a royal fright

Helena Bonham Carter Remembers “Scary” Encounter With Princess Margaret

Turns out the royal, whom Bonham Carter plays on season three of The Crown, wasn’t a huge fan of the young thespian.
helena bonham carter
By Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix.

In the Crown’s upcoming third season, Helena Bonham Carter will replace Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret. But unlike Kirby, who never met the late English royal, Bonham Carter has had a real-life run-in with the princess. But the run-in wasn’t all galas and friendly cocktails; by Bonham Carter’s account, it was terrifying.

“My uncle was actually very close to her,” Bonham Carter told Entertainment Weekly in a new cover story about the Netflix drama’s new season, set to premiere this fall. “She was pretty scary.”

Bonham Carter elaborated that she once met the princess at Windsor Castle. “She said, ‘You are getting better, aren’t you?’” Bonham Carter recalled. Better at what, pray tell? At acting—or at least, “I presume that’s what she meant.”

As The Crown has shown, Princess Margaret—the loquacious, opinionated counterpart to Queen Elizabeth II’s restrained monarch—was never one to bite her tongue. In season three, showrunner Peter Morgan says the show will focus less on the queen and more on Margaret and her doomed romance with husband Lord Snowdon (played by Ben Daniels).

“They’re such extraordinary people,” Daniels told E.W. “Completely addicted to each other. Even right up until the minute they were getting divorced, they still had a really strong physical relationship. People often said that it was like foreplay for them, having a big row. They would have these huge rows and then amazing sex.”

“Try it at home!” Bonham Carter quipped.

Relationships aside, Morgan also revealed a bit more about season three’s key plot points, which will include the 1964 revelation that Anthony Blunt, the queen’s art adviser and distant cousin, was a Russian spy. The scandal was kept from the public until Margaret Thatcher made it known in the House of Commons in 1979. Season three will also revolve around the rise of new prime minister Harold Wilson, and the 1966 Aberfan disaster, a mining tragedy that triggered an avalanche of coal waste, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

“I had never heard of it, which breaks my heart slightly,” Colman told E.W.

Season three of the Emmy-winning series will debut on Netflix on November 17.

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Glitter, Gowns and Gloves: Inside The Crown’s Costumes

  • Princess Margaret's Wedding Dress The Crown
  • Princess Margaret The Crown
  • Image may contain Human Person Military Military Uniform and Officer
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Alex Bailey / Netflix
Royal Wedding: Princess Margaret
This dress—a copy of Margaret’s wedding dress—was made in a week and went on without a fitting (we didn’t have time to do it any other way). It’s iconic, so there was no point in changing it, we just needed to try and capture the details accurately. We used the same quality material to capture the weight and the feel. That’s really the luxury of working on this series. There’s never enough time or enough people, but you do have enough cloth! Aside from this dress, there aren’t as many copies in The Crown as you might imagine: we only did it when it felt right. More often we’d take the spirit of what’s real and adapt it for the scene, working closely with the show’s royal advisor, Major David Rankin-Hunt, who was on set all day to answer any questions about royal style and etiquette.
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