“It’s great to be able to tell the really personal and private stories about these people, and to humanise them in that way”: The cast of The Crown on season five of the Netflix series

The phenomenally successful global hit The Crown is back for season five. As with the previous instalments of the series, it takes viewers behind the names and titles we know so well to try and illuminate their behind-closed-doors relationships and interior lives. Peter Morgan is once again the mind behind the fictionalised dramatisation based around historical facts, except this time around they’re brought a bit closer to home as events spill into the 90s: a decade blighted by turmoil for the Royal Family in the form of declining public support, failing marriages and unbecoming scandals, such as the dreaded “tampon-gate”.

As ever, there’s also a host of new faces picking up the baton from their predecessors in order for the actors to keep up with the ageing of the characters, and the lineup is as top-shelf as can be: Imelda May is a restrained new Queen Elizabeth II, Jonathan Pryce an increasingly estranged-from-his-wife Prince Philip, Lesley Manville a dazzling, if lonely Prince Margaret. Dominic West brings a rather rakish Prince Charles, Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, an uncanny, if significantly taller Princess Diana (wait till you see her in that revenge dress…), Olivia Williams the vilified Camilla, plus other new characters joining proceedings, including Jonny Lee Miller as a disconcertingly fanciable John Major.

The Upcoming had the pleasure of hearing from the top-billed cast ahead of the new series landing on Netflix at a press conference moderated by Edith Bowman.

It is the eve of the release of this season of The Crown – how are you each feeling about that?

Imelda Staunton: I think, quite excited, actually. This is a working week for me – I’m filming in the morning. But I think we’re very excited because I think we do feel extremely proud to be part of it. And proud of what we’ve done in this fifth series.

Jonathan Pryce: I second that, Elizabeth the second. I’m looking forward to it. I’m also looking forward to seeing all of it. I’ve not seen all of it, unlike lots of journalists around the world. So I’m looking forward to seeing how well I did.

Lesley Manville: I’m excited! It’s weird so many journalists I’ve spoken to have seen all ten episodes and I haven’t! So I’m genuinely looking forward to getting on the sofa and watching it, but it’s slightly odd because we’re still absolutely in the depths of filming season six, we’re all filming at the moment as well. So when you’re kind of in it, it’s weird to step out and watch yourself.

Dominic West: I have a bit of relief – I don’t know why. I feel quite relieved that we sort of got here and that the dreadful anticipation is over. And, also, we’re working at six o’clock in the morning, aren’t we? So we’ve got to keep a bit of a lid on it.

Elizabeth Debicki: The same as everyone, I’m very excited. I am really relieved as well. And I haven’t seen all of it. I’m actually super glad it’s coming out on Netflix because then I can just catch up! I’m very, very proud of what everyone’s done. So far, the bits I’ve caught, I was just incredibly impressed by everybody. And it’s also lovely to all be together for a day – I never see anyone because you never invite me anywhere!

Jonny Lee Miller: I’m really excited. I don’t get to do many fancy events, so this is very exciting, actually. It’s really nice to see everyone because – spoiler alert – John Major’s not in season six. So I haven’t seen these guys for a long time, and it’s almost a year ago that I worked on it. I was just thinking yesterday how that’s flown by… but I’m really proud to be a part of it. It’s nice to be here.

What was the appeal for you to take on this character, Jonny?

JLM: When you’re asked to be in a show that you think is really just so expertly done on all levels – it’s just high, high calibre across the board in all departments – you’re just happy to be asked… thrilled. And then I went through a sort of audition process as well. But it was just super exciting to be a part of quality work and it always is really.

One of the things that’s extraordinary about the show is the collaboration process with all these wonderful departments behind the scenes, the craftspeople who are such a big part of the process, in terms of the preparation and on set. Is that collaboration important.  for you all?

IS: Oh, totally! But also, they’ve done four series, so we’ve come in and they all know what they’re doing. And that’s rather nice. We’re sort of riding on their wave of success in a way. I was doing a scene yesterday and I cannot tell you the detail that went into giving me breakfast, it was absolutely extraordinary. And from every department, no one’s going, “Oh, that’s fine, they won’t see it” – no one does that. It’s absolutely got to be to the n^th degree correct. And that’s one part. And then, of course, Peter Morgan investigates the emotional part – that’s another area. But all the costume, makeup, it’s all just top drawer. We want to live up to that and serve it well.

JP: It’s also very useful when you come in, taking over a role in something like this and you’re very trepidatious, nervous: you seek their approval. You seek the approval of the voice coach and the movement coach and – we didn’t have an acting coach did we?

IM: Maybe we should have had one. That would have helped.

JP: Everyone is very welcoming, that’s a great help.

LM: When you start out, you’re on your own. You’ve got this character to create and the baton’s been passed on, so you do all that homework by yourself, but then the last three or four months building up to starting to shoot – it’s all of those layers that get put on with these brilliant departments. And, for me, I could start to see Margaret when I started to work with hair and makeup and with wardrobe. Then she all came together. And the voice as well, with the voice coach.

JP: And it helps that we’re all new, so we’re all doing it together. I think it would be really difficult if you were the only one coming into a long-running series – if she was the same old Queen and I was the new Prince Philip – but we get that sense of support from each other. 

As an audience, we’ve been pretty astonished by how much we’ve learned from The Crown – even about events that seem well-known. Did any of you have the same experience?

JP: Well, it was a great reminder because, unlike, certainly, the first series, when some of us weren’t even born – I was six when the events were happening in the first series – so it was a great reminder of what you were doing in the 90s. 

DW: Also on that one, as part of the backup support, you have this enormous, amazing research department, which has every video, every interview, every question you ever wanted to ask about your character or about the royal family – and that’s a huge resource that you can only learn from and it’s really fun. It’s really interesting that sort of research, and it’s all there.

Elizabeth, were you nervous to play someone so iconic? Was it a role that you could easily walk away from at the end of the day?

ED: Yes, and then no. Was I nervous? Oh, definitely. I think it would be fair to say we were all nervous. It felt like – and the show does feel like – an enormous responsibility. But, like we were saying, we are supported by this network of people who understand that pressure and want us to be able to do it the best we can. It’s an enormous challenge. It was an interesting process for me, I found, and it took me some time to understand that you’re bringing your interpretation to Peter’s interpretation of this person. But then the people watching the show come, like Jonathan was saying, 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. And 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. But there is no walking away. No. Well, we’re all still in it; we’re still working through this. I think of it as sort of being under the waves in a way, and I think we’re still swimming. I could probably answer that question in six months and I don’t know how easy or hard it will be. I don’t think terribly easy.

You mentioned dance – Lesley, can you tell us about the scenes with Timothy Dalton?

LM: Yes. Timothy Dalton comes into episode four and plays Peter Townsend, who I’m sure everyone knows was Margaret’s erstwhile love. And we had to spend quite a lot of time learning to do a nice little dance together. But it’s very sweet; it’s a very good device on Peter Morgan’s behalf, because, obviously, she’s going through, I think – and it can be interpreted through my research and through what Peter’s written – she’s going through a lonely chapter of her life, and transitioning into an older phase of her life, which for her is difficult because she’s been so glamorous and iconic. And how do you marry all of that within this kind of odd life on your own? So he brings him back in and you see them together. And it’s so lovely, but it serves, I think, a great purpose of highlighting maybe what she could have had, hasn’t had, and subsequently now doesn’t have at all. So it’s a very clever device. But those scenes are really charming and she gets quite animated and sparky and fiery and fun with him again, so it’s nice to tap into that side of Margaret in that episode.

Jonny, we’re very much loving your John Major. How do you feel about it and what was the essence of bringing this character to life?

JLM: Jeez, yeah, the essence! I mean, I did a lot of reading and watching of him, obviously, but what was cool was I grew up in a very socialist household – a very left-wing household – and I’m pretty like, lefty, right? And, as a youngster at the time, a young man… we thought we knew who John Major was and what he was about, and he got a lot of flack back in the day. And so the more I learned about him, the more I began to like him, and we had a lot of similarities. We’re from the same part of the world: he’s from Worcester Park, I’m from Kingston. We both went to state grammar schools, we had theatrical parents – so I had all these things in common. Then the more you learn about the work that he did, my respect for him grew massively. So that’s what you’re trying to do – really, what anyone’s trying to do when you’re playing whoever you’re playing is you’re trying to inhabit someone, you’re trying to sort of fall in love with them. So there’s always a fascinating journey, especially with somebody I think who was very misunderstood, actually, and who I respect greatly.

Someone who he clearly understood, through the dramatisation of the character, was the Queen, and that’s a really brilliant relationship to watch across the season. Was it fun for the two of you to work together on that relationship?

IS: Yes, it was fun!

Imelda, as a dramatic character, the Queen is often defined by her passivity. In several episodes we witness the celebration of doing nothing and hiding one’s interiority as a vital aspect of the royals’ role. As a performer, what are the biggest challenges of such a part?

IS: That: holding it in. I suppose that’s what you try to do. Whether it works or not, who knows? But that’s a wonderful acting exercise. And there are days I think I might have got it, and then there are days, “Absolutely I haven’t got it, I’ll try again tomorrow” –  because it’s hard. 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. I think for all of us, this family – I suppose apart from John Major and maybe Diana – we are locked, we are confined with our behaviour, but what Peter Morgan is trying to do is give us a life inside that confinement. And that’s really, really satisfying to try and investigate.

Has filming this series changed your perception of the British monarchy and their lives?

JP: Changed it? No. It has reinforced my feelings about them. I suppose, 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 all his life – well 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.

Dominic, you play alongside your son, who’s Prince William. How was it for you to work together as a father and son on screen?

DW: It was very moving, actually. He’s never acted before because Covid-19 stopped any school plays or anything, so I’ve never seen him act, and he had this amazing innocence to him that was extraordinary to watch – as well as the fact, obviously, he’s my boy. And also just the ease of which – it’s very difficult when you act with children to have a physical intimacy, and with him, that was obviously not a question, which made it much easier. But then I found, when it was more emotional, or when it was more difficult – the scene – it made it much more difficult. And 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 mum, but not your real mum”, and so that I found quite difficult. But, generally, it was really moving. And I think he enjoyed it. It didn’t look like he was, but, actually, he was loving it.

He definitely enjoyed the time with you, Elizabeth, because I know you had a special bond with the kids?

ED: Yeah, I loved my kids on the show! We’ve been so incredibly fortunate with the casting of the boys – all the kids in the show – but William and Harry, they’re incredible children. They’re really new to it, they’re all very fresh. I think, for a lot of them, it’s their first or their second job. They’re so smart and generous and kind and I just I’m so much happier when they’re on set with me. And as soon as they go, I miss them so much. I always text our casting director and say just thank you for finding these amazing kids, because it’s such an important part of the story..

Dominic, do you think the viewers will discover a new side of Charles with this season?

DW: I don’t know. I mean, it depends. His is one of the most scrutinised, publicised lives in the world, so it’s hard to know what people know about him. This period covers a time when… because it was a divorce, and there are always two sides in a divorce, that I suppose viewers saw or heard one or other, and hopefully there’s a bit of perspective now, and I hope everyone gets a fair hearing. I think that’s part of the reason for doing it, and I obviously love the guy. I’ve never heard it put so well as Jonny just did – that you have to start falling in love with the character – but actually, you do, and inevitably you take their side or you give them the benefit of the doubt, and I hope that will maybe happen when people see Charles in this. I don’t know.

There are 12 royal families in Europe alone – why do you think the British Royal Family has had so much interest among the public and filmmakers over the years?

JP: Because they’re the best one.

DW: With the best clothes.

JP: Obviously the world sees them in public events, and all the pomp and finery that goes with it. But European royal families don’t have the same lifestyle: they mostly live as ordinary people, use public transport and have jobs. Ours don’t – the job is being the Royal Family, and there’s a kind of mystery to it. And I think it’s all the costumes and carriages and all that keeps the interest.

DW: I mean you saw it at the Queen’s funeral: just nowhere in the world does anyone do theatre like that. Just the costumes and the cars, I think – nowhere does it like that.

One of the many incredible things about the show is the dedication to the sets and the detail, and how much work goes into trying to represent that kind of grandeur. Did that surprise you when you were on set for the first time when you started filming?

LM: You go to some amazing stately homes and realise halfway through a scene that it’s a real Reubens behind you, so it’s quite impressive, all of that. But having said that, some sets are built and they’re pretty spectacular – that level of detail in the sets that are built as well. 

JP: When I watched it, I couldn’t work out how they got those shots of the front of Buckingham Palace. I recently went to Windsor Castle for real and I had a bit of a look around and thought, “Oh, fake Windsor Castle is better.”

What are your memories of the decade of the 90s? And how was it to almost be back in that period? Jonny, they were your Trainspotting days, right?

JLM: Yeah pretty good [laughs]. That was my decade, it was downhill from there. A little bit uphill then downhill.

Part of the job is to act out stories that the world thinks it knows well already. Is the way that Peter dramatises these stories and these characters something that’s interesting for you?

JP: I don’t know, I just think it’s all part of our story, and that we enter into it as characters in a story. So it’s just like normal filmmaking really – you don’t think about those real events, hopefully. I don’t.

LM: What can happen in The Crown is, you can actually sort of ignore the real events. It’s more about what these people are feeling, and thinking, which is what – when the public watches a real royal event – you don’t know, you have to imagine: how are they feeling at this point? And the great thing about our scripts is that it can absolutely, with a microscope, hone in on what any of these characters are feeling about that, and that they come to these events with their own stories going on; their own lives are still ticking away underneath. So it’s great to be able to tell the really personal and private stories about these people and to humanise them in that way.

JLM: I think, especially as an outsider now and as a viewer and as a fan of the show, I think that that’s what Peter does so generously and empathetically and with real class, actually – and that’s what I think the audience has always connected with about the show. It’s about, as Lesley says, humanising people, and therefore understanding what that life might have been like, or what that life is like. And more understanding is just better.

Elizabeth, apart from the script, what was the most important research and prep for you, going into this role?

ED: Well, like Dom was saying, there’s this enormous archive that we can dip into. I think some of the things that I was pulled to the most were often these very quick – it’s really a deep dive that archive, so we have access to all these little snippets – for me, it’s all these little archive snippets of footage that never made it to the news. So there’s no voiceover it, there’s no agenda to it: it’s just raw footage of people. And it’s often, for me, as the actor looking at how to access the character, it’s always these little off moments… It’s hard to explain, but how somebody opens the car door, why they’re doing something with their body, the interaction, the sort of physical language – that was fascinating for me. But we also had access to these incredible coaches that we’ve spoken about. So much of interpreting these characters is also a real technical challenge, and it’s also really satisfying because we have dialect coaches and amazing movement coaches as well. And so that was a layer. And we had the time to do that work properly, which I found to be really rewarding and juicy.

What’s also interesting is how the costumes help drive the narrative, through what or how the character is wearing something. With Diana, because she’s so known and she’s so driven by her style and those outfits that are iconic in certain moments, how did you work with Amy and Sidonie Roberts on what you would wear and wouldn’t wear as the character?

EB: Amy and Sidonie, they’re so brilliant, and it is a really deep and fundamentally psychological conversation you have about accessing these people in the way that the writing does, who they are behind a closed door and finding that silhouette – although I think what made Princess Diana so interesting and iconic with her fashion choices is that she brought the private into the public sphere, which was such a non-royal thing to do and so fascinating for people, because it was very transgressive, but also an attempt to sort of capture a telling of her own narrative, really through just silhouette and choices. And so we had that part of the story to tell, which was really satisfying to do. But we also got to imagine who Diana in this story is behind closed doors. And so much of that is finding a sort raw version of somebody and allowing the audience to access that private sphere.

Imelda, what about for you, with that particular side of things – that silhouette of the Queen and her style?

IM: Well I started to worry when I started to think, “I look rather good in this”. I started thinking, “I love these clothes”, because, of course, they’re all made, and it’s makes it very hard to just go to the shops and buy a jacket. It was quite difficult. But that was a huge part, obviously, for me, and they did that for me. The clothes do it, the hair and makeup do it. I’ve never done anything where that is such an important factor. But of course, these are people that the world knows; we often play people who have been invented, so there’s that responsibility. You are not those people, but you have to make your best efforts. And I think that has worked with me as far as Sid and Amy and Kate with makeup – they’ve been doing it all this time, and they know how to be, as Elizabeth was saying, restrained. The Queen really just stayed the same all the time. And I think that’s part of why people admired her, that she just didn’t try to be, “Well, maybe I should be trendy now. Maybe I’ve got to move with the times. Maybe I’ve got to…”, but instead just went, “This is who I am. And this is what people want and who they recognise”. That’s why people feel they knew her: she didn’t alter for them.

What about working with Polly Bennett the movement coach – what was the most useful element that she worked with you on to help you with the character?

JP: Very simple things to do with posture. And one valuable thing she pointed out to me, because he does it a lot, is how he shakes people’s hands. So he comes in with a bit of a sweep. It’s a very generous movement towards people, which is quite nice to know – and not Trump-like, he doesn’t pull anybody towards him.

LM: Polly worked with Tim Dalton and I on the dance, so that’s when I got to really enjoy her choreographic skills. There was nothing major about Margaret really. I mostly had to learn how to hold a cigarette with a holder! Which is a different thing to having a normal cigarette, because the holder is quite heavy, so that makes it dramatic in itself. She’s great – she’s a fantastic teacher.

DW: I think it’s interesting [talking about] Phillip shaking hands, because Charles doesn’t reach out. I kept being told: you’re the future king, they have to come to him. It’s all… for him, it’s very much absorption, it’s not outward. And I’m quite outward and all over the place, and his is very much more contained. When he greets people, they have to come to him; he doesn’t go too far and everything’s very much containment, particularly in the mouth, of course. Everything’s very slightly wary of the world and contained, not radiating out.

JLM: I don’t want to give stuff away! But, yeah, there was stuff with the hands and, actually, we worked on a walk, which I don’t think we get to see, which is a bit of a disappointment. But I had read in his autobiography about a bad car crash that he got into in Africa and his knee had sort of not healed, so we looked at that and it kind of informed how he walked. All that stuff’s super interesting. I was just amazed actually at what she could get out of me – there’s all these little tips and, all of a sudden, you feel like a proper actor! You work together. She’s like, “Oh, that works. Do that again!”, then you’re walking up and down the room and you’re like, “Oh, hey, I’m John Major”.

Imelda and Lesley, tell us about approaching that scene in episode four where Margaret talks about the relationship and what could have been. You’ve worked together in the past and there’s a friendship there already, but what was it like getting the chance to play these sisters?

LM: I think that’s the thing – I know the scene you’re referring to – it’s not a scene about a queen and a princess, it’s a scene about two sisters who’ve got things unsaid. And, of course, he’s written it so, so brilliantly and emotionally and it’s wonderful… tells the story. That’s what I mean about him humanising: it’s just, here we go, two sisters. I mean, what sisters don’t have a kind of relationship that can be wonderful and deeply, profoundly loving, which these two are, but nevertheless, there’s always “stuff”.

IM: And of course, you have to, again, stay within the confines of your character. This person doesn’t shout and scream, that person has tended to. So there, you’ve created a wonderful sort of tension. And for the three of us, actually, and for Dom, we’ve all worked together before. And that baseline that’s there, you don’t have to work at, that really helps with, with all of the family scenes and things like that. So it’s just very, very nice to do. Thank you, Peter Morgan.

After the death of Her Majesty, do you think anything changed in the way the audience will react to the new season? 

JP: I think it’s bound to affect their perception of what we do; I’m kind of confident that the numbers will grow even bigger. After the Queen died, the viewing figures went up 500% for previous series of The Crown. I think people will – I don’t want to sound too pompous about it – but they’ll gain a bit of comfort from seeing her embodied again.

This season seems to reaffirm the incredible commitment this woman had to the enormous responsibility she was given as such a young woman, and everything that she went through in this particular period – she’s constantly just trying to keep it all together. Do you feel that?

IM: I do. I absolutely do. And I think, again, referring to her funeral, the people who queued and queued and queued – I think they felt such huge respect for someone who kept her promise. She just kept her promise and she did her job.

JP: I think it’s also a reflection of where our society is at at the moment, with a lack of trust and a lack of believability in our politicians, that – the same happened with Diana’s death – the public, people said, “You’re not going to do it, we’re going to do it”. And that’s why they came out in huge numbers. And I think part of it, for me, seeing the crowds queuing for the Queen, was saying, “This is the kind of person we want to be following and leading our country”.

IM: I think just in society, generally now people [admire those] who stick at one thing or just keep going. It amazed me, people’s response to her. And I just thought, “God, you really admired this woman”. People say “love”, but I think they admired her. And here we are, celebrating a woman who, with her own face, who just let her hair [go grey], who just did the job, not anything outside the job, not the stuff around it, just a straight line. And 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.

The Crown has been a huge success across the globe. What do you hope its legacy will be, or what people will take away from this particular chapter that you’ve been involved in?

LM: It’s a big question. I’m not answering.

IM: I feel sort of lucky that we’re looking at their lives when it was very difficult. As an actor, you’ve got more stuff to do, and therefore it’s extremely satisfying, and it’s dramatic. And this is a drama. Peter writes great drama. He bases it around events and real people, but he gives them heart, soul, brains – all that stuff… It’s not dramatic, being nice and being easy; it’s dramatic when things start to go wrong, and how those people deal with those difficulties. [Peter] investigates all of that, and we get to do that journey.

Thank you so much, everybody and congratulations.

Sarah Bradbury

The Crown: Season Five is released on Netflix on 9^th November 2022.

Read our review here.

Watch the trailer for The Crown: Season Five here: