Honor Swinton Byrne deeply and truly believed that she had buggered up her audition to play Princess Beatrice in the new Prime Video miniseries A Very Royal Scandal. (That’s the term she uses—buggered—and she uses it twice: “I was so nervous. I didn’t think I looked like her. I was like, I don’t know—I’m not really what they’re looking for. And really kind of buggered up, buggered up, that audition.”) Right after, she went to meet her boyfriend at the nearby pub for a pint. “I didn’t want it, anyway. It’s okay,” she told him through tears. But then, a few days later, she recieved a phone call: She’d got it.
Byrne had done her research for the role. She watched old documentaries about the royal family, like The Queen at 90, as well as other public interviews in order to study Beatrice’s mannerisms. “She just comes across as warm and a little bit nervous sometimes,” she says. Then, she tried to determine what that personality looked like when the cameras were off. “I just wanted a more private side of her, this slightly more melancholic, slightly less on energy,”
OK, so she was prepared, and the audition clearly went well. What’s all this about buggering up, then? Byrne admits that it’s just her insecurity talking. “I struggle with that sort of weird thing of sitting in a room, with lots of other people auditioning for the same role. That’s when I get my imposter syndrome.”
Yet she has acting in her blood: Byrne is the daughter of Tilda Swinton, an Oscar-winner considered among the greatest thespians of her generation. When she was eight, she visited her mother on the set of Michael Clayton. “I remember she would be doing something slightly different in every take. I said, ‘Oh, you did something different,’ or asked her, ‘Why did you do it like that?’” Byrne recalls. Her mom responded: “Oh, it’s nice to give some range.” So going forward, Byrne always tried to do that too.