The Crown 's Lesley Manville just missed seeing Princess Margaret play drums at Mick Jagger's house

Like several members of The Crown cast, past and present, Lesley Manville has personal knowledge of the royal family. The Phantom Thread and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris star met Prince Charles (now King Charles III) when she was appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and in 2015 was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by Prince William. And while Manville never met Princess Margaret, the royal family member she is playing on seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, the actress has the best story about almost meeting the Queen's sister.

The setting for this near encounter was the island of Mustique, a favorite vacation spot for Margaret. Manville and her then-husband Gary Oldman visited the island in the late '80s at a time when both David Bowie and Mick Jagger had residences on Mustique.

"My husband at the time knew David Bowie," the actress tells EW for our cover story on season 5 of the Emmy-winning series. "I'd just had my son, and [Bowie] said, 'Look, come over to my villa for a holiday whilst you've got the new baby and everything.' I was staying in Mustique at David Bowie's house and I then had to come home because I wasn't well. [Bowie] then rang me and said, 'It's such a shame you had to go home.' The night that I left, they'd been invited around to Mick Jagger's, and Princess Margaret was there playing the drums! So I would have absolutely adored to have met her and seen her playing the drums. [Laughs] Yeah, but it didn't happen I'm afraid because I got poorly and had to come home, which is rather annoying."

Dave Benett/Getty Images; Hulton Archive/Getty Images Lesley Manville and Princess Margaret

While Manville never met Margaret, she can now claim to have spent a lot of time with James Bond, thanks to the casting of Timothy Dalton as the Princess' paramor Peter Townsend in the upcoming fifth season of The Crown. "I knew him a little bit before, and then we were thrown together and had to learn to dance together and all of that," says the actress of Dalton. "He was lovely and I think he's just spot-on as Peter Townsend."

The Crown season 5 cast also includes Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Dominic West as Prince Charles, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, and Jonny Lee Miller as British Prime Minister John Major.

The fifth season of The Crown launches Nov. 9 on Netflix. Watch the show's just-released new trailer below.

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