Olivia Colman is not usually the kind of actress who buries herself in character research. But gearing up to play Queen Elizabeth II on the next two seasons of The Crown required a different approach.

“My Dropbox couldnt cope with the amounts of stuff their research department sent,” Colman told Vanity Fair recently. “Footage of royal visits since film was first used. You watch her move and how her movements change. . . . The way she holds her handbag. . . . Im still not very good at physical copying. One of the directors kept shouting, Queen, not farmer. So Ill keep trying.”

Colman has already faced certain obstacles that her predecessor, in the role, Claire Foy, was able to avoid—like re-creating Queen Elizabeths fluency in French during scenes depicting the Queens 1972 state visit to France. That five-day visit marked Britains entry into the Common Market, and included a state dinner hosted by President Georges Pompidou at Versailles. During the trip, the monarch was able to pay a final visit to her “Uncle David,” the Duke of Windsor, whose 1936 abdication thrust Elizabeth in line for the throne. (The two shared a 15-minute private conversation in his Paris home—a scene which will hopefully be re-created by The Crown mastermind Peter Morgan.)

Fortunately for Colman, she had a co-star—Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Princess Margaret—who was willing to help.

“Im all right with French from school, but her accent is impeccable. So I asked her to record [my dialogue],” said Colman, revealing that Carter sent her homemade video tutorials. “She took the job so seriously. She did it so I could see her face, and then I got some voice recordings as well, where she would start from the beginning. If it was a tricky word, shed say it again, nice and slowly, like she was the voice department. . . . Shes a really extraordinary woman. Shes so warm and so sort of embracing of everything, and shes lovely. Im really very lucky to spend my days with her.”

Colman revealed that Elizabeth and Margarets relationship is on steadier ground in Season 3. “They have to come to blows, but theyre sort of the only ones who know each other that well and the only ones that each other can really trust,” said Colman. “[Elizabeth and Margaret] did everything together as children—they were taught in the same room, slept in the same room, everything. They saw the world from the same windows. Then they just get foisted into these positions that they didnt really want.”

Margarets ire is instead directed more towards her husband, Lord Snowdon—but Elizabeths marriage to Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies) will also smooth out, according to Colman. “I think theyve gone into a much steadier phase in the 1960s. Theyre older, more mature,” she said. This is not the first time that Colman and Menzies have shared scenes—the duo co-starred in The Night Manager, and met through a mutual friend years before. “Wed been in the pub and pissed together a few times. Hes so brilliant.”

In addition to taking audience members behind Buckingham Palace doors, the next season of The Crown will also tackle major historical events, like Prince Charless 1969 investiture at Caernarfon Castle. (If photographs of The Crowns exacting re-creation are any indication, it looks like producers have devoted the same level of production-design detail to this sequence as they did to Elizabeths coronation.) And while The Crowns new season will not get into Beatle-mania, according to Colman, it will dive into the 1976 Montreal Olympics (which the Queen helped open), a Princess Margaret trip to Los Angeles, and the space race.

For Colman, the most difficult challenge has been summoning the Queens steely stoicism during moments of terrible sadness. The new season, for example, will chronicle the Queens decision to flout royal protocol in order to pay proper homage to her first prime minister, Winston Churchill, by attending his 1965 funeral. Another heartbreak comes in 1966 when the monarch visits Aberfan after the Welsh village loses 114 schoolchildren in a tragedy.

“My problem is, I emote,” explained Colman, an acute empath. “The Queen is not meant to do it. Shes got to be a rock for everyone, and [has] been trained not to. Weve discovered that I cant do it. But Ive come up with a little trick. Its sort of shameful.”

“Whenever anyone is telling me something sad, which just makes me cry, they give me an earpiece and they play the shipping forecast,” said Colman—referencing the BBC Radio broadcast in which wind reports for the British Isles coastlines are delivered in tones soothing enough to put soldiers to sleep. “Its somebody going, And the winds are fair to midland . . . blah, blah.” With the earbud in, Colman said, “Im sort of not listening to what [the other actors are] saying. Im trying so hard to tune into the shipping forecast and not cry.”

She acknowledged how preposterous this strategy might look in print: “Really good actors around the world are going, Fucking hell!” But in Colmans defense, even the real Queens composed facade crumbled during the Aberfan visit. “She was very moved by what she saw,” recalled one doctor, who had been on the ground in Wales during the monarchs visit. “She tried to hold back tears, but it did make her cry.”

Studying Queen Elizabeth has given Colman newfound sympathy for the monarch. Growing up in Norfolk, Colman found the royals “amazing and endlessly fascinating. . . Then I went through my later teens and student years and sort of thought, I dont know if its right that we have a monarchy. But now, less the monarchy, more the Queen, I think, is extraordinary. As a young woman in her twenties, she made a vow to serve her country, and shes still doing it into her nineties. I cant think of anyone else who could do that.”

Colman also has a new respect for how much privacy the Queen gave up for her position.

“When the royal yacht Britannia was decommissioned, I think thats the first time—in all the footage I saw—[you] see her just really struggling to keep it together, because that was the one place they could play. They built a slide on the boat for the kids. No one could take photos of them there, out in the middle of the sea. It must have been like seeing memories just being killed off.”

Given how much of her life the Queen has already given the public, Colman has a hard time considering which question she might ask the monarch if she were ever to get a private audience.

“Im not sure Id be brave enough to ask, because what I would want to know is stuff that she shouldnt have to tell me,” said Colman, struggling to think of a question. “Would you have done anything differently? Would you have thought about yourself more if you had your time again? She sort of was bound by everyones ideas of what she should do and how she should play every moment. But I think she became stronger and stronger as the years went by.”

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Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Julie MillerJulie Miller is a Senior Hollywood writer for Vanity Fairs website.