Helena Bonham Carter opens up about incredible link to Princess Margaret
Helena Bonham Carter, who is set to play the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret in the third and fourth seasons of the Netflix series The Crown has revealed she has a particularly unique connection to the royal.
When speaking to British edition of Harper’s Bazaar, Bonham Carter says her uncle Mark once had a relationship with the royal.
"He was in the Grenadiers, I think, and he guarded Margaret and Elizabeth at Windsor. And then they met, and I think there was a romance. He was really dashing..,” she said.
During a conversation at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the actress noted she has photographs of the couple together.
While they didn’t last together as a couple, as Princess Margaret would go on to marry and then divorce Antony Armstrong Jones, the royal and her uncle maintained a close relationship.
Princess Margaret with Mark Bonham carter at the February 1954 premiere of Kiss Me Kate.
"[They] remained good friends," she said, per The Sun. "It's weird, I basically went out with my uncle."
Bonham Carter has proven to be a dedicated actress, and opened up about her unique methods to prepare for her role on The Crown.
The actress admitted she communicated with Princess Margaret from beyond the grave through a psychic, as well as using more traditional methods by speaking to several of the late royal’s ladies-in-waiting, and her hairdresser.
"They spent hours talking about her, mainly because they loved her," Bonham Carter said. "They felt very strongly that a whole chunk of her character had never been recorded."
An interesting quirk about the royal was she preferred her lipstick angled a certain way to coat both her lips in one swipe.
"The less effort, the better, which is very high-status," Bonham Carter said. "And she always wore a corset because she felt vulnerable, it was her emotional armour—she said of herself that her confidence was enamel-thin."
All 10 episodes of The Crown's third season drop on Netflix November 17. Watch the trailer up top.