Netflix has released a trailer for the third season of its hit royal drama The Crown, with the Oscar-winner Olivia Colman taking over as Queen Elizabeth II from Claire Foy.
Colman isn’t planning to emulate the British monarch to a tee. “If people think they’re going to see the actual queen they can sod off. It’s a drama,” she said last week.
The series, created by the Frost/Nixon writer Peter Morgan, progresses from 1964 to 1976. The first episode airs on November 17th, with Helena Bonham-Carter also joining the cast as Princess Margaret and Gillian Anderson set to portray Margaret Thatcher.
The two-minute preview shows historic events including the Aberfan slag-heap disaster of 1966 unfold, while tensions rise within the Windsor family itself as the queen approaches her silver jubilee. As Colman proclaims that "the place has fallen apart", she seems to refer both to a nation in the grip of crisis and to the inner politics of Buckingham Palace, with Prince Charles becoming involved with Camilla Shand (later Parker-Bowles) and the appointment of the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson among other catalysts for change.
As well as Colman, Bonham-Carter and Anderson, the series has undergone a full cast overhaul. Tobias Menzes replaces Matt Smith as Prince Philip, Charles Dance plays Lord Mountbatten, and Josh O'Connor (The Durrells) is Prince Charles. Emerald Fennell – of the BBC's Call The Midwife, and also the screenwriter of the second series of Killing Eve – takes on the role of Camilla.
The show has been a critical hit since it first aired, in 2016, although the notoriously tight-lipped Netflix has never released official viewing figures. It has also been an expensive endeavour, with the first series rumoured to have cost almost €120 million for 10 episodes. – Guardian
