I started to really enjoy the fact that [princess] Margaret was an exhibitionist. Even on a day-to-day basis, Margaret's costumes were always so much more dramatic and bold than Elizabeth's were.

I really enjoyed stepping into that side of [princess Margaret] and being silly and naughty and fun.

I would argue [princess] Margaret is the tragic figure of the century.

Everybody has an image of [princess Margaret], to a certain extent. But I felt it would have been harder if we were playing them as they are now. In a way, I don't know how much of a living memory we as a collective have of them in the '50s, when Margaret was 21 and this sort of Elizabeth Taylor. You don't think of your grandparents as being teenagers. You just can't - your brain just can't go there!

At the same time, [princess Margaret] had a fragility and an insecurity in who she was and her position, because her sister had always got the education ever since David [Edward VIII] abdicated.

I remember somebody saying something to me about Frost/Nixon, when Anthony Hopkins does his famous speech, and the difference in the way Anthony did it was to dramatize, essentially, what was a documentary-style version of that speech. I remember someone saying to me, "There is artistic liberty."

That external struggle mirrors the struggle of this life force of energy that [princess Margaret] was.