‘The Crown’ stars reveal what it was like meeting the royals

She may play the Queen on TV, but when it comes to chatting up real-life royals Olivia Coleman is as nervous as they come. The Crown star appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week to chat about the fourth installment of her series, but instead she recalled the time she met a real-life royal herself while visiting Buckingham Palace.“It’s not like most flats I’ve been to. I was very nervous… but it wasn’t the Queen that I met, I met Princess Anne,” the Oscar-winning actor revealed on the November 11 show. “What was hilarious was that it turns out everything we’ve done in The Crown was toned down compared to as it is in the actual palace.”The 46-year-old admitted that she was at the palace for a special event so it wasn’t an average day to be sure. Still, “there were endless people with gold frills on their shoulders and all sorts of different outfits and different uniforms… it was an extraordinary experience,” she added. “It’s one I will never forget. I sort of said yes mainly for my mom and dad. I took my dad and he couldn’t walk very fast so he was in a wheelchair so he got a really good seat, he got near the front. They had an absolute ball. Very lucky, it doesn’t happen to many people. And it was also hilarious.” Coleman’s fourth-season Crown co-star, Gillian Anderson, perhaps felt a little less pressure when she visited the palace since she doesn’t play a royal on the series. (She plays the Iron Lady, a.k.a. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, on the show’s most recent installment.) Anderson also appeared on The Late Show to discuss her own experiences meeting the royals, and she revealed that she’s actually met the Queen on a few occasions now—not that the Queen really knows who she is.“I’ve met her a few times and very often there’s somebody who walks with her and whispers in her ear to tell her who it is she’s about to meet,” Anderson dished. “She meets a lot of people and she’s not going to remember who everybody is… she has a Queen whisperer.”If that all sounds very Devil Wears Prada-esque to you, Anderson wasn’t done there. “You’re not meant to speak before you’re spoken to so it can be a little bit awkward,” she said. “She may ask you questions about yourself or how you’re enjoying the thing that she’s just been told that you do,” she continued before recalling one particular visit. “[Once] it was a very, very big room and at the end all of a sudden the room felt like it started to get smaller and smaller.”The former X-Files star (who may or may not have been wearing pants during the interview) recalled looking over her shoulder and seeing men with the epaulets on their shoulders walking in unison in a line towards guests, making the room smaller like a trash compactor. “It was like in Star Wars…,” she continued. “You’re meant to put the drink on the tray that they’re holding and then skedaddle!”If Coleman’s portrayal of the Queen and has taught fans anything it’s that the woman is a very busy lady. So when she says the party is over, the party is over. End. Stop.[video_embed id='2049925']BEFORE YOU GO: 'Horse girl' from Alberta can gallop and jump just like a horse[/video_embed]