(intriguing music) - Feodora, Victoria's half-sister literally turns up on her doorstep, and I think immediately we see Victoria is very conflicted.
I hardly know her, she left me to get married when I was... - Oh, forgive me.
You arrive playing this kind of character knowing that you are going to fracture energies and relationships.
- You didn't even come to my wedding.
- Did it ever occur to you I couldn't afford it?
- Well, if you'd asked I... - What, beg money from my little sister?
(humphs) She's quite emotional, has quite a high energy which is quite interesting to puncture the regal dynamic and atmosphere in the palace, I think she's quite irreverent to that.
- Drina, might I have your permission to withdraw?
So you might say she's manipulative and two-faced, but I think she just thinks she can manage to keep different plates spinning at different speeds.
Speed this one up a little bit, slow that one down, and try not to let anything crash on the floor.
- What sort of trick do you play on her?
- It really feels like a character that we haven't met before, and there's something so irresistible about Feodora as well, she's kind of coquettish and feline, and dark and dangerous at the same time, and hilarious as well, in the scenes she's so, so funny.
- I have nothing suitable to wear.
- Well, you must look through some of my clothes, after all, I have no use for them at the moment.
- You're so thoughtful Drina, but don't you think the skirts would be a little short?
She's one of those people that is tactless and has absolutely no idea that that's how she's coming across.
She's one of those unfortunate people that rub other people up the wrong way.
- Oh.
Oh.
How is my little niece?
And I don't think she's self-aware enough to realize that she's a huge contradiction.
It's interesting playing someone who's using their emotions to try and get other people to understand her.
For her it's not a manipulation, she really just wants to be understood, and to be listened to I think, and heard.
I want so much to be of use.
- She talks to Albert in a way that Victoria sometimes doesn't, and that's that she talks in fact, not feeling, and although Albert has deep feeling, his transactions are often in facts.
And her emotional observations that she passes to Albert are often based in fact, so he's got no reason to doubt those things.
- My sister has always lived in a world of her own making.
When she was little I think she preferred to talk to her dolls than to me because they would not answer back.
- She's fantastic at manipulating him therefore.
- She just wants attention, and for anybody who just wants attention it comes from a place of pain and loneliness I think, so it's not rocket science.
