An actress famed for playing a senior royal in the hit Netflix series The Crown has revealed a surprising everyday benefit of her on-screen persona: it gets her coffee served faster.
The Accent Advantage
Erin Doherty, the 33-year-old star from Crawley in West Sussex who portrayed a young Princess Anne, admitted that adopting the royal's 'posh' received pronunciation gives her an edge when ordering. Speaking to The Observer magazine, she contrasted the experience of using her natural south London sound with the authoritative tones of the Princess Royal.
"I remember ordering coffees in a Princess Anne voice, and it was massively different, which was interesting," Doherty explained. "Without being stereotypical, it got me my way quicker. My coffee was in my hand." She believes the speedier service stems from an unconscious bias, noting: "There's an authority to voices like that. And whether we like it or not, you respond differently."
Breaking Free from Typecasting
Doherty's performance in the third and fourth seasons of the royal drama was so convincing that it led to public misconception. She said most people assumed she was genuinely posh and often looked "surprised" when she spoke in her real accent. "You could see it in their faces," she observed. "Not in a mean way, but you're like, you're just hearing my voice right now, and having a bit of an out-of-body experience."
This success, however, presented a professional challenge. In a 2022 interview with the Sunday Times, the actress confessed she deliberately turned down a stream of upper-class roles that came her way after playing Anne to avoid being typecast. While it was "nerve-wracking" to decline work, she took a "gamble" to ensure she wasn't stuck playing similar characters.
Lessons from a Princess
Despite initially knowing little about her, Doherty says she learned a great deal from portraying the famously frank and headstrong princess. "Anne taught me you have to care less about people's opinions," she stated. She attributed much of Anne's steeliness to her childhood, interpreting it as a response to not having a typical mother figure present, a dynamic dramatised in The Crown with Olivia Colman as the Queen.
"My choice... was to make [Anne's steeliness] come from this childhood of not having that mother figure there as you would have wished," Doherty told The Times. She added that the royal family's life completely revolved around the monarch's duty, which "actually completely detaches her from the beating heart that is a family."
Fans of the actress can next see her embracing a very different vocal style. She will resume her role as Mary Carr in the second series of A Thousand Blows, this time using an exaggerated London East End accent, marking a stark departure from the halls of Buckingham Palace.
