The latest season of The Crown brought us a new actress in the role of Queen Elizabeth II: the award-winning Imelda Staunton, who has long reigned as one of the onstage and onscreen greats. Staunton is the final actress to portray the royal in showrunner Peter Morgan’s The Crown, with the concluding season arriving later this year.
Staunton’s brilliant performance in Season 5 has given audiences much to look forward to before they say farewell to the Emmy-winning series. The penultimate season saw the queen endure the dramatic fragmenting of her family, a fire at her home of Windsor Castle, and the scrutinizing press. “I think this is a great series for unraveling and [my character] has many issues to deal with, which makes for very good writing and, hopefully, very good viewing,” says Staunton. “It’s certainly good to play people with problems and difficulties; it’s much easier to perform that.”
Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki), Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton), and Prince Charles (Dominic West)
Staunton had her work cut out for her, both in balancing the challenges within the storyline and in the preparation that takes place on a production like The Crown. “You’ve got the research but then you’ve [also] got the real person. You’ve got footage and real speeches and then you have imagined speeches, so you have to try and weave all that together,” says Staunton. “That’s been really hard, I’m not going to tell you a lie. It should be hard. It’s such an extraordinary piece of work to be involved with. It’s been really interesting to do and a huge challenge.”
Staunton rose to the challenge, beautifully portraying a queen trying to maintain order in a chaotic world. With a performance that has already earned her BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, Staunton is well-deserving of a celebratory dinner party.
