One of the biggest TV shows in the world returns to screens this week for part one of its sixth and final season.
The Crown has become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon since it first hit Netflix in 2016. Then, it documented the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II after the untimely death of her father, King George VI, which led to her prematurely taking on the mantle of the biggest name in global monarchy.
The past five seasons have explored everything from tensions between the young Elizabeth and the roguish Prince Phillip in the early years of their marriage, the highs and lows of Princess Margaret’s tumultuous love life and the public’s initial love affair with Charles and Diana before their marriage implosion.
It’s also explored Diana’s infamous Panorama interview with journalist Martin Bashir and the queen’s many dealings with various governments and prime ministers, most memorably Winston Churchill, played by John Lithgow and Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson.
Ireland has played its own role in the series, with focus given to the IRA’s killing of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his two grandsons in Sligo in 1979.
The overarching theme of The Crown is the immense pressure placed on the Queen’s head throughout her 70-year tenure to maintain the relevance and popularity of the British monarch in an ever-changing world – and to ensure its survival.
On Thursday 16 November, the first four episodes of the much-loved series will be released while part two lands on Netflix on Saturday 16 December.
So what can we expect, and what time period will be covered?
The first few episodes will explore the summer of 1997, shortly after Charles’ and Diana’s divorce. Charles is stoically sticking to tradition in Balmoral, while Diana is courted by the Fayeds in the South of France, giving the young princes a taste of luxury yachts, video games and movie nights.
The fatal car accident which killed Diana, Dodi Fayed and their chauffeur in Paris in August 1997 will naturally be a key moment in the upcoming series. Netflix has previously said that the lead-up to the fatal incident as well as its aftermath will be shown, but not the crash itself.
The show will explore how the subsequent vast outpouring of public grief catches the Queen off-guard while Mohamed Al Fayed processes the loss of his cherished son. Hoping that the news will bring him and the royal family together in shared grief; he instead finds himself increasingly shunned.
The sixth series will end around the time of Prince Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005.
The cast
The final iteration of the cast will reprise their roles for this last hurrah.
Imelda Staunton stars as the Queen, while Jonathan Pryce plays Prince Philip and Lesley Manville plays Princess Margaret.
The focus of the previous season, Charles and Diana, will again be played by Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki respectively.
Khalid Abdalla takes the role of Dodi Fayed, while his father will be played by Salim Daw.
Olivia Williams once again plays Camilla Parker-Bowles while Bertie Carvel reprises his role as Tony Blair.
Background difficulties
The off-screen controversies and criticism around the show can be almost as interesting as what we see on-screen.
The queen’s death in 2022 came two months prior to the airing of the fifth season of the show, with some commentators stating that Netflix should have pressed pause on releasing it so soon, believing it to be insensitive towards the royal family and indeed, grieving British monarchists.
The passing also threw a spanner in the works of filming of this final season. Series creator Peter Morgan told Deadline shortly after the queen’s death, “The Crown is a love letter to her and I’ve nothing to add for now, just silence and respect. I expect we will stop filming out of respect too,” which later Netflix confirmed.
Imelda Staunton, who plays the matriarch, reflected on the period in an interview with The Wrap, saying, “We started filming season six on Wednesday, and the queen died on Thursday, so we then stopped filming for a while and then resumed.
“I personally resumed the day after the funeral. So there’s no doubt about it, it was a very sad and strange time for all of us, knowing that we had to continue. We couldn’t stop completely. So you have to regroup and carry on.”
The death also led to the consideration of editorial changes too. Netflix chief Ted Sarandos told Variety that although ending the series with the queen’s death was discussed, they ultimately opted to stick with the intended 2005 end point. “It was the cutoff to keep it historical, not journalistic. I think by stopping almost 20 years before the present day, it’s dignified.”
Another criticism the show continuously faces is that it doesn’t make it known clearly enough that it’s a fictional series. Ahead of the premiere of the fifth season, actress Judi Dench joined the chorus of well-known people speaking out against the “cruelly unjust” and “inaccurate and hurtful” fictionalized depiction of the British monarchy.
She wrote an open letter calling on Netflix to add a disclaimer to the show, to relay to viewers that it’s a fictional drama series and that huge liberties are taken with storylines.
“The closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism,” she wrote. “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged.”
A disclaimer was subsequently added to the description of the trailer for series five, but one has not yet been added to the series itself.
The show has maintained that it is clearly a fictional dramatization. Show creator Morgan has said that while the series and the blurring of fact versus fiction is a “minefield”, that, “Dramatists are born to write about kings and queens. That’s what we do.”
What are the cast saying?
Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Princess Diana, said she found filming the scenes in the run-up to her death “heavy and very manic, and incredibly invasive”.
“At times it’s almost like an animalistic response to being pursued by that many actors playing the Press, because there’s nowhere you can go and you only have to be in a situation like that for about a minute before you realise this is completely unbearable.”
Khalid Abdalla, who plays Dodi Fayed, echoed her sentiments. “I remember…when we finished shooting on one of those days, I went home. As I was going home, out of costume, in the car, any time a scooter would go past me, I would flinch with the ghost of its presence.
“There’s a part of that recreation of a circumstance where you then, as a viewer, might watch and go, ‘At some level, I understand their reaction. I understand why they would want to escape them.'”
Debicki says she clearly recalls the real life events of Princess Diana’s death, although she was aged only seven at the time, growing up in Australia.
“I have a very distinct memory of watching the funeral when I was a kid and watching the two princes, as I think everybody does. And I was really young, I didn’t really understand what was going on.
“My mother was devastated and I was trying to process, so that was my first imprint memory of that.”
When asked about her feelings on finishing up with the role, she said, “I’m extremely grateful for this job, in so many ways. It’s been such a huge gift to play the part and to do it in the show and to have people see the work and respond to it.
“I don’t take any of that for granted, any day that I work. It’s always hard to leave something like that behind,” she said.
Dominic West says his character, Prince Charles, starts off the season in the “worst period of his life… breaking the news [of Diana’s death] to his sons and trying to help them mourn.”
He continued, “There were some really heavy scenes this season and a lot of tears for Charles. And I love crying, so it was great.”
The tide then turns: “The last third [of the season] is much happier for him as it ends with his marriage to Camilla, which was unquestioningly the best wedding I’ve ever had. It was amazing… 500 extras bowing.”
Recalling other happy on-set memories, he said, “Then there was a lot of set piece teas at Windsor Castle or Christmas day or family photos or weddings, where all of us were there and they were the biggest joy, because you’re in a room with a bunch of people you’ve got to know quite well by this stage and everyone looks like a member of the royal family so it’s hilarious – and then Imelda walks in and you go, ‘My god, there’s the queen!’
“It’s sort of like being in a touring panto show eventually – it’s great.”
What’s coming in part two of the final season?
Time moves fast in season six as the action moves onto an adult Prince William’s early romance with Kate Middleton and of course, the aforementioned big wedding.
The final word…
…must go to the lady herself, Imelda Staunton, the final actress to take on the coveted role of Queen Elizabeth II in this series. She reflects on the queen’s early days of her reign.
“Even seeing footage from when she was a young queen visiting the Commonwealth, we think… Diana had all the crowds but go and watch footage of the queen and Philip in Africa visiting all these places, millions of people turning up.
“I loved doing those scenes. Because I felt like everyone, her whole life, was sitting on her shoulders and I think that’s what people feel when they met her; that you’re looking at history.
“The monarch is a thing. Royalty is a thing and to remain as dignified as she was, was an extraordinary feat.”
The Crown – Netflix, from Wednesday 16 November
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