#and it makes vic feeling bad about not doing something about helena’s job so much more 🥹🥹🥹🥹

[senorscotty]

there's so much to expand on wrt helena's day job being a public school teacher and the role adding this tenderness to a character whose seeming roughness gets read as uncontrollably violent (a convo for another day). the huntress to helena is fueled with so much inner strife, part of it is putting a tangible mask on something she was doing throughout her teenage and young adulthood, going from protecting herself to protecting the vulnerable. her choosing to be a teacher further roots her in the community that she aims to protect and allows her to become the helping hand she needed as a kid. her being a teacher makes her character so much more compelling, marking her compassion and desire to be there for children esp., as a trait that exists beyond the mask. (imo this also allows a deg. of character development with what the mask is to helena; moving between a means of revenge, idealization of her strengths, to a tool to be there for when blood cries) although bat editorial has never fully understood her (some of that misunderstanding is played up solely to rehash conflict between her and the other bats), there is something about the lack of “screentime” helena’s day job gets and desire to have these figures protecting gotham but no desire to tell the stories of the people/communities that make up gotham.

[princessanneftw]

The Crown's Erin Doherty on playing Princess Anne – the voice, the hair and the style

By Caroline Leaper, Senior Fashion Editor for Stella Magazine.

As she joins acting royalty for the new series of the hit TV show, the actress discusses her transformation into a princess and just how long it takes to create THAT ’do

Erin Doherty is explaining how much fun it is to pretend to be very, very posh when you’re not. In the lead-up to playing Princess Anne in the new season of the hit Netflix drama The Crown, she says that she spent days practising her best royal voice in mundane scenarios, and offers to order a smoothie at the café we’ve met in ‘as Anne’, by way of demonstration.

‘Anne’s accent, and the whole family’s accent, is so weird,’ she laughs, snapping back into her own south London dialect. ‘It’s alien to me, I’ve never heard anyone else talk like that. My natural voice is the opposite. I watched YouTube videos and would practise when ordering a coffee, or speaking to people I didn’t know. The reactions were brilliant; I’m looking casual with this crazy posh voice coming out of me.’ Indeed, today she looks quite unroyal in her Breton top, khaki trousers and Birkenstocks.

Playing the Princess Royal is Erin’s first major television role. The 27-year-old from Crawley had a small part in the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables this year, and appeared in an episode of Call the Midwife back in 2017, but has otherwise stuck to the stage, graduating from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School to The Young Vic and The Old Vic, after being hailed a rising star of her generation. She is palpably excited about being in The Crown, and refreshingly honest about how she’s ‘winging it’ on one of the most anticipated TV shows of the year. She does, I should say now, deliver an incredibly convincing Anne. When casting director Nina Gold told her she had got the part, she celebrated by having a curry.

The Crown season three will span more than a decade, from 1964 to 1977, warranting an all-new cast to play the ageing royals. 
Olivia Colman picks up from Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth, Tobias Menzies follows Matt Smith’s Duke of Edinburgh and Helena Bonham Carter takes over from Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret. We’ve reached the years when the Queen’s children are coming of age; Erin’s Anne is in her late teens when we meet her, and is full of fantastically feisty opinions about being ‘launched’ as an adult in the Royal family.

We all know the plot, or so we think, as The Crown is based on real events. But the brilliance of the show is that we don’t know which bits of history creator Peter Morgan will zoom in on. Season three might cover the time when, in 1974, Ian Ball attempted to abduct Anne and hold her to ransom for £3 million. (‘Not bloody likely,’ she famously said to her kidnapper, and her father Prince Philip quipped, ‘She would have given him a hell of a time in captivity...’). We might get to see Erin in bridal attire, as Anne’s first wedding to Captain Mark Phillips took place in 1973.

Erin is tight-lipped about which events do and do not make the cut. ‘You know what happens to Anne,’ she says. ‘It’s not hard to guess. But Peter makes these people so fascinating because of the way he focuses on stories which might not have been the headlines everyone remembers.’

Anne’s story, Erin says, was largely unknown to her before she began researching ahead of her audition. ‘Princess Anne, honestly, didn’t mean anything to me,’ she explains. ‘Like a lot of people who grow up in Britain, I think, [the Royal family was] always just there. My family watched the Queen’s speech at Christmas, but other than that, you feel a bit removed from it. I had to research her and then I realised, wow, this woman is awesome. I fell in love with her.’

Anne’s reputation as the reluctant, truculent royal, who was more interested in riding horses than wearing ballgowns and playing the part, has come good of late. Where once the tabloid press dubbed her ‘rude’, ‘dowdy’ and ‘austere’, her dependability, cracking wit and commitment to public duty now see her celebrated as the most hard-working royal each year (she completed 180 days of engagements in 2018, 20 more than Prince Charles). And her never-wavering signature style suddenly chimes with the fashion industry’s new drive for more sustainable shopping. ‘At 69, Princess Anne’s country-chic look and penchant for rewearing couldn’t be more on trend,’ a fellow fashion editor of this newspaper wrote back in August.

Erin discovered pretty quickly that her new ‘family’ is full of eccentric, fun and 
complex characters. In one of her first scenes, she is sitting around a television with the Queen and Princess Margaret for tea, cigarettes and whisky, to watch Royal Family, the famously ill-fated 1969 BBC documentary (the reception to it was so bad that it was banished after airing, with the press suggesting director Richard Cawston’s fly-on-the-wall approach had ‘cheapened’ the monarchy). In real life, of course, that meant cosying up with her new co-stars, a cast of national treasures and Oscar-winners.

‘Scenes like that were surreal, but everyone was so normal on set,’ Erin says. ‘Seeing someone like Helena be so calm and cool has been a gift. What makes it weird is that I then go home to my houseshare and my housemates are like, “Your job is insane, did you see Olivia Colman today?” I obviously can’t tell her that they love her in Fleabag every day, that would be weird. And ultimately I’m trying to be like her daughter and build this relationship up with her, so the main goal for me is to forget about the fact that she is Olivia Colman. My dad is the worst for it, he took a flight and texted me, “I’ve just seen Olivia Colman doing the BA safety advert – tell her she’s great in it.”’

As well as the voice, the other thing to get right when becoming Anne was the hair. Today, Erin’s hair is soft, straight and centre-parted. She says it takes a lot of work to mould it into the Princess Royal’s trademark style each day.

‘The hair takes a solid hour and a half,’ she laughs. ‘Most of that time is spent backcombing and setting it with hairspray. Sometimes if it’s not poofy enough, we have to use a sponge doughnut underneath to hold it up more. I’m no wiser as to how she actually does hers. It must be pretty solid, as she doesn’t change it much.’

In Anne’s youth, Erin points out, the Princess typically only set half of her head, leaving some hair down and smooth at the back. For season four, though, which started filming this month, Erin is expecting to double her time in the hair chair, as Anne switches to her mainstay full halo. ‘It takes even more time if she’s wearing any sort of a hat,’ she groans. ‘I brace myself if it’s a hat day.’

Costume was crucial to Anne’s character. This season of The Crown will revisit the Princess’s fashion heyday in the ’60s and ’70s, when she wore sharp checked suiting and chic flares, and was photographed by Norman Parkinson in the era’s Pucci-esque saturated floral prints. Costume designer Amy Roberts recreates some of Anne’s most memorable outfits – many of which would still look relevant and stylish today.

‘She was so on-trend in the 1960s and ’70s. She figured out her style at that age and she has stuck with it ever since,’ says Erin. ‘I created a Pinterest board of her outfits and I saw this amazing thing of Anne throughout the years, reusing her gowns, sometimes rocking it again 20 years later. I love that about her. She must not get rid of anything.

‘My favourite outfit, though,’ she continues, ‘is the one in the first scene you’ll see from me. The idea is that her parents have just pulled her away from riding and she’s 
angry and stressy, so I’m wearing riding boots and stomping around.’

Erin understood that, of all the looks, this would likely be the one that the Princess Royal herself would favour too. ‘So often she’s in these amazing ballgowns, but you can tell that this would be her preference,’ she says. ‘It just feels more like her. Because of her sporting side, I don’t think she gets enough credit as a style icon. You meet some people who remember that she was fashionable, but a lot are like, nope, she’s just horses.’

Ah, the horses. For Olympic athlete and European eventing champion Anne, riding has been a passion since childhood. For Erin, it was a case of all the equestrian gear and no idea.

‘I’d never been horse riding before filming this, it was the first time I’d ever put on jodhpurs,’ she admits. ‘After my initial meeting with the casting team, my agent rang and was like, “Are you OK with horses?” The part was still in the balance, so I said, “Yeah, of course I am.” As soon as I put the phone down I thought 
I can’t believe I’ve just said that. It’s notorious that actors will say they can do something and learn how later, isn’t it? I was petrified. Luckily I had 
a bit of time, so it’s sorted now and I can ride.’

Horses may not have been on the agenda for Erin growing up, but football was. ‘I was pretty good – I was scouted to play for Chelsea,’ she says. ‘I really hated school, so I lived for the weekends; I’d play football on a Sunday morning, and then in the afternoon I would go to stage school. When I was about 14, the schedule was getting so intense that my dad said I needed to choose one. I still do my keepy-uppies in the garden. I’d love it if someone remade Bend It Like Beckham – I’d be totally prepared for that part.’

Erin is one of three children (she has an older sister and a younger brother), and her mother, a retired medical practice administrator, and father, who works in airline operations, split up when she was four and now, respectively, live in Guildford and Folkestone. She’s living in south-east London in a houseshare with strangers who have become friends, and who work in entirely different fields. She grew up, she says, happily hanging around in Croydon wearing a tracksuit. ‘That was our best town to go to with your friends.’

When The Crown was first released, the original cast found themselves famous around the world. Appetite for the show is especially high in the US where, as Erin points out, ‘they flip for the royals.

‘It exploded for the last cast didn’t it?’ she considers. ‘They’re all pretty high-profile now. It’s mental what could happen, but I’m really not prepared for it and I also don’t think it’s healthy to expect it. Imagine thinking your world is going to change then nothing happens, that would be heartbreaking. I don’t think people would really recognise me in the street anyway, I look quite different when I’m not made-up with the hair.’

Claire Foy and Vanessa Kirby, particularly, benefited from the magazine covers and fashion status that came with the territory, as designers from Erdem to 
Gucci vied to dress them on the red carpet.

‘I’ve never really done a red-carpet event,’ Erin says. ‘I was speaking to my publicist and I think we’re going to get a stylist to help. Honestly, these conversations are so alien to me. It’s actually more intimidating to do these things where you have to be yourself. I can get very anxious and I’m more of an introvert if I’m not acting, so the simpler these things are and the less I have to think about what I look like, the better.’

Her photo shoot with Stella is the first that she’s done, an experience that she enjoyed, she says, because she was able to treat it like playing a role.

In her own life, comfort takes priority. ‘My style is pretty androgynous,’ she says, ‘I’m all about not abiding by gender norms, not because I have any particular view of myself that way, but I like messing things around and trying different things. I’ve always been sporty and I’m drawn to clothes that are baggy. What I hope is that you’ll still be able to see me [even when I’m dressed up on the red carpet] and I’ll look back and think this whole experience was amazing and fun, not a surreal period of my life that I didn’t really live in.’

It will be surreal, probably. But Erin seems to have put in the work to ensure that her portrayal isn’t a caricature, and she has got under the skin of one of the nation’s famously-hardy senior royals. She did weeks of research, listened to the historians on set, nailed that voice and even investigated Anne’s Chinese zodiac sign, just in case it gave a crumb of insight to work with. ‘Anne’s a metal tiger,’ she confirms.

Talented, funny, hard-working and, crucially, not at all starstruck by the royals. It is, likely, exactly what the Princess Royal herself would want from the person deemed tough enough to play her.

[mbtizone]

Sarah Manning (Orphan Black): ESTP

Dominant Extroverted Sensing [Se]: Sarah is constantly scanning her surroundings for potential. Her first instinct after watching Beth commit suicide is to steal her purse and run. She seizes the opportunity in front of her. Sarah goes to Beth’s apartment, does her hair like Beth’s, dresses in her clothing, mimics her accent, observes her behavior from video footage she finds of her, and learns to forge her signature. When she requests a large sum of money from Beth’s bank account, she’s told she can’t withdraw that much immediately. Noticing the trophies behind the teller, she asks if she can expedite the process by sponsoring his next charity run, to which he agrees. Sarah is extremely resourceful and street smart. She destroys the magnetic strip on Beth’s bank card so she can replace it at the bank. When Paul returns from his trip and begins an uncomfortable line of questioning, Sarah distracts him by initiating sex so she doesn’t have to continue the discussion. Sarah has a keen awareness of her environment and knows how to use what she notices to her advantage. She tends to react to things physically and she can be very violent. When Sarah asks Alison to teach her how to shoot, she picks it up quickly. Her reflexes are very good, too. While following a lead at an apartment, Sarah notices a person watching from outside with a gun, and pushes Art onto the ground just as the attacker shoots. When Helena tries to kill her later, she’s able to keep her talking just long enough to grab a nearby rebar and impale her with it.

Auxiliary Introverted Thinking [Ti]: When Sarah is in a bind, she is very good at analyzing her situation and coming up with the best solution. Her process is internal, though. She doesn’t think aloud. When Felix points out Sarah can only take over Beth’s life for so long, since Beth’s body will eventually be identified, she becomes very quiet, thinking intensely. When he continues to talk, she tells him to shut up and that she’s thinking. She sees the news report about Beth’s suicide on television as she’s contemplating the situation and is struck with the perfect idea: She’ll have Felix identify the body as her, leaving her free and clear to continue impersonating Beth. When a man pulls her into his car, she has no idea who he is or what’s going on, but she notices a paper in his car with the name “Arthur” on it, and remembers that someone named “Art” has been calling Beth. She instantly realizes this is the same person and casually refers to him as “Art” which allows her to evade suspicion (Se-Ti). When “Beth” isn’t to return to work, Sarah meets with her therapist. When she hears the therapist talk about how Beth claimed to be “glitched” and how she was “missing herself”, she successfully gets the therapist to change her ruling after threatening to speak out about how she was prescribing Beth a lot of medication, which Beth may have been high on at the time of the shooting that she was suspended for.

Tertiary Extroverted Feeling [Fe]: Although Sarah isn’t a particularly emotional person, she is good at picking up on other people’s feelings and using them for manipulation. She knows how to turn on the charm to get what she needs from people, and can tailor her approach to the specific person she’s trying to manipulate. Though she isn’t very direct with her feelings, she does care about the people in her life very much, especially Kira and Felix. Sarah is also pretty good at slipping into the lives of her clones when she needs to impersonate them. When she impersonates Alison to interrogate Donnie, Sarah admonishes him for the way he’s speaking to Alison (even though she’s torturing him). She’s fiercely protective of the people she cares about and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe from harm.

Inferior Introverted Intuition [Ni]: Sarah lives moment to moment and doesn’t have a clear plan for her future. She survives, and that’s about it. Once she discovers the clones, she begins to utilize her inferior function more frequently. Although she initially toys with the idea of just taking Alison’s money and running off with Felix and Kira, she can’t. She understands that there’s a bigger picture. When it comes to protecting the people she cares about and getting to the bottom of who she really is, Sarah can be extremely goal-oriented. When Sarah and the rest of the Clone Club come up with plans, Sarah is good at remaining on target and not getting sidetracked.

Enneagram: 8w7 Sp/Sx

Quotes:

Siobhan Sadler:: I’ve seen your elaborate ruses and guises before, but how do you do this, how do you fake your own demise beneath a train? Sarah: Wouldn’t you rather know why? Siobhan Sadler:: I don’t care to know why. Sarah: Because I saw a way to dump Vic and get out of that life and get away with Kira. Siobhan Sadler:: Ha! Take her on the run with you? Brilliant. New clothes and a Jaguar do not a mother make.

Sarah: Bloody Mrs S. She’s right. Felix: Really? Sarah: What kind of mother am I if I snatch my own daughter? Felix: A crap one, I agree. Sarah: And if I rob Alison, run now and never tell my… Felix: Clones? Sarah: Oh, God, we do have to find another word for that.

Alison: This one’s some kind of lowlife grifter! How do we know she didn’t push her? Sarah: Oi! I already told you… I didn’t want to be her. I got stuck! I was running from my own shit. Alison: [Alison sarcastically replies] I can only imagine. [Sarah punches Alison for pointing a gun at Felix] Sarah: You point a gun at my brother again, I will kick the living shite out of you!

[Dr. Bower tells Sarah she’s unfit for duty as Sarah argues back] Dr. Anita Bower: By your own admission of blackout or psychotic break, I can’t recommend you for duty. Sarah: That’s not going to work for me. Dr. Anita Bower: I understand, you’re a cop, but this is my job. Sarah: Can you read that back again? That, um, ‘I’m missing myself. I glitched.’ Does that sound stoned to you? Dr. Anita Bower: ‘Glitched’ sounds stoned? Sarah: Tweaked, gakked, spun. Ahem! Allevia, Superprax, Draxifil. What’s the difference between a mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic, again? Dr. Anita Bower: Beth… Sarah: Oh, no, I’m sorry, I’ve been confused. I mean, it’s very confusing. Um… Antidepressants, antianxieties, SSRIs. Serotronax… That one’s a stimulant. Dr. Anita Bower: We have known each other for a while, now, Beth… Sarah: Yeah? That’s where you’re wrong. Dr. Anita Bower: You have constantly tested me with your personal appeals for prescriptions. Sarah: I know. My bad. So I’ll just explain to the board that I shot this poor civilian after mixing up all your overlapping scrips. Or am I making progress? [Sarah smiles]

[Sarah shows Felix the $75,000 she took out of Beth’s bank account] Felix: Is this evil twin’s money? Sarah: Yeah, $75,000 in cash. That’s enough to lose Vic, lose the twin-sister weirdness, just somewhere safe with my daughter. Is that so much to ask?

Sarah: I do have one really idiotic idea. Felix: Oh, good. Sarah: I need to be in two places at once, yeah? Felix: Yeah… Sarah: Well, if anybody can do that, we can. Felix: Are you effing serious? Sarah: Yeah, suddenly, I am.

Sarah: Look, Art’s already looking for the killer. I shadow him as Beth, I let them figure out what’s happened to her, and then, when I find that out, I can jump off and deal. Felix: ‘Deal’? I’m beginning to realize crazy’s genetic.

Sarah: Something really weird just happened at the train station. Felix: What? Sarah: I saw a girl kill herself. Felix: Ew! A jumper? Sarah: Yeah, and she looked exactly like me, Felix. Felix: What you mean? Felix: Oh! You robbed her body. Sarah: No, she left her bag on the platform. Felix: Isn’t that essentially robbing her body?

Sarah: I’m going to shoot Paul’s balls off. Cosima: Wait, just, um, just squeeze them, ok? He’s our way into this whole thing.

Sarah: [Sarah sits with Kira] You’re so independent, aren’t you? Hmm, monkey? Little monkey? Siobhan Sadler: Remind you of anyone? Sarah: Yeah, but I was much angrier, wasn’t I? Even small. You were the one who introduced me to punk rock, though. Siobhan Sadler: Yeah. You took all of the attitude, none of the politics.

Sarah: He’s a bastard. Felix: Who? Sarah: Paul. Beth loved him, but he wouldn’t love her back and he wouldn’t leave her. Felix: Mm. Well, he’s certainly changed his tune now, hasn’t he? Sarah, he’s falling for you. Sarah: God, what a mess.

Sarah: Of all the things that scare me right now, Fe, this one’s the heaviest. Felix: You know she can’t wait to see you, right? Sarah: Yeah, thanks. She’s the only thing that really matters, you know?

Sarah: [Sarah tells Paul that he’s a mole and killed the woman who loved him] You’re a plant, and she killed herself because the man that she loved turned her whole life into a lie. She knew you didn’t love her and she couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t leave. And, now, she figured it out. Paul:[Paul holds his gun on Sarah] This isn’t true. It’s a sick test. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Sarah: She trusted you. How could you do that to her? Paul: You think I had a choice? Sarah: Just tell me why. Paul: They don’t tell us why.

[Donnie is questioned by Sarah who’s impersonating Alison] Donnie: [Donnie hears the voices of the neighbors] The whole neighborhood is here? What kind of irrational nonsense is going through that head of yours? Sarah: Hey, watch your tone, Donnie! Donnie: Alison, get your frazzled, PMS shit together! Sarah: Hey! You watch your tone! Your wife is the rock of this family! You will no longer speak down to her! Am I clear? Donnie: Yeah.

Paul: I’m not doing any of this by choice. Sarah: Right, so, they forced you to be Beth’s monitor for two years, without ever knowing why. Paul: You’re some kind of hustler. You understand leverage, right? The difference is, you chose to infiltrate Beth’s life, to screw her boyfriend, right on this counter. Sarah: And you weren’t even you. Paul: And you weren’t you, either.

Vic: So, you faked your own death so… You could move on to a new scam, hmm? Who are you now, Sarah? Sarah, it must be so confusing. Sarah: You have no idea.

[Sarah tries to convince the drinking Alison that Donnie is not her monitor] Sarah: Look, Paul’s military. He’s a professional. You’ve known Donnie since, what? Alison: High school. Sarah: Right, high school, yeah? So how could he be your monitor?

Art: Sarah, my partner killed herself. I didn’t see it coming. Help me. Help Beth. I know you care. Sarah: There’s a reason we look exactly the same, Art. Art: Okay. Sarah: [Sarah starts to cry] Why the prints match, and the DNA’s all screwed up. But you have to promise to protect me and my daughter. Art: I will. If that’s what you need, I promise.

Sarah: I just want to know who I am. Siobhan Sadler:: You’re still you. Remember that. You’re a survivor.

Cosima: Sarah, what are you going to do? Walk into the Dyad with a gun and just start shooting people? I mean… Sarah: Yeah.

Sarah Manning (Orphan Black): ESTP was originally published on MBTI Zone