have a meeting with Peter Morgan who writes the series?” Within a matter of a day or two, I was at Peter’s house. We had a chat, we had a cup of tea, that was it. He asked me to do it. This is a good two years before the filming was going to start, so they were really ahead of the game, casting me.

I hadn’t thought of myself as a Princess Margaret, but as soon as they said it, I thought, Oh yeah, actually, yeah, maybe I could play her. I said yes, because you’ve only got to have watched the series to see the standard and the quality of it. Every step of the way, every department—not a stone left unturned, every box ticked, just wonderful. Why wouldn’t I want to be involved with something of such high quality?

the crown princess margaret

Keith Bernstein//Netflix

How familiar were you with the princess’s biography before you joined the series? Was there a lot of extra research you felt you needed to do to be prepared?

Oh, there was lots. I mean, I had nearly two years, so I could take it easy. There was no real pressure on me. I’d grown up as a little girl observing the princess in that kind of, “Oh wow, isn’t she fabulous?” kind of way. Because, of course, she was in her thirties and she was in the papers all the time. I was always seeing her face on the front page when I was a kid.

But no, I took my time. I spent those two years reading a lot of books about her, watching lots of documentaries, and looking at footage of her speaking and being interviewed. Photographs. By the time you’ve done that very gently over a period of time, I had a really good sense of her that then made me feel prepared for when Peter had finalized the scripts.

I knew the next part of the job, the journey, was to take what he’d written on the page and infuse my Margaret with what he’d written and really get to grips with playing the woman, the human being, which is the side that you don’t often see [in] public. You see the side that they present to the world. You see them at events; you see them out and about being royal. You don’t see them at breakfast. You don’t see them being lonely or unhappy or cross. That’s the great thing about The Crown: [It] lets you do it. It dramatizes what it imagines is that more private side of a very public family.

In episode 4, there’s this stunning scene near the end where you, as Margaret, confront Imelda’s Elizabeth and the role she played in denying you Peter Townsend. What went into the preparation and delivery of that monologue? What was it like to film?

Probably a good way to start off with talking about that scene is to say that Imelda Staunton and I go way back. We’ve known each other decades. We are very good friends, and we’ve got a lot of love for each other. That side of Margaret and Elizabeth, the sibling side of it, was kind of taken care of. We didn’t need to talk about that. We could do that.

But also, I think that Imelda and I, the way we work is very similar. All of the practicalities of a scene—i.e., the learning of the lines, the understanding where you’ve come from, what’s happened before, the backbone of the scene—we’ve both done our homework on. I think we’re also both at the stage as actors where we are very confident as performers. If you can be confident as a performer, difficult emotional scenes like that one will come easier, because nothing really phases us.

But having said that, I was very aware that this was a potent scene, that it was a very unusual scene for the audience to witness, because it’s not queen and princess in a way. All of that is stripped away. It’s a scene about two sisters, in particular, [with] Margaret compelled to say stuff that’s been dormant for decades. And so it’s this outpouring of pain and grief and resentment and anger.

It all comes out in this one brilliantly written scene. I knew it was going to be, as it were, a thrilling day at the office, and it was. I mean, it was a standout day at the office.

As I was researching the events depicted in this season, I did a lot of reading about Peter Townsend. And there’s this line in his New York Times obituary I found fascinating, given your performance. It reads: “After Princess Margaret was denied marriage, it backfired and more or less ruined Margaret’s life.” I’m curious: After studying Margaret’s life and playing her on the screen, is that an assessment you agree with?

Well, interestingly enough, no. I don’t think so. And this is the difference between the reality and our drama that’s called The Crown.

Because, in all my research and reading, I personally came to the conclusion that: He’d asked her to marry him. She was under 25, so she wasn’t allowed to make that decision independently. The Queen stepped in and said, “No, this can’t happen. But, we’re going to send him away for two years. If when he comes back and you’re 25 and you still want to, you can marry him, but you will be stripped of your title, you will lose your lineage to the throne, and you will be Mrs. Townsend.”

Now, I think—and this is my take on it—I think in those two years, she is living a very exciting life. She’s a very vibrant young woman who likes life. She was seeing other men, having other experiences, also under the umbrella of this enormous privilege. Now, imagine that you’ve never known anything but that. How could you be stripped of the title? You’d have to go and do the shopping, you’d have to do the cooking, you wouldn’t be entitled to be paid under the civil list. All of those things would be taken away. I’m not saying that she was solely a material girl who just thought, Oh God, I can’t live without my tiara.

But I remember being 23. Yes, when you’re not allowed to be with somebody that you love or you think you’ve loved, that you’ve had a great time with—it’s all the romanticism of him being older and married and all of those things. Terribly exciting affair they had. I think he went away, and she sort of got over it and pursued her life with other suitors and had a very full life, as you’d expect any 23-year-old to have. I think when he came back and it was sort of, “Right, okay, do you want to now?” I think she sort of didn’t want to anymore.

But that’s not what happens in our drama. Because we are telling a story. I don’t mean to say that I don’t think she isn’t the 60-year-old woman who’s a bit lonely, because I think that is true. But I don’t think she was lonely because of the Townsend episode. I don’t think she lived her life deprived of the man she really loved. Because I think she did love Snowden, and I think she did love Roddy Llewellyn. Everything points toward that in my reading of her. When you’ve been this great, kind of iconic, glamorous goddess, hyped-up person, and suddenly, “Oh, I’m 60,” it’s a challenge. She’s a 60-year-old woman with no partner living in these kind of glass houses.

That is my take on it. Maybe if she could come back and talk to me now, she’d say, “No Lesley, you’re absolutely wrong. Peter Townsend was the love of my life, and I was deprived of him, and I never recovered from it.” I’d have to say, “Okay, Margaret. You know best.”

lesley manville as princess margaret in the crown season 5

Keith Bernstein/Netflix

Was there any one scene with Timothy Dalton, who played Peter Townsend this season, that stood out to you as you were filming?

There’s the lovely scene when she is dancing with Peter, and there’s the joy of that—because she doesn’t want to go there with him again, and she’s quite prepared to just leave the event. But no, he wants to dance with her, and it’s very sweet seeing her face just looking at him. It’s not that they’re going to … He’s married. He’s having his life. But it’s just the two of them looking at each other, kind of remembering with a tenderness this enormous love that they had and what it meant to them both.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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