The Crown's Vanessa Kirby loves new Princess Margaret actress Helena Bonham Carter: "We text all the time"
Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Colman have been sending silly pictures to Vanessa Kirby as they film The Crown season 3
"I think she's going to take Margaret up a level," says Vanessa Kirby. The actress has passed on her tiara to Helena Bonham Carter for season three of The Crown – and she is satisfied the role of Princess Margaret is in safe hands.
In fact, the two Margarets of Netflix have struck up a friendship.
"It’s amazing! I’m so excited," Kirby told The Hollywood Reporter. "I couldn’t think of anyone better. We text each other all the time, and she sends me photos and wants my scripts and notes and playlists."
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We're also pretty envious of Kirby and her inbox, because she gets sent sneak peeks of the new cast goofing around on set – including new Queen, Olivia Colman, who takes over from Claire Foy.
She revealed: "She [Bonham Carter] sent me a photo of her and Olivia making silly faces like, 'We’ve got the baton, but I think we’ve dropped it.'"
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But while Kirby admits she would have loved to play Princess Margaret in her later and more "outrageous" years, she's happy to see the role re-cast as Peter Morgan's series leaps into future decades.
"I think there's something new and exciting about somebody else taking over," Kirby said. "For the show, it regenerates in a way."
The actress is currently starring in Julie at the National Theatre, but she's still drawing on The Crown.
"Margaret set a benchmark for me in that the females were the protagonists of the story. So it’s about finding those characters," she said.
"I'm playing Julie at the moment, which is sort of similar to Princess Margaret in that I love to absorb the depth of people that have incredible ranges of feeling and are living in opposition to things in their lives, like Margaret who happens to be royal but absolutely loathes being royal and at the same time absolutely embodies it in every essence. I like complex.
"Also [playing] real women is important to me. I don't want to see fantasy women that I can't identify with. My dream is to produce and make my own films, which I'm doing in July. There are so many people that I would kill to work with. So much of it is about the director, but it's also about finding psychological truth in a person, and I think representing women is more important than ever now."
