The Crown’s final episode marks the bittersweet ending of Peter Morgan’s dynastic show.
Many reunions are emotionally charged, with elation accompanied by the poignant knowledge that the moment is finite. But no reunion has had quite the dramatic makeup of the one that took place during the filming of “Sleep, Dearie, Sleep,” the 60th and final episode of The Crown. There was the show’s executive producer, Stephen Daldry, who helped develop the series with its creator and writer Peter Morgan and directed The Crown’s first episode, returning behind the camera. There was the once-in-a-lifetime gathering of actors in front of the camera, including not only Imelda Staunton, who has played Queen Elizabeth for the last two seasons, but also Olivia Colman, who portrayed the queen in Seasons 3 and 4, and Claire Foy, who starred as the young monarch during the show’s first two seasons. And then there was the subject matter, which included the planning of both a funeral and a wedding.
Across its six seasons, The Crown has charted the queen’s path from a 21-year-old mourning her father’s death to a wise world leader and matriarch. Through Morgan’s compassionate eyes, audiences have come to know and feel for the fictional Windsor family in all their triumphs and through their many tragedies. So it’s a fitting end that “Sleep, Dearie, Sleep” — named for the Scottish lament the queen selects to be played on the bagpipes at her funeral — offsets the contemplation of her own mortality with the future of the monarchy, as Prince Charles (Dominic West) marries his longtime love, Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams). “You want to give people excellence,” says Staunton, “and I think this piece of work is the jewel in this crown.”
Three generations of The Crown's Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman, Imelda Staunton, and Claire Foy)
COMING FULL CIRCLE
Bringing the three Queen Elizabeth actors back together was, explains Morgan, “always, always what the episode was going to be.” The queen’s ongoing inner dialogue about whether to abdicate is embodied by Colman as her middle-aged self, who counsels that she step down, and her younger self (Foy), who reminds her that she took an oath to serve until her death, saying, “It is not a choice. It is a duty.”
The former queens, both of whom won Emmys for their roles, needed little convincing to join the farewell. Remembers Morgan, “Olivia — I just rang her up and said, ‘Look, I’m thinking of,’ and she said, ‘Are you going to give me an extra scene?’ I didn’t even finish the sentence. I went and saw Claire personally. She was just as excited. A big part of the draw for both was doing a scene with Imelda. I didn’t need to do much persuading.”
Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) didn’t require a great deal of wooing either, despite executive producer Suzanne Mackie laughingly recounting, “I think I may have gone down on bended knees.” Daldry, who previously directed episodes in both the first and second seasons, earning an Emmy for his work on the latter, says, “Coming back to direct again, just at the very end, has been one of the great joys of my professional life. . . . It did feel very much like coming home.” Adds Morgan, “It meant a lot to me personally. It returns the show to the original voices that started it. It’s only right and proper. And it’s perfect.”
Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton)
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
Daldry, who directed Morgan’s 2013 play The Audience starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth, brought his experience and his share of ideas to the last episode. Says director of photography Adriano Goldman, who worked with Daldry on the 2014 drama Trash and has been with The Crown since its first season, “Stephen elevates whatever he’s doing . . . there’s always a bit of magic realism that he loves and brings to the show.” It was Daldry’s idea that Viola Prettejohn, who plays the teenaged version of the queen in Season 6’s flashbacks, appear and salute the queen in the show’s final moments. It was also his suggestion that instead of filming Morgan’s draft, which had both Colman and Foy in the same scene speaking to Staunton, they give each version of the queen’s younger selves individual scenes. “The way Stephen choreographs the whole thing, they are never face-to-face because Imelda doesn’t want to face herself, so she’s avoiding eye contact,” says Goldman. “This is 100 percent Stephen.”
The director also added a major plot point to the final episode. Although Morgan knew early on that “Sleep, Dearie, Sleep” was going to revolve around Charles getting married and the queen considering whether to gift him the crown, it was Daldry who suggested that Elizabeth also be seen planning her funeral. (In real life, Queen Elizabeth died during the filming of Season 6.) As the episode begins, Elizabeth, who is now almost 80 years old, bridles at the plan, code-named London Bridge. Watching Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) approach his ceremony with downright glee — “I’m finding it all rather stimulating,” he tells her — does little to engage her in meetings involving potential military parades, professing she would rather have a 20-minute funeral in Scotland.
As she wrestles with the imagined end of her life, one of the episode’s most powerful moments unfolds: The queen, hearing the bagpiper performing his morning music outside the dining room, calls him in and asks him to name his favorite lament. When he says it is “Sleep, Dearie, Sleep,” she asks him to play it for her, her eyes filling with tears as she imagines it being played in her memory.
“I wrote that scene where she talks to the piper in about three minutes. I think it’s my favorite scene in the episode. It may be my favorite scene in the season,” says Morgan. As for the moment where the maid, overhearing it in another room, bursts into song, “I did not think of it. That was not written. That was completely Daldry.”
Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton)
ENDING ON A HIGH NOTE
Ruminations on death aside, the spirit on set had more than its share of cheer — thanks in part to what Pryce calls Daldry’s “sense of fun,” especially involving the wedding. Williams, who plays Camilla, suggested that rather than being formal, the proposal should take place in a potting shed where she is smoking while planting. In Charles’s eager quest to find her and finally ask for her hand in marriage, “there was a lot of running through gardens,” remembers West, who played Prince Charles in the last two seasons, “and running is not really my strong point. [But] it was all quite down-to-earth in a way, which is what we decided Charles and Camilla were about.”
Far more elaborate was the joy of filming the wedding celebration following the couple’s civil service. “Everyone was on such a high,” says Williams. “It was beautiful and illegal amounts of fun.” York Minster, which is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Northern Europe, was filled with five hundred extras and music by the Worcester Cathedral Choir and the Chamber Orchestra of London, and accurate, multipage programs with the hymns and readings were passed to all. It was, says West, “unquestionably the best wedding I’ve ever had.” Adds Pryce, “I think it was possibly more magnificent than the real thing.”
The highlight of the event, and arguably the episode as well, is the speech given by the queen, the anticipation of which has caused the characters — and audience — to wonder if she will in fact retire. “Peter brings this kind of suspense,” Goldman says. “You really think for a few moments, You know, maybe let’s just reread history and then give The Crown a different finale.” Instead, Staunton’s queen stands her ground, delivering a monologue filled with humor and warmth. “She had a speech that was a page-and-a-half of solid speaking, which is almost unheard of in film,” says Williams. “She had to stand up on a stage and deliver this solid speech all day. She must have done it about 30 times. And she was faultless. It was like Live at the Apollo with Imelda,” she continues. “She was magnificent every time.”
While the final goodbyes were as bittersweet as the episode’s initial reunions, the show’s creators say they are at peace. “I hope [it’s] a very satisfying conclusion to that story,” says Mackie. “We want it to feel like it’s sort of a happy-ever-after for them. It felt like the right place to end optimistically, with a sense that life must go on, that this family must move on.”
Morgan has no ambivalence about The Crown’s family doing the same, confident that the job has been well done — a fact marked by the show’s first five seasons winning a total of 143 awards, including being the first drama in history to sweep all seven major categories at the Emmys.
On one of the last days of filming, the crew marked Morgan’s birthday by presenting him with a cake in the shape of a typewriter with “701” written on it, alluding to the first episode of a seventh season. “That will never exist,” he says. “They accompanied it with a photograph that was taken of me when I was writing the first episode,” he laughs. “I looked so much younger.”
