Seven years ago, the real Queen Elizabeth II shared the screen with a James Bond-playing Daniel Craig as part of opening ceremony for the 2012 London Summer Olympics. And Olivia Colman, who plays Her Majesty in season 3 of Netflix’s The Crown, says she would be more than happy to do the same.
When I recently spoke with the Oscar-winning Colman for this month’s Entertainment Weekly cover story about The Crown, we chatted about her Emmy-nominated performance in Fleabag, the Amazon show which both stars and is written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
“I think I begged Phoebe to be in it, when she was writing the first [season],” Colman said. “But the second one, it felt like she just had a built-in confidence. She thought, Okay, I know what I’m doing, I’m just going to really let rip. And she did. The first episode of the second series, to me, was like a piece of theatre, a piece of writing that I would have studied at school. She’s extraordinary and it’s a pleasure to say anything that she’s written. And also, to film it, is so much fun, because they’re my mates. I will be eternally grateful to Phoebe, because she said, What sort of things do you want to say? And I went, could you write me someone who’s a total [spells out a four-letter expletive]. So she made up this person for me. Yeah. I always wanted to play the baddie and she’s written a really good one.”
Waller-Bridge was recently recruited to polish the script for the still-untitled 25th Bond movie and Colman revealed that she would also be more than happy for the Fleabag creator to write a role for her in that, too.
“Oh, trust me, I’ve tried!” the actress said. “I’ve asked!”
Season 3 of The Crown launches on Netflix, Nov. 17. Bond 25 is set to be released on April 8, 2020.
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