Swedish stunner Rebecca Ferguson is about to become one of the most famous faces on British telly.
The model-turned-actress is playing the title role in the BBC’s blockbuster summer series The White Queen.
But the 29-year-old has confessed that she almost missed the part of a lifetime by taking to the wilds of her native Sweden to try to put audition angst out of her mind.
“I went for a seven-hour hike, leaving my phone behind for the first time since the last audition,” reveals Rebecca.
“I’d even been sleeping with it. When I came back I had 15 missed calls and texts from my agent saying, ‘Where are you? We need to fly you to London tomorrow.’ So I jumped on a plane for the fourth and final audition. It was between me and another girl.
“I didn’t sleep and my agent called at 7.15am and said, ‘It’s yours’.”
Just minutes later the producer showed up in the hotel lobby.
“I remember running down in my pyjamas and asking for a couple of minutes,” laughs Rebecca.
“I went back upstairs and thought, ‘I need to put my high heels on and then I’ll feel a bit more in control and powerful.’ The job started from there. I had a read-through in front of everyone, flew home to Sweden and two days later I moved to London to practise horse riding. It was a crazy week.”
Made in conjunction with an American network, the 10-hour drama is one of the BBC’s most ambitious projects. The epic series is set in the 15th Century against the backdrop of the War of the Roses and is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s historical novels, The Cousins’ War. Rebecca plays commoner Elizabeth Woodville who secretly marries Edward IV, played by Max Irons. With weddings, coronations, a dozen state banquets and loads of battles, it was a mammoth job for the production crew with filming taking place in Belgium around historic Bruges.
And Rebecca, who has just been signed by Gladiator director Ridley Scott for another major project, has a lasting memory of her days as a British royal.
“In episode one I had a scene with Max where I had to grab a dagger from his belt which was really sharp,” she explains. “The stunt coordinator taught me to hold the knife but what we hadn’t discussed were the studs on his belt! There was blood pouring down my leg and to this day I still have a scar.”
The White Queen, BBC1, Sunday at 9pm
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