A STAR of the hit series The Crown has revealed she still gets awestruck despite her success.

Erin Doherty, who plays Princess Anne in the Netflix drama, said she struggles to contain her excitement around big Hollywood stars.

The 28-year-old, who grew up in Crawley, told Elle Magazine about her encounter with Meryl Street at the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles, California.

She said: “I get imposter syndrome massively.

“It’s so weird because I’m just a girl from Crawley walking past Meryl Streep. It’s just stupid.

“It sounds so cliché but I love her. I had a whole period of growing up asking my dad to get me every single DVD of her films because I would watch them and rewind little bits and wonder how she was doing it.

“I had to walk up to the stage and ignore her. I was like, ‘Erin, you won’t be able to walk up on to the stage if you look into the eyes of Meryl Streep’.

“I think I just avoid situations like that because it’s too unreal. That was honestly crazy to me.”

 

Erin studied at Hazelwick School in Crawley and attended a Saturday drama school.

She went on to graduate from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School alongside her co-star Josh O’Connor, who plays Prince Charles.

She has since gone on to star in BBC drama series Call The Midwife and a TV adaptation of Les Misérables before landing the role in The Crown.

While filming season four of the series, Erin said she had to stop herself from being a “fangirl” while working alongside the likes of Oscar-winner Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter and Gillian Anderson.

She told Elle: “When I first got the job, I thought, ‘Erin you need to get rid of all your love and admiration, in the nicest way possible, for these people’, because I would just be staring at them in the scene, unable to believe I was in a room with them.

“I think that was the hardest thing, it’s a challenge playing that character but actually that was just fun, whereas the hardest mental decision I had to make was to not be a fangirl.

“I wanted to tell these people how they’d inspired me but it’s such a difficult one because then you have to do a scene with them... it doesn’t work.”

To get into character, Erin said she listened to hours of recordings of Princess Anne’s voice and watched hours of footage on YouTube.

She said: “You can learn so much about someone by the way they hold their voice.

“I think because she felt so suppressed, trying to be this princess everyone wanted her to be, it resulted in this restrained, forced vocal display, which was fascinating to imitate.”

Erin has said she will not be returning to the role of Princess Anne for season five of the royal drama.

She said in the future, she hopes to “continue to push her game” and is not fussed about the “glitz and glam” of showbusiness.

She said: “I don’t care in what room or on what stage or TV show, if a story needs to be told I want to tell it.

‘I only want to do work that’s not been done before, that pushes me to up my game.”

Season four of The Crown is available on Netflix now.