Netflix gathered The Crown’s new stars – Imelda Staunton, Elizabeth Debicki, Lesley Manville, Jonny Lee Miller, Jonathan Pryce, and Dominic West – for a press conference in support of season five. The new season arrives just two months after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and the series’ Queen, Oscar nominee Imelda Staunton, shared her feelings about the thousands of people who stood in line to pay their respects to the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
“I think they felt such huge respect for someone who kept her promise. She just kept her promise and she did the job,” said Staunton. “It amazed me, people’s response to her. I just thought, ‘God, you really admired this woman.’ People say ‘love’ – I think they admired (her). Here we are celebrating a woman who, with her own face – you know what I mean – this woman who just did the job, not anything outside the job, not the stuff around it, just straight line.”
Staunton added: “My thing is that with her connection with horses…horses have blinkers and you just go straight on. And that’s what I feel she always did.”
Imelda Staunton found that one of the biggest challenges of starring as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown was playing someone whose position required her to suppress and internalize her emotions.
“That’s a wonderful acting exercise. There are days I think I might have got it and then days I absolutely haven’t got it,” explained Staunton. “It’s hard but when you’ve got the writing there, that does probably about 80%, if not more, of the work. But the challenge is getting the audience to come inside, hopefully, and see what you’re feeling without showing what you’re feeling, hopefully. I think for all of us, this family – apart from John Major and maybe Diana – we are locked. We are confined with our behavior. But what Peter Morgan is trying to do is give us a life inside that confinement. That’s really, really satisfying to try and investigate.”
Emma Corrin earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as Princess Diana in season four, and Elizabeth Debicki takes on the role of the People’s Princess in season five. Debicki admitted to feeling nervous about playing Princess Di and confessed it wasn’t a role she could easily walk away from at the end of the day.
“The show does feel like an enormous responsibility,” said Debicki. “It’s an enormous challenge. And it’s an interesting process, for me, I found. And it took me some time to understand you’re bringing your interpretation to Peter [Morgan’s] interpretation of this person. But then the people watching the show come […] with such attachment and memory and a sense of ownership, too, over these characters in a way. Not only from the people who’ve played them before but also from their living memory and their history. So, you have to leave a kind of space for that, and it’s sort of a dance between all those things.
It’s a beautiful process, but it’s also very challenging – and very rewarding, I think, too, because we get to work with each other and get to do these wonderful scenes.”
Prince Charles was the target of sharp criticism following his breakup with the incredibly popular Princess Diana. Dominic West steps into the role of Charles as he’s experiencing backlash over his divorce.
During the press conference, West expressed hope that viewers will at least give the Charles he portrays in season five a fair hearing.
“He’s one of the most scrutinized, publicized lives in the world, so it’s hard to know what people know about him,” said West. “This period covers a time when he got…he didn’t get a bad press but he maybe…because it was a divorce and there are always two sides in a divorce, that I suppose viewers heard one or the other, and hopefully there’s a bit of perspective now.”
West continued: “I think that’s part of the reason for doing it. I obviously love the guy. […] Inevitably you take their side or you give them the benefit of the doubt. I hope that will maybe happen when people see Charles in this. I don’t know.”
Season five of The Crown gave Dominic West his first opportunity to work with his son, Senan, who plays Charles and Diana’s son, Prince William.
“It was very moving, actually. He’s never acted before because Covid stopped any school plays or anything. I’d never seen him act and he had this amazing innocence to him that was extraordinary to watch,” said West. “It’s very difficult when you act with children to have a physical intimacy, obviously. And with him that was obviously not a question, which made it much easier. But then when I found when it was more emotional and when it was a difficult scene, it made it much more difficult. You were slightly split in your head between, ‘Okay, we’re acting this part but that’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I’m talking about your mom but not your real mom.’ That, I found quite difficult. But generally, it was really moving and I think he enjoyed it.”
Jonny Lee Miller dived into the research to prepare to play John Major, even though growing up in a socialist household Miller thought he knew who Major was and what he was all about.
“He got a lot of flak back in the day, you know? And so, the more I learned about him, the more I began to like him. We had a lot of similarities. We’re from the same part of the world,” said Miller. “And then the more you learned about the work that he did, my respect for him grew massively. So, that’s what you’re trying to do, what anyone’s trying to do when you’re playing whoever you’re playing, is you’re trying to inhabit someone, and you’re trying to sort of fall in love with them. That’s always a fascinating journey, and especially with somebody, I think, who was very misunderstood.”
Jonathan Pryce chuckled when asked if playing Prince Philip and being part of The Crown has changed his perception of the British Monarchy.
“Changed it? No. It’s reinforced my feelings about them. Looking at Prince Philip, it’s made me much more aware of the kind of man he was behind the headlines. I mean, he spent most of his life getting bad press as a kind of grumpy, irascible person who kept saying all the wrong things usually in the Colonies. And finding out more about the man who was behind all that has changed my view of him, essentially,” explained Pryce.
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The Crown season five premiered on November 9, 2022. Filming is currently underway on season six.
