FOLLOWING THE LEADER

“The queen is everything, and the way her character radiates outwards is absolutely critical for the stability of the show,” says Morgan. “Really early on, I’d imagined who the three would be.” Foy inhabited the throne for the first seasons, set between 1947 and 1964, winning two Emmys and a Golden Globe. Colman picked up the baton for the next two seasons, which take place from 1964 to 1990, snagging an Emmy and a Golden Globe; and the lauded Staunton has been the last of the trio, seeing Season 6 to its fictional end in 2005.

Robert Sterne (casting director): Claire had the most difficult job of everybody because she had to start it. She set the bar. 

Peter Morgan (creator, writer): Claire might’ve been a little bit more considerate and been slightly less fabulous . . .

Sterne: Claire didn’t play the grandeur or the haughtiness of
the monarch. You feel that you completely understand [her
as a] woman.

Claire Foy (Queen Elizabeth, Seasons 1 and 2): Peter’s Elizabeth is a quite naïve, sheltered person. She is thrust into a world she isn’t prepared for, where she has to make big decisions around globally significant events and navigate her way through people’s sometimes sinister agendas while trying to maintain her familial relationships, all the while grieving for her father. Ultimately, I think she’s a very kind, loving, strong, determined, funny, clever person. Sometimes she’s allowed to show it, and sometimes she’s not.

Sterne: Once we’d seen what Claire was doing, we had to sit down and think, Well, who is going to be next? 

Morgan: It was a list of one — Olivia — and the phone call lasted one second. We said, “Would you like to . . . ” Yes. It was one of those, Oh, well, that was nice.

Olivia Colman (Queen Elizabeth, Seasons 3 and 4): I totally tried to do an impression of Claire the first few weeks. But at some point you’ve got to trust yourself. 

Sterne: Then you go on to Imelda, who’s one of the finest that we’ve got, but also has an accessibility to her. When she said yes, we had a party.

Imelda Staunton (Queen Elizabeth, Seasons 5 and 6): When you’re asked to play the queen, you’re not going to say, “Well, hang on a second.” You think, Oh God, are you sure I’m the right person? The added weight was not only the original people we were trying to portray, but then everyone who has portrayed them before. You have to go through that and accept it and fear for your life, and then you just go forward. 

BUILDING CHARACTER

Long before the cameras rolled, the cast and crew spent months preparing, from reading head of research Annie Sulzberger’s 100-page “protocol Bibles” to working with vocal coaches and Polly Bennett, a movement coach. Some even turned to the supernatural.

Staunton: They said, “Would you like to have a word with Polly?”
I thought, I’m just walking into a room, aren’t I? I couldn’t have been more wrong. [And] every scene, someone goes, “I think that vowel needs slight lightening.”

Meg Bellamy (Kate Middleton, Season 6): I worked with William Conacher, the vocal coach. That was probably where I nerded out the most. I made verb tables. 

Josh O’Connor (Prince Charles, Seasons 3 and 4): I’ll create a book and it’ll have drawings or colors or images that I’ve printed to create a memory bank for a character. From day one, I got an email introducing me to the research team. I dropped them an email asking for books on Charles, and a day later a courier turned up with eight. 

Gillian Anderson (Margaret Thatcher, Season 4): The Crown has an exemplary research team. Whether it was an initial Thatcher pack or me asking for details on every last cabinet member and what their specific roles and leanings were, or even [asking], “Is there archival footage of this particular joke she told while canvassing?” — the team was there to provide. 

Morgan: Gillian will start preparing a year or two in advance. Olivia will prepare in the taxi on the way to the shoot. She probably won’t know where the scene comes in relation to anything else. She may have even forgotten what part she’s playing. And in makeup something will happen, and when she gets there on set, she is instantly brilliant.

Colman: The hair and makeup and wardrobe departments are unbelievable. Three-quarters of your work is done before you set foot on set. 

Tobias Menzies (Prince Philip, Seasons 3 and 4): Neither Olivia nor I are from upper-class circles, and there’s a particular way of behaving that we needed guidance about. We had to ask ourselves what it’s like to be waited on, to be in rooms where everyone is looking at you.

Emma Corrin (Princess Diana, Season 4): There was one documentary called Diana: In Her Own Words where [Diana’s] narrating her own life story. I got this sense of her as being incredibly strong . . . but at the same time, having this innate sadness and vulnerability that she also wore, I think, just as boldly as her strength. It [was] kind of the basis of any research I did after that. 

Helena Bonham Carter (Princess Margaret, Seasons 3 and 4): My aunt was a great help. She’s a graphologist, so she analyzes handwriting. Margaret was vulnerable. She had a lot of anxiety. 

Benjamin Caron (director): The first time I met [Helena], she had just had a séance. Helena asked [Princess Margaret] her permission: Could she play her? Apparently Princess Margaret told her that she needed to tidy herself up a bit, but that she thought she’d be perfect.

SETTING THE SCENE

Morgan never confused fact with fiction. “I’m not a historian. I’m not saying, ‘This is what happened, folks.’ I’m saying, ‘This might have happened, and I hope you enjoy it,’” he explains. But when it came to the look of The Crown, teams assembled by costume designer Amy Roberts, head of hair and makeup Cate Hall, and production designer Martin Childs were charged with keeping it real. 

Cate Hall (hair and makeup designer): Recreating iconic and well-known characters in an authentic and believable way is our main focus. 

Amy Roberts (costume designer): A huge amount is required just to have the background knowledge. Each script contains an event which naturally demands research . . . endless photographs and references. Everything’s got to be made from scratch. I’m used to projects where [the characters] are normal people who have a wardrobe and reuse it. This is a group of people who didn’t do that. 

Jonathan Pryce (Prince Philip, Seasons 5 and 6): You begin to take for granted that everything’s going to be correct and right. You have a scene where you’re going through photographs and letters and everything about it is accurate — the address, the date.

Bellamy: We did some university scenes and I looked in this vending machine, and there were all the chocolate bars rebranded to be of the time.

Dominic West (Prince Charles, Seasons 5 and 6): I loved tea because there would be proper cake, proper buns, proper biscuits.

Pryce: There was the moment in Season 5 [in a] vast hotel room in Moscow where there’s a slight confrontation between Philip and the queen. A lot of productions would have [had] two people sitting on a sofa. We were placed almost on either side of this enormous room full of enormous paintings, swagged [out] and draped, and [with] massive beds. We also had the privilege of going into a lot of ready-made homes, mansions, and palaces. 

Martin Childs (production designer): We go to some pretty spectacular locations and therefore we have to build sets that are equal to those. But it’s pointless going to a location to shoot something small, you know?

West: You walk into a room and it looks like they haven’t done anything, and then you talk to the owners or the people who are standing guard and they say, “No, none of this is our furniture, none of the knick-knacks. That’s all set dressing.” 

Sam Woolf (Prince Edward, Seasons 5 and 6): We’ve shot in so many extraordinary — freezing, often — houses.

Elizabeth Debicki (Princess Diana, Seasons 5 and 6): I think a lot of what you see in The Crown is actors doing unbelievable acting to not look cold because we’re in these drafty houses in summer clothes. They should teach a class in drama schools, like temperature evasion. 

THE END OF AN ERA

Season 6, which is divided into two parts, covers Charles and Diana’s lives postdivorce, Diana’s death, William meeting Kate Middleton, and Camilla and Charles’s wedding in 2005. Soon after filming began, the cast and crew also found themselves mourning Queen Elizabeth, who died on September 8, 2022. “We carried on,” says Staunton, “but it was quite difficult, to be honest.” 

Now, those involved with The Crown are adjusting to leaving behind not only the trappings of royalty but also each other. They’re taking notes from those who came before them — “We have a WhatsApp group,” says Anderson of her graduating class — but admit to some quivering of their otherwise stiff upper lips.

West: I’ll miss everything. I’ll miss the clothes, the cars, the houses, the crowds. And I’ll miss people bowing to me, particularly . . . I’ve tried to get my kids to do it. My wife said, “Why do you want crowds of people waving flags in your face?” and I went, “I don’t know! But it was so nice!”

Lesley Manville (Princess Margaret, Seasons 5 and 6): I shall miss our little jaunts to stately homes, which is not a bad way to earn a living. 

Marcia Warren (Queen Mother, Seasons 5 and 6): I’m going to buy a bulb for my garden called crown imperial (fritillaria imperialis). We have to shred our scripts; I’ve put mine in the compost heap, so my garden will be royal by next year. 

Staunton: I’m going to be bereft for a while, but I’ve felt, from the beginning, so utterly proud to be part of this.

Debicki: We all feel that we’ve given whatever we could, so there’s a kind of peace to it. 

Pryce: It can go out loud and proud, this show.

Morgan: It was time. It’s worked, and it’s worked beautifully.