The Crown’s third season features a new breakout royal: a feisty, 20-something Princess Anne, as played by Erin Doherty (Call the Midwife). Doherty’s Anne isn’t afraid to stomp around Buckingham Palace in riding boots; tell off Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies) and his reptilian advisers; appall Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) with details of her and Prince Charles’s (Josh O’Connor) problematic romances; and slice through all that stuffy monarchy reverence and self-importance with a well-timed smirk.
To hear more about Charles, Anne, and all the younger royals, listen to this episode of the Still Watching podcast:
The real Anne is just as much an acid-wit revelation. Take for example an episode that occurred in March 1974: the 23-year-old newlywed was traveling with husband Mark Phillips to Buckingham Palace when their car was stopped by an armed criminal who attempted to kidnap her. The gunman, Ian Ball, strode toward the car firing his weapon—injuring Anne’s security guard and others in the ensuing melee. Ball opened the car door and instructed the princess to exit the vehicle. In spite of the gunfire, bloodshed, and chaos around her, Anne is said to have coolly responded, “Not bloody likely.”
Later, Prince Philip joked that he would have felt bad for the attempted kidnapper had he succeeded in taking his daughter hostage. “If only he had known what he was getting into,” Philip deadpanned, according to Anne biographer Brian Hoey. After expressing her concern for those injured, Anne, too, also joked of the incident. “My first reaction was anger,” she explained. “I was furious at this man who was having a tug-of-war with me. He ripped my dress, which was a [favorite] blue one I had made specially to wear on honeymoon.”
Speaking to Vanity Fair, actor Erin Doherty explained that Anne—who has spent decades operating comfortably within the shadows of her mother, the queen, and her older brother, Prince Charles—was just as much a revelation to her. “When I got the phone call from my agent, I was kind of wondering who we were talking about,” Doherty said. After discovering myriad interviews online in which the princess let her dry wit and direct opinions fly, Doherty fell in love. “She’s just about truths if I’m honest.”
A little digging online reveals some of Anne’s sassiest spit-takes. Take, for example, her sensible opinion on golf: It “seems to be an arduous way to go for a walk. I prefer to take the dogs out.” Or her no-nonsense thought on childbearing: “Being pregnant is a very boring six months…. It’s an occupational hazard of being a wife.” She also finds hand-shaking “patently absurd” and has no problem scolding anyone who approaches her with a smartphone outstretched. “I either don’t bother or just say, ‘If you want to ask me something, I suggest you put that down,’” the royal has said.
Said Doherty, “I don’t think she’s trying to be mean. She’s just kind of like, No, I’m going to tell you what I really think of this and you’re going to have to handle it. Because I’m not going to lie. I love that about her.”
The actor said the key to figuring out Anne’s physicality was her voice. “Especially at that young age, you can see that she’s kind of pushing her voice down a bit. The moment I started to do that, I found myself getting really angry. It taught me a lot about where she’s coming from, psychologically. I think you can tell a lot about someone from their voice because it’s quite a personal thing.”
As for the reason behind that anger: Doherty explained that, as a teenager, Anne was criticized by press—judged on her appearance and her straightforward, unsmiling ways. She seemed biologically incapable of suffering fools or mechanically grinning through photo ops. The press, in turn, dubbed her rude, sulky, and even the “frown princess.”
“What fascinated me and shocked me the most about Anne is that she was put under so much scrutiny—in particular about her physically when she was a teenager,” said Doherty. “Because she’s in the royal family, everyone just thinks they’re allowed to comment. She would’ve been this really young, fragile teenager and people would write things in the newspaper about her being frumpy. That surprised me—that she managed to go through that at such a young age and still come out really determined to be honest and open with people.” Speaking about Princess Anne’s guarded nature, Doherty explained, “I think that’s where the armor came from—because she was subject to this pressurized environment of people commenting on her.”
But the beauty of The Crown, Doherty explained, is that creator Peter Morgan manages to bring heart and warmth to even the most distant-seeming of royal family members by showing them behind closed palace doors. And in season three, Anne is shown sharing sweet moments with her brother Prince Charles, bonding with her paternal grandmother Princess Alice of Battenberg (Jane Lapotaire), and having a carefree, “normal” evening set to David Bowie.
Said Doherty, “I’m really excited for people to kind of rediscover Anne in a way because I think she’s up there with the best.”
— Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s doomed romance
— When the Queen met Jackie and JFK
— Prince Philip’s rumored affair with a Russian ballerina
— The scandal that rocked Philip and Elizabeth’s marriage
— Take a look at the “less sexy, more studied” season ahead
— From the Archive: Why happily ever after was never in the cards for Princess Margaret
— From the Archive: How Charles and Camilla got together at last
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