"I'd go into coffee shops and order coffee in her voice"- When Erin Doherty shed light on her bold acting method while portraying Princess Anne

Erin Doherty is currently making waves with her latest Netflix series Adolescence, but most would remember the actress as Princess Anne in The Crown, a role that earned her great acclaim and fanfare. Though she is still quite young, she has done many successful roles in many equally successful films and shows, which make her a standout talent.

But standout talents do not just become stand out. The path to Erin Doherty's success is visible through the dedication that she put into playing Princess Anne, down to getting her voice right. She even went around practicing Anne's voice, even in random venues, to nail it before she started with the role.

Speaking about this in a 2019 interview with Harper's Bazar, Doherty revealed:

"When I got the call from my agent about it, I genuinely didn't know anything about Anne, and when I went away to do my research, I really, really fell in love with her. I watched so many YouTube videos of her when she was younger, just trying to get the voice right mainly, because it's not only so different to mine, it's just so different."

She elaborated further about getting the voice right, adding:

"It's its own weird sound, and I knew I couldn't go into the meeting room without getting it 100 percent. I'd just walk around London listening to her voice, and I would practice it. I'd go into coffee shops and order coffee in her voice, just trying to make it feel normal, trying to live in it a bit. That was my tactic."

It is no wonder that she played this role to perfection and became a household name in the process.

She also explained in the interview how people reacted to her going around talking like Princess Anne.

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"It was really weird!"- Erin Doherty on using Princess Anne's voice in public spaces

To practice her craft, Doherty committed more than usual and used Princess Anne's voice in public. But this often led to "weird" reactions. After discussing her method with Harper's Bazaar, Erin Doherty also answered the obvious question about the public reaction.

She elaborated on this:

"It was really weird! Normally, if I go into a coffee shop, I'll have a nice chat, but honestly the moment that voice comes out, no one really wants to talk to you. Everyone became very efficient about the way they did things, and I didn't have any real conversations with anyone."

This interesting tidbit reveals a lot about Erin Doherty's craft and her dedication to the same. She also compared this public reaction to being a royal, and the inadvertent isolation one has to face at the top. She added:

"Yeah, in a way, it made me feel sorry for them, because it's quite a lonely place to be, as a royal. The moment you try to engage with anyone, there's this shift, even just based on the voice. It's really quite alienating."

Her work in The Crown gave her a lot of career momentum, and she went on to make more prominent appearances in Chloe (2022), Reawakening (2024), and A Thousand Blows (2025), among many others.

We expect to see Erin Doherty soon in other projects. Meanwhile, Adolescence is now streaming on Netflix.