On the evening after a royal ball at Queen Elizabeth’s Scottish castle, British Prime Minister John Major and his wife retire to the royal guest room. We write at the end of summer 1991, the Prime Minister has danced with the Queen. Now he looks out the window; on the forecourt of the castle, he sees a tipsy Prince Andrew messing with his friends. Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson walk arm in arm into the night, their ball gowns dragging across the lawn.
Major frowns at his wife. The older members of the royal family, he says, are ‘dangerously otherworldly’ – that very afternoon the Queen ordered Major to pay for the expensive renovation of the royal yacht while the United Kingdom is in recession. He calls the young people ‘lazy and privileged’, they have ‘lost their way’. Prince Charles and Diana’s marriage is on the rise – the princess has confided in him over the champagne that she won’t last six months – and the marriages of brother Andrew (to Sarah) and sister Anne (to Mark Phillips) are also shaky. Polls show that the British people are more than tired of the rotten monarchy. “Charles doesn’t understand that his only asset is his wife,” Major says at the window. “Soon the whole thing will collapse.”
Hoopla in the UK
Including this scene from episode 1 of the fifth season of , which was shown to the press at the beginning of October The Crown has caused quite a bit of fuss in Britain, starting with the former Prime Minister. He has never spoken so badly about the royal family, the 79-year-old Major said furiously. And that Prince Charles has urged him to abdicate his mother (to oust, write the British newspapers, feel free to say ‘turn off’, so), as can also be seen in episode 1? ‘A barrel-load of nonsense’, fulminated Major, evil fiction that damages the royal family.
A riot was born, especially when a few days later also Lady Judi Dench got involved. In an open letter in The Times The actress, who is said to be good friends with Charles and his wife Camilla, wrote that the series is “cruelly wronging the royal family” and that she fears that “certainly overseas viewers” will take everything for granted. Dench urged a disclaimer: Netflix should make it clear with every episode that The Crown fiction, ‘out of respect for a queen who has served her people so faithfully for seventy years’.
Politicians had already pushed for such a disclaimer before, but Netflix has so far refused. Writer and creator of the series Peter Morgan kept saying over the years that everything was based on double-checked historical facts. “We all know that the early 1990s were a difficult time for the royal family, and King Charles will almost certainly have some painful memories of that time,” he told Major’s critique the day after. variety. The series certainly doesn’t paint a false portrait of him, he also said; he did not comment on a disclaimer.
‘Hear, hear’
That’s what actor Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes), who plays the old Prince Philip in the fifth season, during a group interview via Zoom in which de Volkskrant has been moved. ‘A disclaimer?’ he sniffs – it’s October 11, so before all the commotion. ‘Only when the politicians who so desperately want to place a disclaimer at their meetings with ‘this is not theatre, this is real life‘, shall The Crown do it too.’ He shares a three-seater sofa with Imelda Staunton (Elizabeth in the series) and Lesley Manville (Princess Margaret), both of whom nod in approval:Hear, sir.“So much has happened in the royal family,” Pryce continues, “some storylines you can’t make up.” “And they weren’t made up,” adds Manville. ‘It is an exceptional family with exceptional stories. Everything Peter Morgan does, he does with a lot of research, integrity and respect.’
The disclaimer is now in place. As of October 22, Netflix has stated with the series: “This fictional dramatization is based on true events and tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.” Fictional dramatization – how clear do you want it, overseas viewer?
Introducing: the top three new protagonists in Season 5 of The Crownwhich runs from 1991 until not long before Diana’s death in 1997. (Season 6, the latter, is in the works.)
Imelda Staunton (66, Vera Draketwo Harry Potter films, countless other roles) is Elizabeth in seasons 5 and 6. At five feet, she’s even shorter than the queen, who was sixty-three, but otherwise a spitting image according to British media, physically more similar than her predecessors Claire Foy and Olivia Colman. Does she feel pressure now that Elizabeth has passed away so recently? ‘Yes,’ says Staunton via Zoom, ‘although the shooting for season 5 had already been completed by then. But we all feel a great responsibility to do justice to the real members of the royal family as the events are more recent. Season 1 could still be seen as a costume drama, but this is all much fresher in the memory.
‘You play, as it were, two people: the public Elizabeth, whom you can study on visual material, and Elizabeth in the private sphere, of whom you can only guess what she was like. You don’t know for sure if that part is true, but the point is to do it as truthfully as possible.’
Dominic West (53, he was under (much) more in the The Wire) is Charles in those for him so painful nineties, in which the atmosphere between him and Diana became more and more frosty – and she the public’s favourite. Then there was ‘tampongate’, a leaked phone call from him and Camilla in which he says he wants to ‘live in her pants’ and reincarnate as her Tampax. “The phone scene!” West says with apparent pleasure, yes, that was one of his favorite scenes to play. “Like the transfer of Hong Kong, because of the great white admiral uniform.”
West said when he was cast on the series that the producers made “a big mistake” because he doesn’t look a bit like Charles. When asked if that’s important, he now says: “Not at all, it even turned out to be an advantage not to look like him, it emphasizes that it is dramatized fiction and not a documentary.” Laughing: ‘Although – a little resemblance would have helped so people understand who you’re representing.’
Elizabeth Debicki (32, starred in movies like The Great Gatsby, Widows, Tenet) is like Diana the discovery of the new season. “I had a list with one person on it,” said creator Peter Morgan about the casting of the tall (1.91 meters) Australian actress. Debicki makes Diana into a woman who is as annoying, at times, as endearing with her perpetual slanting gaze. And who is on a collision course with the royal family, in which she feels so lonely. “I won’t be silenced, I’ll fight to the end,” she says in the trailer, with a clip of the infamous BBC interview in 1995. Diana’s brother has always said she was manipulated into giving that interview. The Crown promises to show how it all really went.
Season 5 of The Crown will be available on Netflix from 9/11.