The only role Vanessa Kirby couldn’t let go of: “It was awful”
Vanessa Kirby is set to have a very big 2025, about to appear as Susan Storm/The Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four: The First Steps, the first movie that will officially welcome the iconic comic book team into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This has been a long time coming for fans of the characters (please don’t mention Fan4stic, you’ll only make them upset), and viewers are eager to see how this new version of the group will work. As for Kirby, she has the chance at the dominant portrayal of one of Marvel’s most iconic women. No pressure, then.
This sort of success has been a long time coming for her. The rising star has been steadily working her way up the Hollywood ladder, thanks to roles in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, and her Oscar-nominated turn in Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman. To discover where it all started, however, you have to go back to a little show on Netflix called The Crown.
An epic sweep of the British royal family under Queen Elizabeth II, The Crown is one of the streamer’s most accomplished original series. It wasn’t without its controversies, but that just made it more compelling. Kirby played Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister, in the show’s first two seasons. She embodied the much-troubled figure through her early 20s, the breakdown of her relationship with Peter Townsend, and the ‘nude’ photo scandal that pushed her into the arms of Tony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon.
The historical nature of The Crown means that none of the cast hold onto their roles for very long. Elizabeth is played by Clare Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton at various stages in her life, and her sister was handed the same treatment. After Kirby’s time as the character, Helena Bonham Carter took over the role, who herself handed it over to Lesley Manville when the time was right. Unfortunately, the decision to step away from Margaret was not an easy one for her originator.
“The Crown was the best time of my life,” Kirby told The Guardian in 2018. “Saying goodbye to it was awful; I really grieved it, actually. The easy route would have been for me to just play her as the version of her who comes later, the public persona of her that is so—I don’t know the right word—gauche?” When the interviewer quipped that the show should have sent her to Mustique, the ultra-private Caribbean island where Margaret enjoyed spending time, she jokingly responded she was “livid”, before giving a serious answer.
“I wanted to try and find the person she was before she hardened,” she said, “before she became bitter and self-loathing, which is what I sensed”.
It’s only natural that Kirby should feel so strongly about this time in her life. Playing Margaret is what raised her profile for the first time. It led to all the success she had achieved by 2018 and, by that logic, all the further success she is set to achieve in the years following.
Her days on The Crown might be over, but there’s no reason she can’t revisit the role of Margaret later down the line. Helen Mirren has played Elizabeth II about 500 times at this point, so it can be done.
