The Crown: The Official Podcast

Q: I spoke to the Prime Minister today, as you know, Athens is in the throes of a military coup.

P: Yes?

Q: The Foreign Office is that we should send a plane to bring your mother to England to live here with us here. 

P: Here? 

Q: Yes, here. I’m sure you will agree there's room at the inn. 

P: When?

Q: As soon as possible tmorrow? 

P: We can't do that. 

Q: Why not? 

P: In case you haven’t noticed we have cameras crawling all over the place 

Q: As it happens I had noticed 

P: Well, we can't afford to have my mother jeopardise this film, you know what she’s like. 

Q: A little eccentric yes.

P: it's more than that. She's not of our world. No, frankly suited to it. She's. She's been in institutions, most of her adult life. She's not. She's not well, and with his film appearances are vital, we need to be careful very careful. The answer is no.

E: Welcome to the Crown, the official podcast. I'm Edith Bowman, and this is the official podcast for the third season of the Netflix original series The Crown, taking you behind the scenes, speaking with many of the talented people involved and diving deep into the storeys. Today we're talking about Episode Four titled Bubbikins. In 1967 Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark came to live at Buckingham Palace. It was a chance for the deeply religious royal to reconnect with her son, Bubbikins, or Prince Philip to everyone else. We’ll be talking in depth about the events in this episode, so if you haven't got around to watching it yet, we suggest you do so now, or very soon. Coming up later, we'll hear all about Princess Alice from the incredible actor who plays her Jane Lapotaire. 

JL: I love her. She was brave, compassionate, gutsy…a total individual. 

E: But first, I got together with executive producer Suzanne Mackie and Lead Director and Executive Producer Ben Caron, to talk about why it was so important to feature Prince Phillips’ mother in the episode.

S: Prince Philip had a very complex childhood, and his mother had very complex mental health issues, Peter wanted to grapple with that, of course. that became an extraordinary and, you know, in many ways, an unstoppable sort of background to his, you know, his childhood. And in this episode, Episode Four of season three, Ben brings mother and son together again, which is obviously very poignant and very painful. And Prince Philip is very resistant to it because she is, she represents a part of his childhood that he wants to forget. And I don't think he can contemplate embracing her back into the family. He's married to the queen of, you know, England it… to welcome her in is hard for him. And yet she is his mother. And she's deeply religious. And what this episode beautifully provides us with is and so many of the episodes I think of the Crown do this they, they start out with a sense of something quite surreal, almost quite comedic, a beautiful comedy juxtaposition of a smoking nun, who might be slightly mad coming into the palace, At the very time when Prince Philip is trying desperately to re reconfigure the the the reputation, if you like of the royal family, in the public's eyes, this could be the worst possible time. And it almost presents a farcical situation. And very quickly it becomes more serious, more profound, more moving. And it provides an opportunity then for not just reconciling Philip with his mother, but actually have Philip reconcile something deep within him and confront it both his childhood and also what his relationship is with with faith with God, which is very important to her.

[CLIP]

P: Her presence at the palace threatens to derail the entire thing. 

Q: Why are you so angry with her?

P: I’m not angry?

Q: Yes you are, you're furious. Have you even been to see her yet? Since she arrived?

You haven't. 

P: Let me give you some advice. Stop patronising me. Stop interfering. Stop meddling. Just stop. You know nothing.

Q: I know that she's your mother.

P: Tentatively yes. 

Q: What is that supposed to mean?

P: It means she gave birth to me. She was never a mother.

B: What I love about the sort of Jane and Tobias is that we see both of them but we never actually see them together until the end, that their distances are represented throughout the films that we go with Jane, we we go to, we go with sort of Phillips character who is as you know, as Suzanne said, is trying to explain what the civil list is and trying to understand how much the royal family get paid and we need to get paid more because we might have to give up our boat and, and and we sort of see this through the eyes of a journalist who is our kind of assassin lurking in the background who's about to sort of do a big expose a of the royal family and should they be paid this amount of money? Why should they be paid this amount of money? And you feel with Philip and Mrs. You know, Tobias is beautifully paid this is that when she is brought back and he sees her from that window across the courtyard, and she's being interviewed by the shame, or most of that, that sort of exposure of his mother's there, and all those real feelings of the past. I mean, Phillip is not someone, you know, those emotions don't naturally pour out of him in that way. 

E: Yeah.

B: So we were sort of trying to find ways to represent that. So, you know, in that scene, he just opens the window and you sort of feel the air on his face, and then we, you know, we go back into the flashback sequence and we sort of see awful moment where his mother has been pulled away from him and you know, put into a psychiatric care and you see the young Philip, which we remember that from season two, episode nine with Gordon's turn and that gut wrenching feeling is sort of brought back to the present with Phillip in that room. And then you know and then he walks into that into that stilted scene where they're being filmed watching it's like a sort of and I love it it's like a version of gogglebox you know being filmed watching television and you know and you see Elizabeth Look at him and she knows something's not quite right that you know, she's bought the mother back and yeah, but they've hidden her way up in the attic somewhere because they got you know, they don't want to see each other. And it's just real pain but at the same time there’s comedy there and sort of the you know, what do you want us to say you know, in that in that moment.

M: Do you expect us to say something? 

BBC: Yes

M: Well what? Has someone prepared something?

Bbc: I think the general idea is it be unscripted to reflect a normal evening. 

M: This is nothing like a normal evening. If it was a normal evening we’d all be on our own in sad isolation in our individual palaces. This is like some sort of nightmare Christmas.

E: One thing I wanted to ask about was was within this episode obviously Philip is seen as this kind of forward thinking, trying to kind of bring the Royals up to date and he makes this decision about the documentary, you're you're kind of recreating a film that was made of the Royals and did you pay much attention to that having not seen it? I don't know. 

B: Well I went to the BFI, and I watched the documentary and we recreated it live very faithfully. 

E: Did you? 

B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, I think that so there there is a BBQ where  Philip and Anne are turning sausages on the barbecue. Charles is although we didn't actually have Charles because we hadn’t introduced him so we couldn't have him in this. He's making a vinegarette. 

S: And Queen mother's having a tipple

B: Queen mothers having a tipple, 

E: Swigging from behind the Landrover

B:. So, so that was true. but then it also has that sort of peppery sort of voiceover underneath from from the journalist so it kind of does that wonderful crown thing where it's, you know, can’t let itself get to please with yourself. It's got to stick a, you know, skewer in it to twist it a bit more. 

Phillip: well it seems the documentary not only failed to achieve what I hoped for, it has somehow achieved the opposite…

…I would like to offer you to the Manchester guardian as the subject of a major in depth profile .

B: What we think is going to be an interview Princess Anne and it turns out to be interviewed Princess Alice and, and Philip read that and you think we're not quite sure what do you think about it? And then it turns out, it's, you know, it's a love letter to him, explaining what happened and then you know and that becomes an apology from him and the first moments of connection again between the mother and son, which again is feel so relatable on so many levels.

S:  It sets, and it sets, it sets, sets a sort of hair running for the rest of the season, then Philip because he has to then come to terms with, I suppose with with the concept of faith and that it has eluded him, and he has to find it again, which we do, as you know, we go through the season. And as Ben says that the mother mother had the strength of character to forgive all the faith to forgive them. And those, you know, 

B: She says, where's your faith and he's says dormant. 

S: Yeah, something is amiss. 

E: Yeah. 

S: But also what I love about the end of that episode, which again we do a lot and not not consciously they just seem to happen we obviously, which is that the as Ben says that that final moment of reconciliation is beautifully beautifully portrayed from afar, but that we're not watching it the Queen's watching. 

E: Yeah, 

S: and the queen is watching it in the knowledge that something in her husband will now be settled. 

E: Yeah 

S: That are wrong is being righted there, there will be peace and that that again, beautiful and understated and again, so important for how we portray the queen. Because the so many times we talk about the Russian doll and that she's buried her emotions and that

publicly at least, but actually to acknowledge a tenderness there 

E: and, and also I think that kind of she you know, she made the decision to to have Alice coming to the palace and which resulted in this you know horrendous fight resentment from our husband for doing so and then for that moment as well then to go I made the right choice 

S: Yeah

E: And it's such an underplayed response and Olivia’s face in that point as well in terms of beautiful very small smile but it's just yeah we have to say so much 

S: yeah there's a real, there's a beautiful dignity to it.

Alice: Your majesty……

Q: We’ll find someone to take you to your room

Now we’ll hear from someone who not only knows all there is to know about Princess Alice, but played her beautifully in the episode too - Jane Lapotaire.

E: Jane, thank you so much for being here today on also thank you for bringing your very own framed picture of Princess Alice. It's extraordinary. 

J: She lives in my sitting room. That I've never really let her go. Why would you? I love her.

She was the most maligned, maltreated and underrated member of the royal family ever. She's the jewel in the crown.

E: What did you know about her? If anything before nothing? 

J: Wow. I mean, yeah, is that lots of people say that. And in fact, one of the producers sent me a tweet that people had shared, what a great character they thought she was but she probably only get a walk on part in the crowd. Well, it's not a walk on.

And I'm so privileged and I really mean that and honored to walked in her shoes, especially with a script as good as Peter Morgan's and the directors absolutely edible as

I love her 

E: Why?

J: She was brave, compassionate, gutsy. A total individual. Her detractors may have cortex centric. This is a woman who was born in Windsor Castle, who married Prince Andrew of Greece in Denmark when she was 18 and was very much in love with them. She had been born deaf, completely deaf. The royal family made no allowances for her. She lip read in Greek, English and German 

E: Wow.

J: When they had to start escape Greece. 

she was described as schizophrenic. I suspect, actually what she had was a nervous breakdown. Yeah, and who wouldn't having to leave their home. She was put in asylum for two and a half years. And she was treated by Sigmund Freud, who thought her problem. Well, he would wouldn't he was too much libido. Zaped her ovaries with radiation to bring on the menopause is barbaric, absolutely barbaric. After two and a half years, she lived incognito in being bees in Germany.

She sold her royal heirloom jewellery, went back to Greece, and opened a convent where she trained local girls to look after the sick and the poor. It was Greek Orthodox, but it wasn't affiliated to Greek orthodoxy. She ran it in her own eccentric, wonderful way. And as if that wasn't enough, when the Nazis occupied acid and it's during the Second World War, she has two families of Jewish people and just played dumb that she didn't understand what the Nazis was saying, because she was the star Paul came and yes, yes. And she had the men convent hidden. And in fact, she won posthumously, the highest award that Israel ever gives to a non Jew called righteous among nations. And there's a lovely story attached to that which isn't in the series. He wanted to be buried on the Mount of Olives. The Queen had insisted when things got hairy in Greece again, that she come to England. She didn't want to leave the convent and she arrived at Buckingham Palace and she was at having scrub floors like all the other nuns. And of course, when she died two years later in Buckingham Palace, she couldn't be buriedon the Mount of Olives because they just got over the six day war in Israel. So she was kept at Windsor Castle. And when the time was considered

not dangerous anymore, Prince Charles flew out with her coffin. And she's buried with Russian Orthodox on the Mount of Olives.And about 18 months ago Prince William went to visit her grave .

E : Wow. sends chills down my spine. So you can see why I love her. I can see and I want to film about her. It's an extraordinary story that you can't, you know, thing after thing experience after experience this and the order this woman wonderful little touches about her. 

J: She smoked a lot and she played Connect. That was the one thing I didn't manage

everything else Absolutely. Only kind of gradually I've got with Peter Morgan is I wanted to see where I come back as a ghost and horn, the Queen Mother.

E: So he had the mother in law. 

J:Yeah. Playing canasta.

E: Where did you start to find out about her? And how did you find out about it? Because like you say, you didn't know anything about her?

J: No, no, she's one of the people that wrote found me brushed under the carpet. A bit like Prince john. Yes. 

E: Where did you start? 

J: I read everything I could. I mean, the crown has the most extraordinary research department. But I have to do it myself. Because only an actor knows the kind of information that's going to be useful to them. Now I'm an actor who works from the inside out.

If I know eventually after I've read everything I can lay my hands on, watch every film look to every photograph, months and months I spent.

Then I will know how she walks. Yeah and how she moves. Because my research will inform that. It's not something I decide. Because she was very vulnerable mentally. She was very vulnerable. Yeah, but I am def, not as deference as Princess Alice was that there was a moment when we were filming, as it were in Buckingham Palace, yeah, and everybody started to look at me. And I said, What's going on? What's going on? And I hadn't heard the first shout action. It was really quite funny. I said, I'm deaf!

They were round the corner, and I just hadn't heard. There's this idea that she was misunderstood as well in terms of particularly with our son. And it's wonderful to watch that reconciliation. I'm a foster child. And my mother left me in this country with a woman who had been her foster mother. And my mother hopped it back to France. So I know what it's like not to have a mother. Yeah. It's a basic psychological.

I don't want to call it a flaw, but it's the most fundamental of childhood hurts. I remember one of the Queen's relative saying

When Prince Philip would come to stay with her, she'd asked him to sign the guest book. And he put Philip of no fixed abode.

E: Wow.

J: Now I don't suppose he knew that she was under lock and key in asylum. Yeah, I don't suppose he knew that she was having radiation for so called libido problems. Yeah, although she lived in B and B's for years until she got her jewellery together.

If you are born deaf, you are very vulnerable psychologically. I once worked in a TV series with a deaf child. And his mother explained that unless you actually make an effort to involve someone who's born deaf, they can become mentally very vulnerable indeed.

I mean, I had to walk down st as it were in Athens with tanks and tires burning and men with rifles and lots of Spanish extras not knowing what thought yes because bit of Spanish one of them came up to is it What language is being as it is great. This is Athens just for today.

E: One of the things that you did do was you had a Greek dialect coach to help you with because when we first meet her, you speak fluent Greek. She's chatting away and it's you – bravo! 

I had the most wonderful….it's all down to young a very lucky because when we first met this young, beautiful girl, very bright to got five degrees. I said, Deanna, I don't want you to be kind. I don't want you to be nice. I don't want you to say, well, it's sort of all right. I want you to follow me like a ton of bricks. We've worked for hours. And I mean, having to remember language you don't understand. But I wrote it all out. And she helped me write it all out phonetically. Yeah. She was worth her weight in gold. And it was a wonderful experience. I just want to make sure that we're not propagating a myth that an actor becomes character. Yeah.

I put it like this. You are the channel through which this person speaks. And as Helena Bonham Carter has already said, you have an extra responsibility when you're playing somebody who actually lived. 

E: Yeah.

J: I mean, I used to go away and corners and say, Please forgive me, Alice if I made a wrong decision. Oh, I think she'd be incredibly proud of your portrayal.

loafer Well, I'm proud of her. 

E: Yeah, she leaves a lasting impression when you know when she's when we meet her and when we spend time with her in the, in this particular episode when she's saying goodbye when you're saying goodbye to the nuns, when she has been, you know kind of summoned to Buckingham Palace she doesn't want to leave and that scene as she's saying goodbye but then on the plane

J: that was my first day was it in Spain. Yeah. That cases been home under set designers absolutely miraculous, because in a previous scene with princess and I was telling her about the rain coming through the roof, which of course she Alice couldn't hear. But she said Costas, the

janitor of the place, had said it sounded like an orchestra tuning up the

water falling into the metal buckets. And when I got to the conference in the middle of Spain, they both had to go up to the ceiling and put green wet mobile ceiling. And there were buckets on the floor to carry some water. And that was from an improvisation. It wasn't anything to do this script. What I have to say is the happiest unit I've ever worked with really. Now a lot of that has to do with Ben Caren as a director.

He was an actor, he understands actors, and a lot of it is because Peter Morgan gives you such wonderful material to work with. But also, Alice is the best role I've had since I had a brain injury. And in a way, it was a kind of gift from God if you like to play Alice because I know about being death. I know about being odd. There are times I say things and people look at me and I think all brain injured time better go.

But the one thing that hasn't been affected is my memory. So I have no trouble learning lines. New trouble I have is with distance. And so the youngsters the runners on the set, and if I had to get down from a Dyess or chair, they were there instantly. And like most 74 year olds, I have glaucoma. So going from the lights into the dark, they were there to take me but I've never been so well looked after in my life. And the day I finished filming, I got back home, there was no meal. There's no wonder shopping.

Way to go straight back on set. It's unique. I've never experienced such ease and comfort and a sense of everybody was Working together.

That's not just actors. Gosh, I really mean it.

And even I spent a long morning months talking to one of the guys who was playing an equity who stood on the steps of Buckingham Palace.

And he was involved in it as people with greatly and of course the leads Well, they just are them. And you know, I was so blessed with Tobias Menzies let's talk about that because it was a real relationship. It was a real moment where they didn't have a relationship and then they did was the first time I did it is I got it so wrong with the first way my soul Phillip

I solved. It was Knoxville And Ben said slightly.

He said you just played it as if it were your son. He said, Let's play it differently says thanks to Ben, the scene is moving as it is. Because I, I had to fight to hold the kids back. But Tobias is Philip. 

E: Yeah. It's extraordinary. Isn't that? 

JL Yeah, he is him. And did it. Was it something that you did you and Tobias talk about not just two, okay. Because of course they've been distant. Yes. So we wanted to keep the distance. Yeah. It was different when we finally ended the scene. And I won't give the game away. Yeah. Of course, children blame their parents. We all do. We all did. And in turn, those children will be blamed when they get there.

Nobody's a perfect parent. Yeah. And of course, she could be considered as very eccentric

go off and open this convent. But her heart was in the right place. Absolutely. She was doing it for the good of others and she went where she was needed most. Her children are looked after by the royal families of Europe. 

E: Do you know what I want to know? I want to know when when you and Phillip Tobias are having a goofy little walk. What we talking about? 

J:We talk. We talk like Alice and Philip, did you? 

E:Yeah, I love that. 

J: I said, gosh it’d Windy out here.

And he offered me his arm. And that just made my heart Come into my mouth because that wasn't scripted was enough. And it was so it was like all those years of separation. And no mother is separated from her children without thinking of them every hour of every day.

She came over to England for the wedding. Oh, I want to tell you a lovely story about that. She came with the coordination and she came over for the wedding. And I think it was for the coronation. The coronation came after the wedding. And she was in her nun's habit by then but she had it made by Balmain in Paris.

I love it. Okay, I’m going to be a nun but I’m going to have the best outfit going! 

E: I hope that you got Balmain to make yours! 

J: no afraid I didn't.  the costume was brilliant. The Designer she'd made little Don holes in the pockets, and I will Clark sandals circa 1950 and the leather hurdle dried and stiffened. It they were agony ivy my Bunyan's really gave me a bad time walking in Spain.

E: Amy Roberts the costume designer is Wonderful. Did you was there an opportunity to to work together on 

J: Oh, yes. I mean, I first met Amy and she showed me the material which I thought was brilliant. Because it wasn't dole gray. It had to kind of blue light to it. The headpiece was hard to wear especially as the band when my hearing aids that Alice didn't care what she looked like. And so I wore no makeup, no makeup at all. So it was joy getting into the location in the morning into my

my sandals, picking up a cigarette the hand

over the struggling top, and I was ready to fly.

I love the scene with Princess Alice and Princess on Erin Doherty plays. She was great. We were having the scene in my bedroom in

Palace and I was telling her about the leaks and ceiling of the convent and how we need to raise money. And I'm smoking and she just took the cigarette off path. And so kind of I thought, Oh, no, I mustn't notice it because Alice wouldn't care.

Anne: Yaya’s be telling me the most incredible stories about her life…

……

Alice: The palace writing paper…we think it could help. 

E: it's lovely to hear that you're, you know that you're allowed to play with the characters and with your colleagues. It's not just about doing what's on the script. 

J: It has to have the directors say so of course, but there comes a point when you know the character better than anyone.

On the set, and as long as you're serving the character not being ego lead, then you can't make any mistakes. I do admit to taking my quaff is not called a Wimpole there. It's called a quaff taking it off when I went outside the convent in Spain to have a fag, because and I hit the crucifix because I thought I didn't want to be disrespectful to the local, and I've got the crucifix. Amy Let me have the crucifix. And that hangs on my sitting room window. Right now beside my picture of Alice. 

E: Well, faith is a big thing. Faith saved her really didn't it and it's it's that conversation that she has with Philip in terms of if as your mother I can tell you one thing it's find, find the faith find something. 

J: I think that's a really good point you brought up Edith.

It's very difficult to talk about faith nowadays. Because we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. As Carl Gustav Jung said in the 60s, ‘there is an area of the human brain that is necessarily spiritual.’ I'm not talking about religion, and was religions of course rules. Yes, we all know about that. But we are more than flesh and blood. We are spirit and soul. And when you look outside the you can see what's happened to a world that has forgotten soul.

E: because this the crown has been this phenomenon. There's so much interest in our monarchy and Peter's done this wonderful job of dramatizing real people, real events, and what was your expectation going into being part of that family? And then what was the reality of it? Did you have any expectation and what 

J: I didn't, no. what I had was fear.

Well, it doesn't get any easier. The older you get, you know, every job you start again from the beginning.

And I did know I got quite a lot of scenes in Greek to do, which was a bit of a hurdle to get over to begin with.

And also, I knew I was playing a loose cannon. You know, she was very much a loose cannon, not consciously, yeah. But in a way that allowed me wonderful freedom.

I was thrilled to bits that Nina gold dust to see me.

. 

E: I'm so glad that you got the part and I'm so glad that you've been able to share our story I've loved and thank you for asking me to come along to do this. Because I feel if she hasn't had a voice. I think we need to get Peter to write a film about our surely Shall we ask? 

J: Yes, please.

Thank you so much for your time today.

A: Let this me a mother’s gift to her child…

….what do you say? A walk?

I’m Edith Bowman and my special thanks to our guests on this episode Jane Lapotaire, Ben Caron and Suzanne Mackie. 

The Crown: The Official Podcast is produced by Netflix and Somethin’ else in association with Left Bank pictures.

Join us next time when we go behind the scenes of Episode Five, where the Queen reflects on what life could have been without the crown.