"When you’re playing a real person, you never want to be ghoulish."
Claire Foy has earned a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix's The Crown, but she's not so sure the 91-year-old royal would enjoy watching her life played out on the small screen.
The 33-year-old actress covers the October issue of Town & Country magazine, on newsstands Sept. 12, and admits that she's apprehensive to have the queen watch the series.
"I would hate the idea of her watching it. When you’re playing a real person, you never want to be ghoulish," Foy explains. "I don’t want to pick apart a person. I want to invent someone. So I would hate for her to watch it and think I overdramatized anything."
That being said, The Crown plans to switch out the cast of the series every two seasons to accurately depict the royal family at different times in their lives, which means Foy will only be portraying Queen Elizabeth for a little while longer.
"I’m in massive denial. I don’t feel like it’s over," she says of her inevitable exit from the show. "I’m waiting for it to hit me at some point that this stage of my life is finished, but it hasn’t happened yet."
Back in December, ahead of her big Golden Globe win, Foy spoke exclusively to ET about what she'd do if the royal family ever reached out in response to The Crown.
"I think they're much too reserved and 'keep calm and carry on' about things. No, absolutely no kind of contact at all. I'm not, in any way, expecting anything," she said. "I'd probably have some sort of an existential crisis if she ever [reached out]. It'd be a little weird!"
