Elizabeth Debicki & Emma Corrin | Actors on Actors

And also, especially with Diana, there is so much, like everyone's got a thought, everyone's got an opinion, you don't really know where to... It's so wild, we've never had this conversation before. It is wild. This conversation will now go on for the next six hours. I see a lot of panicked faces in the room. Hi. Here we are. I feel like we didn't learn our lines. Completely, yeah. I feel like I'm having a massive blank and I just realised. Yeah. You want to go first? I read some stuff online. I read some of your interviews that you've done. You did? I actually did, yeah. Wow, that's interesting. I thought it might serve as inspiration for what to ask and then also things you hadn't been asked before. Okay. But I realised... You've come extremely prepared, I'm very impressed. No, it was honestly like two things. Okay. Because also I don't have any subscriptions to any of the news sites, so I just read the title. But I realised that we had a similar thing where you auditioned for... This is the thing, I was going to ask... You took my question. Yeah. Because you auditioned for a smaller role before, for which season? Two. Mad, and then they called you back. I read this about you and I thought, that's so interesting. I wanted to talk to you about it as well. It's so weird. What was the role that you went in for? I've never told anyone what the role is because the person who did it was so brilliant. Was it a big, big girl? In The Crown there are cameos that pop up and the whole episode becomes about that person that might only appear for one or two. So in that sense it was a big role, but I was almost completely physically wrong for it. Love an audition like that. Love that, love that. I feel very prepared. This is my takeaway from the fact that we both have this story. Maybe we're better at acting when we're not trying to do the thing. I think that... Because I've been thinking about it this morning. That's my takeaway. But I went to do this audition and I went really because The Crown Season 1 had just aired and it was huge. It was massive. Do you remember when it first... I remember where I was when I first watched it. I was in my second year of uni in my tiny single bed in an attic somewhere. You were? Yeah, and my friend said, you should watch this, it's really good. And I loved it. Hadn't really seen anything like it before. Did you watch it on your own? Yeah, on my laptop. Cross-legged on my bed in this attic. With your little dinner. My little pot of noodles, yeah. Like, whoa, this is cool. Yeah, I remember loving it. I thought it was well-written and I hadn't really seen anything like it before. And hard to do well. That kind of thing is really hard to do well. I think Peter Morgan smashed it. My takeaways from it were... I never say the word takeaway. I don't know why today I'm just using it constantly. I guess this is about your takeaways. My grab, yeah. I remember all the publicity around it was that it was so lush. It was so lush. And I remember being bathed in just the scenes and just, I mean, to be frank, the amount of money that was on the screen was extraordinary. Crazy, yeah. Because it was sort of at the dawn of television becoming this golden... Especially Netflix. Yeah. It wasn't even that common. I don't know when House of Cards came out, but that was the first time I remember you could just watch everything in one go. Yeah, in one go. So that struck me, but also how good the acting was. Yeah, crazy. I just couldn't believe how good everybody was. Yeah. And I'd never seen Claire Foy in anything, so she was like this incredible discovery. And I was very good friends with Vanessa Kirby, who played Margaret. Yeah. So I watched it because it was a news show. Yeah. And then I was completely hooked. Yeah. I loved it. You went in for the... Season two. And I got like halfway through the read and... You got halfway through and he said... Well, I think I did one scene. I was doing a play at the time. I went in in the evening and I was very, very nervous. And I think Stephen Daldry may have been there. Ben Caron, I think. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you with auditions, but I just blank. Yeah, terrible. So I went in and I did a bit and it wasn't nearly... Oh, I don't know. But anyway, I then got an email, I think a few days later, from my agent saying, not that part, but we're thinking about... And they explicitly said it. That's wild. It was sort of like very vague, though. It was sort of like we have... I guess they must have felt something Dianery in it, which is hilarious because I was trying to do... Not only was I not playing... Well, I wasn't an English person even. No way. I've done such a terrible job, but... Must be an energy thing. Stick a pin in it, you know. Anyway, the funny thing is, for like five or six years, I thought... I wouldn't think about it frequently, but every now and then I would think, and I continue to watch The Crown religiously, I would think, I wonder if that's ever going to come around. Yeah. As I sort of did other jobs and moved around. And then when you were cast, at that point, there was no season six planned. It was just season four and five. And I remember you got cast and I thought... Well... Oh, no. It was a nice dream. No! And not only that, I thought, well, you're perfect, you know. And I was also like, who is this creature? That's so funny. So, funnily enough, I sort of gave up the thing when you appeared. And you didn't think that they'd do a switch? I didn't think they needed to. They hadn't yet, I guess. Only they had for Olivia, the Queen, and, yeah, they had done a cosplay. Maybe I did bad maths with that, but... I remember I went in for, I think, a chambermaid. Like a real, like, we're talking tree number two kind of role. I went in for, yeah, I think it was the Queen's chambermaid. Like a bedroom... Lady in waiting. Oh, no. No, maybe... I think chambermaids more medieval times. I think lady in waiting is probably what it was. Yeah, I went in for that and never heard anything. What was the line? Something like, yes, ma'am. I can't imagine you just went in for tree number two. No, genuinely, tree number two. And then got asked to read with the Camillas in auditions. So, here's my question, because I read about this. When you went in to do the auditions, was there any strategy? Yeah. I would be totally lying if I said, yeah, there wasn't. But it's what you were saying, it was kind of a perfect situation because it wasn't an audition. So, I didn't really need to learn the lines, which meant that the pressure was off, so I kind of did. Yes. And also I managed to remember them, which was great, because the pressure was off. It's lovely being a reader because... It's so nice. You can have fun with it. It's so important to... I don't know if you've ever been a reader before that, but the first time I ever read for something, it completely shattered my whole understanding of getting parts. Because I remember the first time I did that, years ago, back in Australia. And I remember that there's probably ten guys that came in to read, and they were all kind of beautiful. Were you the reader? I was just reading. I don't even think I got to audition for the part I was reading for. But I remember the first time I did that, it completely shifted. It's really interesting. It's really important because suddenly you think, oh, it's not about how good you are or not. No, it's really small. Did you have a thing as you saw more and more people, you saw ten people come in and read? Something like that, yeah. Then by the end, you think, yeah, it's so much about the right fit for the role, which has nothing to do with how good anyone is. No, exactly. And also just something that's completely got nothing to do with you, which is someone else's idea of the thing. Yeah, yeah. That was a very healthy thing for me to do early on in my career. Yeah, and to be in the room with the people still chatting. I mean, afterwards, and you're like, I don't know if I want to hear this. I know. But it doesn't feel personal. It's kind of a real, I really enjoyed it, as a sort of window into how the sausage is made, I guess. Us being the sausage, I suppose. Yeah, I went in for that and then read with the Camillas and then, yeah, ended up doing a duet with Rob Stern in one of my auditions. I love Rob Stern, he's amazing. I love him so much. He's great. He's such a lovely man. Did Emerald Fennell read for that? Yes, there were about five people. And as you said, all amazing. It's fascinating, all these different takes on this one character and all of which were incredible. And it was really cool. It was kind of like a masterclass, really, to see. And then you auditioned with Rob. Yeah, and Ben Caron and Peter Morgan. We were in this office in the place in Holborn. Do you know that office is in Holborn? I don't know, it's a crown. The office isn't there anymore. But I went in and it was this long meeting table room and Peter was sat at one end, looking very official. And at that time I was terrified. And then Ben, who's just so sweet and enthusiastic like a kid. I remember halfway through the audition, Ben was like, do you sing? Can you sing? I was like, we always say yes. So I was like, yes. And he was like, do you know Phantom of the Opera? And I did. But you don't know the words. No, but obviously in an audition you're like, I love it. Oh my God, I was there yesterday. It was incredible. And so they were like, fantastic. Can you do the song that Diana sang? And I was like, now? And they said, yeah. And then I ended up duetting with Rob because there's two parts. No! He was the Phantom and I was Christine. It was incredible. And we got it off on a laptop on one of those karaoke things with the little thing that bounces on the words. Yeah, it was fantastic. So once you had the part, how much time did you have to prepare? I want to say six-ish months. And I read that you did a similar thing, which is you asked for all the research and you got all the binders. It was incredible. I loved it. They sent them to Australia. They sent them to Australia? It was COVID times as well. So it's just sort of landed in this big box outside my flat. And did you work with Polly Bennett? Yes. Yeah. I worked with Polly. I worked with William Conacher. Did Polly give you an animal? No, she did not. No. Amazing. So wrong. Did she give you an animal? Yeah. Oh, maybe she tried. No, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing the animal thing. Please, no. I went to drama school. I don't need to be an animal again. I didn't go to drama school, so I was like, yeah. I've been waiting for this. Give me the animal. Give me a colour. Give me an animal. The thing that really struck me, and this is unlike any, I don't know how many jobs you did before this too, a small smattering. Three. It's outrageous. Frankly, it's kind of disgusting that you should be so good. But anyway, the thing that struck me about The Crown that I've never experienced before was like the machinery to help you prepare was so extensive and available and it just ticked away in this way that should you sort of wish to click on any of the boxes, these things were just there for you. That for me was, after doing many other jobs, was just something I'd never seen before. And I know the whole world is wondering if we're going to get married. But that's not a reason to actually do it. I'm nowhere near ready for another marriage. I don't know about you, but once I did ask for all the binders that arrived on my doorstep... Did you feel overwhelmed by it? It was a double-edged sword thing for me because I love, I love to just sort of dive straight in. Do you tend to do that for all the stuff you do or it depends who it is? It depends. I think when you play somebody who's based on a real-life person, the temptation to do that is very, very strong. I'll sort of find any reason to do immense amounts of research. Yeah. But this was particularly overwhelming, I think, for many reasons. And with her, it's bottomless. At one point I was like, I've got to stop because there's too much. And also, especially with Diana, there is so much. Everyone's got a thought, everyone's got an opinion. You don't really know where to... It's so wild. We've never had this conversation before. It is wild. This conversation will now go on for the next six hours. See a lot of panic faces in the room. I'm curious about what you said about at what point you decided to kind of throw, not throw it out, but just, for me, it was like I was trying to carry around so much information and it was important because some of it... I remember at one point during, I'm sure, like a mild nervous panic attack breakdown thing, I decided that what would stick would stick and it would have to do because there was no way of accumulating everything I felt I needed to. And I think I was doing that more than I've ever done because I felt that I owed this kind of... I don't... I'm not even really sure what it was, but it was this kind of, like you said, this sort of bottomless... Yeah, you want to do it justice, I guess. ..thing I was trying to fill or something I was trying to feed and it was so demanding, or perhaps I was being so demanding of myself. I wrote to him every week from boarding school. I ironed his shirts, I baked him cakes, even married the Prince of Wales. Anything to make him notice me, be proud of me. Any other job I've ever done, even if it was based on a real-life person, I felt I could be the authority of the character from the beginning. Yeah, whereas with her, there are so many authorities. So many. Your Royal Highness, I didn't see you there. Evidently not. I was the one telling the story. You ruined with your entrance. Sorry. I watched you do it and that was so beautiful. I mean, you're... I've never... We've told this to each other. It was so just, like, crystal. It was so beautiful and it was so measured and moving and all the things, and I sat there in awe of you. I mean, I'd never seen you do anything before. And then there you were on the television screen and you were just amazing and you were doing it more than justice, but also you were so creative and fun and just beautiful. Thank you. And I remember watching that and thinking... What do you do? Because The Crown does that. Not only is it, like, here's the biggest stack of research you've ever seen, the most opinions you've ever had on a character that you will ever play in your whole life. Oh, but also, before you get to do it, someone absolutely brilliant human is going to do it before you. It must be really strange. I feel very grateful that I didn't. Well, it was strange, but it was also kind of, like, lovely because, well, I learnt a lot from watching it. But then I think I'm sure I had to sort of, like, silence that as well. You know, at some point that was also feeding my panic. I remember, like, at some point, going from this huge, like, stack of binders of research to the script and being like, oh, this is actually the thing that I'm doing and finding that a massive relief to sort of reassure myself that I had ingested all of this as much as I physically, humanly could and then to go back to the script and there was such relief in that. I think I found that useful as well in the whole question, which I'm sure you got asked the whole time in interviews of, like, how does it... Do you feel there is such a responsibility playing such a well-meaning person and how do you do it? Because, you know, she's the most talked-about person still in the world and that kind of thing and there's, like, that separation thing where at some point you have to be, like... Really, my job is to, you know, represent in the best way I can this work that is written on this page, in the scenes, on the set and it sort of minimised it for me in a way that felt digestible and manageable. It refined it because the thing that struck me was that I wasn't doing, I don't know, some meta thing. Yeah. I was doing Peter Morgan's Diary. Peter Morgan's... Exactly. And that kind of... It refined it. But I don't know if... I don't think I ever told you this or maybe you never heard it, but I remember when Peter was talking to me when they had just sort of started editing season five and he said to me something that enormously reassured me at the time and he said, what's really interesting is that when we started editing your Diana, the crossover between Emma's and yours, he said, was just, like, this lovely thing that flowed. Wow. That really reassured me. I was like, well, really? Really? Say it again. Say it again. I didn't watch season five as it came out, I'm going to confess that, because it was emotionally a lot. I was like, I don't know if I'm ready. But I watched it as six... No, yeah, six came out. And I found it heartbreaking and also incredibly empowering as well to see her in her happiness. The happiness that I feel like, and the freedom and that sense of herself that I had spent a lot of season four, like, not being able to present, but knowing it was there. And to see that and her come into that part of her life was... I felt like I didn't realise I'd been waiting to see it. And you did it so beautifully. I can't make your father love you more by becoming your wife. Actually, I think you can. Well, I'm not going to do it. I know we spoke about working with Polly, but also William Conacher, who's an incredible dialect coach. What was your process of working with him like for the voice? I think of all the things that really, really gave me a lot of anxiety was the idea of the voice, because I realised that... More than the mannerisms. Yeah, much, much more. I realised that the kind of, like... I've since worked this out sort of retrospectively, but what you, as the actor playing that character, sort of owe the audience is a very specific, sonic kind of imprint. It's very important, and I felt huge responsibility to get it as close to it as I could. It's so far from my voice. I've lived in London a long time, so my Australian accent is very kind of transmorphed anyway, but of all the accents I've ever learned to do... It was the hardest. Yeah, it was... It's funny that you refer to it as an accent almost, because it almost is. But it's, for me, and I wonder if you had this too, it's sort of like there's... Sure, there's the muscularity of changing the vowel shapes and the sounds in your mouth, but for Diana, it felt like it's music. It's like a music. It's music. And that music and that rhythm were so far from how I make sense myself as a person, actually make things make sense. So I worked, like, extremely hard. Really? And I remember that I used to sit on this chair, and it was Covid time, so I was Zooming. William. William. Yeah. And I used to sit there. My whole body was completely still, and I would sit there, and the only thing that would be moving would be my mouth, and I was pouring sweat. Really? Yeah. Wow. I was just, like... Trying to get, like, a position. Just the amount of concentration and just sort of everything about it, and also because I was judging myself so harshly at the beginning for not being close to it, so the amount of time I spent just listening and thinking. Yeah, yeah. I was really curious if you had... Because I'm sure we've just watched such an incredible amount of footage. Yeah. But I wondered if you had, like, specific... And I don't mean to do... You know, I've been asked this a lot when people say, like, was there, like, a little hook? Yeah. All right. That was mine. That was yours? Yeah. Yeah. Was there, like, any footage that you watched that, like... I think the most quintessential bit was the proposal after post-engagement interview. In the blue. That one where they come out on the steps in the blue. Yeah. There are so many. It's almost like the mannerisms that she had were almost... They appeared in that moment where you know that she's under such intense emotional stress in that moment that they almost become, like, tics, like tells, right? Because it's so much of this, and I feel like her voice as well. In that, there were all the sort of... I always saw it in my head as, like, a... Like, a straight line and then a fall-off, you know? How she always goes down at the end of every sentence. So I always saw it like that, and I guess what you said is so true about it almost being you see it musically, like a song. And I think, yeah, there were real moments in the interview of her responses which are almost sometimes just like... And the laughs in that interview are really interesting as well. Yeah. Kind of, like, bruised, like they break my heart. After the whatever love means, there's a sort of laugh that I can hear quite clearly. Yeah, so I feel like something I always had on my mind as Emma, but also, like, in character, was her battle with fame and public attention. I remember when I got offered the role, Ben said, your life's going to change massively, literally just from this moment that this has just happened. And, you know, that's exactly, like, what happened to her. So just, like, you know, everything that you're feeling as, like, this news gets released and everything in your life starts changing, just, like, remember it, bottle it, use it, because that's... It will be... It's like this crazy coincidental experience that you're going to have shared. And he was spot on, but it meant that I think that it was really present all throughout the shooting and afterwards. And I know that especially in those scenes where, yeah, Diana's being, you know, chased by paparazzi and stuff, and I had that, you know, a little bit, and I know, yeah, you experienced it loads in the scenes that you shot. And I remember feeling so overwhelmed. It's really hard for it not to feel... I mean, it's so invasive. And obviously then, since then, I've experienced it personally and it's the worst thing in the world. And, yeah, how did you manage with those scenes? I think I treated them like stunts. So I kind of carved the physical path out so I knew what my body had to do and then I would let myself respond. What I found about those scenes... There's one in particular I was thinking about. There was a scene in season five that Diana's talking to her therapist and it was sort of this really sad conversation and then she, and this was true, I believe, left the office and she's swarmed by paps. Mm-hm. And we shot that chronologically, so I spent the morning crying and then felt sort of hollowed out and very tired. Exhausted. And then shot the scenes where people were sort of harassing you. And for me, it's very physical. You don't have to act very much. You don't. Your body does it for you. Your body does a lot of the work, yeah. Especially, obviously, the scenes in season six, Khaled, Abdallah, who plays Dodi, and I, we would just do... I think we just let it happen to us. I had a kind of journey with it because when I started playing that Diana, she still has a relationship with the media that we sort of watch your Diana learn to try and navigate, but obviously the media is a sort of very dangerous, slippery beast that you can never really have on side and then it slips away. And it really became a character in itself in your season, especially towards the end when they're in... It's supposed to be Saint-Tropez. Saint-Tropez, yeah, with all the boats and its presence builds and builds in her life and it becomes this sort of harbouring of doom, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when people have asked me about those scenes, you know, how did you play all the paparazzi scenes? I mean, I wasn't playing the paparazzi scenes. I was just playing trying to make a phone call scenes and they just kept coming at me. And I think it sounds like, you know, your real-life experience... Well, she seems to you as like... I mean, maybe not as much. But, you know, the times it has happened, it's very invasive. I actually usually find it more invasive when you don't know it's happening. Yeah, exactly, yeah. But, yeah, it was an extraordinarily horrendous, appalling, abusive thing that happened to this human being and I think the fact that it still exists, that culture of chasing people still exists and there are no laws against it that protect you, is astonishing to me. It's really astonishing. We have not learned anything from it. No. I remember a lot of what I had to deal with in season four was not playing the end. Like, pretending I didn't know what was going to happen. The end of your season or the end end? No, as in what happened to her. And, yeah, it was hard not to and then there were moments where it was quite useful to bring that into the work. But, yeah, how did you navigate those scenes? I mean, I'd say quite similarly. I think particularly in season six it was just really not playing the end. That season six was such a light, there was so much more lightness and joy in that for me in season five. I think after I did my stack of research for season six it seemed to me that there were times that were had that were genuinely kind of blissful, complex and not many, many things being true at the same time. Both being happy to be somewhere, also wanting to leave, also not knowing if it's the right thing to do. And so I just kind of played the joyful moments with the kids. I played enjoying time with this new person who was listening to me, which I think, having both played this character, we can say... It was what she needed. One thing she needed. One thing she's deeply missing is just for someone to listen to you and care how you feel. So there were these kind of... I just lent into all the things that were good and where there was sort of like juice and goodness and warmth in your body. I really felt that in the scene where, I think it's just before the accident, where, correct me if I'm wrong, that Diana and Dodie are in the hotel room and he pretends to make the phone call to his father and she catches him out. And then they really have the most honest conversation that they've had, and I certainly feel like I'd witnessed her having in this series thus far. And it's such a euphoric moment where there's been this breakthrough for both of them in their relationship, but I think really for her throughout all of it to really sit with someone and for them to be so honest and open and vulnerable with each other. In that moment, I really remember forgetting. And I think that's such a testament to how well you did that. There was a moment where I was just taken somewhere where it was this breakthrough they had that led to such a feeling of hope. And it meant that what happened afterwards completely destroyed me, because it was... Yeah, it really feels like this promise. There's this upwards drive of energy to think anything could happen now. I think about the end of a character like this is so unique. The end is always, like you said, you would feel it at the beginning of doing anything. It sort of occurred to me that you have to leave a lot of room for the story that everyone's bringing with them. Every time they watch something, they're bringing the whole storyline with them, and it's so unique, unlike we learn as the character learns. This is completely different. It's sort of this enormous... It's this huge whole life, this vivid life that the audience bring to every moment you're creating. You have to leave so much room for people to bring that to the work. Yeah, and to everything that they feel about it, which is so much. I don't know if you found this, but after it came out, I had so many people sharing their stories, because obviously she was so open with the public and shared so much of herself with them, so that so many people... I was amazed at how many people have a story of interacting with her and feeling like they knew her. And I believe that they did, because she made it feel that way, and she genuinely believed it too. And it was kind of overwhelming at times that people... They just wanted to tell me, and it took me a while to make... not feel panicked and actually make space for it. And it was important for people to sort of keep passing the stories on. And I guess that's what you're saying, is that they bring... Everyone's bringing something. Even if it's not directly to do with her, even if it's to do with some of the emotion that they can relate to or empathize with. I love this instance. I binged it when I got my wisdom teeth out. You felt a kinship to Lisa. It's hard being the smartest person in most rooms. So I'm at the end of the world. In the first episode, my character loses this person, Bill, who she hasn't seen for, I think, about six or seven years, but who she was incredibly in love with. They were each other's first big loves. I remember shooting one of the flashback scenes in Utah, where she first meets him. They met online in this hacker forum, and then he says, let's go and find the serial killer. The scene in the bar, right? Yeah, the scene in the bar. It was so beautiful. With the Frank Ocean. Such a gorgeous scene. And I remember we did a few takes of it in that bar, and they actually played the Frank Ocean in the live, which I loved. Then Zal, the director, took me aside and he said, just a quick note, but could you possibly infuse this with a sense that when Darby sees Bill for the first time, she falls in love with him, but at the same time, knows that she will lose him in a very fundamental way, as in she will lose him completely. The first time I felt myself fall in love with you was on my phone. I was like, that is one hell of a note. Cool, let me just, yep. It was really beautiful, and there was something about the way that, I mean, having Harris as a partner in that was just, he's just an incredible person to act opposite. He's so generous with the way he holds space for you, and he's such a fantastic actor. I really felt it, and I think hopefully it came across. It's so beautiful, that moment. Brit or Zal, I think, I can't remember which one, but one of them said it in an interview and were explaining it so eloquently. I think it was Zal. He said, there is that thing of when you fall in love so deeply, when you're young especially, where it's so all-consuming that there is such jeopardy, and there is that sense of finality and that it will end, and that was really, I don't think I'd really had that articulated to me before, so it was fun to play with. I loved you in Murder at the End of the World. I really, really, really did. So different. So fresh. Such a beautiful performance. I think it's sort of what you do in a way, which I hope this doesn't sound reductive, but you're so generous. You allow us a lot of access to yourself and your character, and you do it in all the things, I mean, you do it on stage too, and I wonder, was that your first big job? I did Chatterley after, but then I guess with Chatterley you have a book. Exactly. So I sort of dived into that as much as I could. So I wonder, how did it feel? It must have felt both sort of like a free fall, but also kind of wonderful at the same time, exciting. It was strange because I think I thought I had a process, because research sort of gives you a process. I don't honestly think I do have one, but I think... You feel like you don't have one. No, not a... Not something you apply. Not something I apply, and I kind of wish I did, because I think it comes with a lot of security. It's something I've been thinking about quite a lot recently. Yeah, and it sort of unnerves me that maybe I don't, but then also I think that I kind of adapt, I pivot with each role that comes along, and maybe that's quite nice, because it sort of means that you can let each project bring something to you instead of you bringing like a rigid thing to each one. But I certainly did feel a bit of free fall, because it was literally the scripts, and luckily the world that Brit and Zal created was so rich and so full. I remember reading the scripts, I think I got about three out of the seven initially, and I just couldn't put them down. That was great, and I remember reading them and thinking, wow, I get such a sense of this world, I get such a... I mean, Darby has such a presence on the page. Well, you're also in every scene. Every frame, yeah. I mean, that was one of my... It was wild. Yeah, watching it, thinking of your well-being. Honestly, I don't regret it for an instant. I loved it, it was an incredible experience. I wouldn't change it, but it was a lesson learned in hubris, I suppose, because I... if that's the right word, because I read the scripts and I remember thinking, this is great, this character is in every single frame. And then six months in to this shoot where I literally had to be there physically and well enough constantly to do my best and serve the story and the project, and it was a lot. I remember my body just started... things just started dropping off. I wanted to ask you about how you took care of yourself when you were doing a show like that. It was a real crash course in... I mean, it was an incredible ensemble cast who were amazing, the crew were incredible, because also they are also there in every day. Everyone working is always in every frame. And the energy of the set was incredible and the energy from the cast was amazing and Britton Zahle are fantastic collaborators and creatives and very caring. But there were moments where your body just... it catches up with you. Of course. And my wisdom teeth started coming through. Oh, good. Super helpful. Yeah, and I remember... Were you in Iceland when that was happening? Thank God, no. Can you imagine? Maybe they have very good doctors there. I feel like they would have very good dentists. No, I was in New Jersey and my wisdom teeth started coming through so my jaw was sort of swollen and I was in so much pain. But they were like, we are really... our hands are tied. We can't... If we can't shoot with you, we miss a day of filming, which I totally appreciate. You were like, mm-hmm. I was so ready. It was fantastic. Also being British, obviously, you're absolutely fine. Honestly, no, I'm fine. Don't worry about it. So they got this doctor who turned up with this kind of dodgy briefcase and was like, I'm going to give you a steroid for the pain. And I was like, sure. And he was like, you just turn around. So he shot me in the bum. Okay. It was great. You were just like at the tea trolley. Yeah, genuinely. And I was high as a kite. Absolutely high, which I don't think anyone had predicted. And I had this scene where me and Elisa Braga were on a snowmobile and we were reshooting it against a green screen in these stages. And I was convinced I was being attacked by bees. Utterly convinced. You would not have been able to persuade me otherwise. Oh, my God. And I don't think it ended up in the cut, but there's a shot of me as Elisa saying, dude, there's a snowstorm. We've got to go. We've got to make it back. And I'm sort of going, God, what? And at that point, everyone was like, I think Emma should go home. Oh, my God. But no, it was mostly a fantastic experience. And you learn a lot from being on set every day. You learn a lot about boundaries and, you know, what it takes to be the one. Have some. Yeah. How are you? How are my boundaries? How are your boundaries? They are porous. It's hard. At times, they are far too porous. It's hard to say no in this world, in this industry. But you know, no is what makes you. Yeah. And makes your career. It is so true. But I'm always fascinated when I watch what your character goes through. How chronologically did you shoot? Did you shoot Iceland first? We shot Iceland first. Uh-huh. And then we did New York. And we did most of the hotel stuff, the inside of the hotel stuff. And then we went to Utah and did all the flashbacks, which was such a treat. So it was incredible. All the hotel stuff was in New York. Yeah. They built the whole thing in a stage. It was wild. So all the things that you were carrying about your relationship you hadn't yet experienced. No. Yeah. Which is really interesting. One of the things that struck me about that character was, it's sort of what you were talking about at the moment when you meet in the bar. Mm-hmm. The end being part of a beginning of something. Yeah. And how I feel like that's true a lot in life. And when you are brave enough to love somebody, that's the bit that's really hard and scares the ---- out of you. Because you have to also accept the end of it. So when I watch your character through that thing, there's this kind of, I mean, in a way, what's really satisfying is watching the archetype of the detective. Someone the other day was saying to me, in regards to the Diana story, in their opinion, tragedy is when things are avoidable and they're not avoided. This is a sort of like, when we watch that happen, that creates tragedy. Yeah. And it could have been avoided. You could have done something. Yeah. And I thought, oh, that's such an interesting kind of way to think of a word that we use all the time. And I think it's really accurate. But in terms of sort of like fearlessness or sort of strength in a character like Darby, it's sort of more that she is actually acutely aware of the consequences of actions and acutely aware of how vulnerable she is in that. Yeah. And then she does it anyway. And that's sort of like watching that kind of courage and this sort of persistence. And also I find it so satisfying to watch intelligence. Like, it's a really difficult thing to play well, too. There's a lot of interiority, intelligence. Yes, there's so much. Like playing someone's mind is a lot of... But you gave us so much access to thought processes and that's so satisfying to watch. Yeah. When I was the same age as your girls, I believed that I really mattered. And then I grew up and realised that I really didn't. Yeah, the fearlessness thing is an interesting one. I remember very early on Britanzar saying to me, we've written a female detective who is hopefully going to go against all the stereotypes of what we've seen before, which is essentially someone having to access their vulnerability in order to solve the crime, not shut those parts of themselves off. It's sort of like not getting hard and aggressive and that sort of take, which I suppose we've seen, like the antagonistic detective, it's a sort of soft version, a soft serve detective. And I think that's sort of what Darby ends up becoming because she's confronted with the ways in which she wasn't able to save Bill and the ways in which she left him because she wasn't able to be open and vulnerable with him. You get that sense through the flashbacks of how she was always on the case and she loved him, but she wasn't emotionally available to him. And I think that's a very hard pill for her to swallow and I think she realises that it's sort of the greatest thing that his death teaches him, is how to access her own emotion and that the only way she will be able to solve the crime is through that. And so that was a really interesting thing to play with, the fearlessness, but also the fear. You have to feel the fear in order to be fearless, to recognise it. Yeah, I suppose the experience of playing Darby and Darby's fearlessness, I think there are some parallels with Diana's fearlessness. Or maybe in so much as Darby needed to access the openness that Diana had. And I think it's interesting because I think openness and vulnerability is often taken as a sign of weakness and I think that's what people mistook in Diana. Do you think? I think maybe the family did. They didn't know how to deal with it or trust it. They didn't trust it. And I think it's the strongest thing about her, is how much of herself she felt like she wanted to share with the world. I agree. And that generosity. Is that something that you... I know I really enjoyed playing that part of her, that fearlessness. One of the things I really loved that it gave me access to in myself when I was inside the character was that openness. That I felt so much more that... I think it was a superpower. If there is someone who had a superpower, it was this ability to totally move through socially constructed barriers of the things that disable or don't allow connection between people. It's my personal opinion that people in general, and maybe I speak... I don't think I speak only for myself. People, we just so desperately want to be seen. And we want to be acknowledged. And someone I was talking to the other day said, we want to be cherished. People really want to be cherished. And she really could do that. That's why all the people that approach you and I once, we played that part and said, I remember once when I was walking down the King's Road and she came out of the shop and... And it's different as well to anecdotes that people have about meeting singers or like... No. It's so different. It feels like it moves on a really personal level. I think because they felt seen. Yeah. By somebody who they so adored and admired. And it's so interesting because what you said about her in that scene with Dodie finally being listened to. And for someone who was so deprived of being listened to, she had an ability to endlessly listen to people and absorb them and to pay attention. She paid attention whereas so many people just don't. We put on blinkers intentionally because we are too afraid or... Yeah, we're afraid of everything, of being judged and... But if you just have somebody leading that, sort of fearlessly leading that charge, and being inside of a character who is leading that charge, was so freeing because it meant that I suddenly felt that I could connect with people much, much more efficiently and with my whole self. It's made you bear that in mind. I really feel like it's helped me look up a bit, like look up and engage more than I would. And I think I tend to not because I probably err on the side of shyness or not wanting to... Cross into other people's... Yeah. Or maybe protect yourself too. I think it's that as well. It's a bit of everything. And not just wanting to put yourself out there, but she really gave people time. It was an incredible act of generosity because as I imagine, and I did imagine playing it, that it also costs a lot. You have to restore and you have to repair. And she didn't have a lot. No. And I think it shows that it really kept her going. And I remember with all the quite harrowing parts of her that we had to play, those were the real joyful bits. And you use that word superpower, which is such a funny word, but it is true. It felt like a superpower. And especially for me in season four when you're in these scenes with the rest of the family who don't see it, I sort of had this thing in me that was like, you know, you don't know how much power I hold in the fact that I can do this. And it was like a fun thing to play with, that not being seen but knowing that you had something to give. What a pleasure. What a pleasure. I'm such a huge fan. Me too. I always feel funny when I say that to people, but I really mean it. Yeah, me too. Yeah. That's nice. It feels special. Yeah. And I always feel a bit soothed when I'm near you, because I feel like you and I... Well, the thing is that I feel like you and I sort of understand some very specific thing that we both tried to do that was at times a heavy load. Yeah. It must be like archaeologists meeting. If two archaeologists met in a bar and were like, my God, you like that rock? I like that rock. Yeah. It's like that. Yeah. Bye.