'The Crown' Actress Hurt Herself Trying to Imitate Princess Anne's Low Voice
Fans might think that acting in The Crown is a relatively safe gig. There aren't any stunts, nothing's ever lit on fire; few people even seem to play sports. But that doesn't necessarily mean the cast escapes unscathed—just take it from Erin Doherty, who found playing Princess Anne unexpectedly injurious.
In an interview with Glamour, Doherty explained that the hardest part of getting into character was perfecting the royal's low voice. "Basically, the way she suppresses her voice... it's kind of this odd, low placement," she explained. When asked if she'd hurt herself while attempting to mimic it, Doherty admitted that she had.
"The first time I did, yeah," the actress said. "My voice obviously kind of became acclimatized to that placement. I think that's probably just a part of voice training, but it took a while for it to settle. Now it's fine. But there was a process maybe for two weeks or something where it was just a bit…it was unhappy."
Still, she got over the hump. "I would go to random places and order coffee in that voice. I would do anything I could in that voice to try and make it feel natural, because it doesn't. Everything about it my body wanted to reject, because it just doesn't feel healthy or right."
Once she got it down though, Princess Anne began to make a lot more sense to her. Doherty said that she'd use the voice "psychologically just to get into where she was at, the head space she's in as this princess who was born into this role." Doherty added, "She didn't choose this way of life. It kind of set me up for everything I needed to know. Because that voice placement of pushing it down makes you feel really constricted and controlled, and you just want to break out of it."
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