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Olivia Colman wasn't allowed to cry as the Queen while filming The Crown 

Olivia Colman revealed the one difficulty about playing the Queen - not being able to cry!


olivia colman
Emmy Griffiths
TV & Film Editor
On 28 December 2018
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Olivia Colman has revealed that she struggled not to cry while filming The Crown - the one thing the Queen very rarely does in public. Chatting on the Graham Norton Show, the actress admitted that she finds it difficult not to cry while filming and so the crew came up with a helpful way to stop her from getting too emotional! She said: "If someone says something sad I can't help myself and start crying, which is not what The Queen does, so they film quite a lot of the back of my head on those days and they've come up with a trick. They give me an earpiece and play the Shipping Forecast to me. So, I just tune into that and try not to listen to my fellow actors. It helped enormously!"

olivia colman in wales© Photo: Rex

Olivia will play the Queen in season three

The Favourite actress revealed that filming was almost over for the hugely popular Netflix show, and that she can't wait for a break. "We are nearly at the end," she explained. "It feels like the longest bit because we have been going for months. I'm looking forward to a lie-in." Speaking about taking the role over from Claire Foy, who played the Queen for the first two seasons of the show, she added: "For the first two weeks I was trying to do an impression of Claire (Foy) playing the Queen. I kept saying to myself, 'What would Claire do?' and channel her. Now we are so busy I might not be doing it anything like the Queen or Claire!"

READ: Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter pictured together for the first time on The Crown set

Olivia has previously opened up about crying in shows, previously telling Vogue: "I have a sneaking suspicion that audiences have seen me crying a little bit too often in the past couple of years. And if people get really fed up with me, then I won't get more work. And if I can't do what I love, then I will shrivel up and die. If something touches me, I cry. That's it. I'm a bit raw, a bit rubbish really," she continued. "Often a director will say to me, 'I don't think this is a scene where your character cries.' It was slightly embarrassing at a parents' meeting when a teacher was nice about my boy and I started to well up."

READ: The Crown's Olivia Colman looks identical to the Queen as she films devastating scenes

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