Netflix gives first glimpse of Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown season 5
The actor is taking over as the Queen of England for the show's final two seasons
TV News Netflix
So, move over Olivia Colman, there’s a new queen in town. The Crown is heading into its fifth season and introducing another actor to play Queen Elizabeth once more. Netflix shared an “early glimpse” of Imelda Staunton as the Queen of England, with her signature coiffed gray hair and pearls.
Staunton’s casting was announced at the beginning of the year, with the actor expressing her excitement to join the show. “I have loved watching The Crown from the very start,” she said to The Hollywood Reporter in January. “As an actor it was a joy to see how both Claire Foy and Olivia Colman brought something special and unique to Peter Morgan’s scripts. I am genuinely honoured to be joining such an exceptional creative team and to be taking The Crown to its conclusion.”
Production for the upcoming season began in the UK this month, and Staunton isn’t the only new cast member arriving for the final two seasons of the Netflix series. Lesley Manville is stepping in to play Princess Margaret, Jonathan Pryce will be Prince Philip, and Elizabeth Debicki will be Princess Diana (an odd move, considering Emma Corrin could’ve realistically played Diana up until the show gets to her death). And the forthcoming season will also introduce a new character: Prime Minister John Major, played by Jonny Lee Miller.
The series was initially set to end with the fifth season, but creator Peter Morgan changed his mind, expanding it to a sixth season—though he notes that we won’t get to see the drama of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry leaving the royal family. “As we started to discuss the storylines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons. To be clear, Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present-day — it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail,” he said to Deadline earlier this month.
39 Comments
Well she plays a dour looking old white woman exceptionally well…So if S5 will be from ~’91 up to ‘97, the shortest period the show has covered in a season what exactly is being left for this S6?
The post-Diana storylines could be pretty interesting. That’s when they realized they needed to actually make some changes to the institution, so there’s plenty of room for drama.
I like this show, but the way they switch up actors is baffling. Like, as noted, the decision to replace Emma Corrin, when she could easily continue the role. And I feel that Claire Foy could’ve easily gone another season, before they made the switch. It just makes it harder to get adjusted each season with such a heavily rotating cast.
Yeah love the show but it took me a full season to get used to Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies. Especially because Claire Foy and Matt Smith had such amazing chemistry, which I felt was kind of missing from the new actors (but I guess it makes sense that they’re now older and have settled into a more comfortable, staid portion of their marriage). Would’ve loved to see Emma Corrin come back as well – she really was fantastic.
Little known fact that all British media productions are thinly disguised jobs programs and must have hired at least 75% of all British character actors by the end of their run. This was relatively straightforward with Harry Potter and it’s ~1000 bit parts, but it’s more awkward with a small core cast. It’s going to get even weirder when Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson show up as future-King George and future-Princess Charlotte, respectively, in some controversial flash forwards.
Reading this response in a Cliff Clavin voice made it an even better experience.
Fuck it, you had me at Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry:
Going back to watch Foyle’s War and Midsommar now is entertaining – basically all the movie stars from the 2010s were all doing guest bits on murder mystery shows for a while before breaking out.
I love stuff like that. If you watch the Marples from the decade before, you’ll see a ton, too. I call them crossroads shows, because they’re full of past stars and future stars. Of course, Columbo is the OG of mystery crossroads shows.
Going back, people didn’t ‘break out’ of British TV, but they did cycle around this little pool of murder mysteries – as though it’s a giant shared universe about people in witness protection committing crimes under their assumed identities. Plus the occasional random sitcom star, who would sometimes even be the detective (eg David Jason).
So to pick one episode of Morse at random, you had Maggie Steed (Morse, Foyle, three different people in Midsummer, New Tricks, Father Brown, even Pie in the Sky (the sadly-forgotten one where Richard Griffiths is a crime-solving pastry chef)), and Roger Allam (The Bill, Morse, Foyle, Waking the Dead, Inspector Lynley, Spooks, Ashes to Ashes, and then weirdly going back in time to be Morse’s mentor in the prequel series), and Susan Field (Morse, Midsummer, The Bill, Between the Lines, Poirot, Dempsey and Makepeace (!), Dixon of Dock Fucking Green (!!), and, back in in the 60s, Fraud Squad and Dr Finlay’s Casebook (!!!))… and Clare Holman (Morse, Lewis, Silent Witness, Death in Paradise, Scott and Bailey, Marple, Messiah, Prime Suspect, Murder Rooms (the underrated show about Arthur Conan Doyle solving crimes), The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, The Bill, and three different people on Midsummer)… and Richard Briers (Morse, Marple, New Tricks, Dixon of Dock Green)…
…and John Fucking Shrapnel. Off of Midsummer (twice), Lynley, The Last Detective, Waking the Dead, New Tricks, Foyle’s War, Jonathan Creek (the one with the magician’s assistant solving crime sarcastically while living in a windmill – if you haven’t seen it, do!), Morse, Wycliffe, Kavanagh, Between the Lines, The Woman in White, Justice (a 1970s show about a female lawyer’s cases) and even fucking Z-Cars. Z-cars!And that’s just one random episode!Of course, the weirdest bit is when you see the Poirot adaptation in which David Suchet, who has become synonymous with Poirot, instead plays Inspector Japp…
I can’t wait to see who plays Epstein.
I just hope they cast an actual weasel as Tony Blair.
Seriously get Michael Sheen to do it (yet again)!
yes! the “tony blair played by michael sheen” cinematic universe needs to be extended.
Isn’t “The Crown” already in that cinematic universe, as it has always seemed to be the prequel series to “The Queen.”It would be foolish for them to cover the same ground again in the show.
Or Pierce Brosnan. The corrupt/American asset prime minister in 2010’s The Ghost Writer played by Brosnan is clearly supposed to be Blair.
I can’t wait to see her jump out of a helicopter with James Bond.
Ron Perlmen? What do you guys think?
“The actor is taking over as the Queen of England for the show’s final two seasons”
*Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
*Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of Canada, of Australia, of South Africa, of Jamaica, of Barbados, of The Bahamas, of Grenada, of Papua New Guinea, of the Solomon Islands, of Tuvalu, of Saint Lucia, of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, of Belize, of Antigua and Barbuda, of Saint Kitts and Nevis and of Gibraltar, Fountain of Justice, of Order and of Honour, Seigneur of the Swans, Chieftain of the Braemar Gathering, Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska, the Duke of Normandy, the Duke of Lancaster, and Lord of Mann…
Pretty sure she’s not the Queen of South Africa anymore…
Sorry, brain failure. I should of course have put New Zealand there! Mixed up my Dominions…[I think she’s the only female Duke, incidentally! ‘Lord of Mann’ is a pretty good title, too…]
Well I didn’t vote for her.
I’m genuinely surprised that they’re not getting to Meghan and Harry, as when that happened I thought the show had inadvertently been given its perfect ending.I’ve had the sense that William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan are the show’s real main characters, ever since Margaret’s impassioned “THIS CAN’T KEEP HAPPENING!” speech about Charles and Diana; they’re the ones who break the cycle of loveless marriages that drive the participants insane and cause nothing but trouble for the entire institution.Harry making a statement of “I saw what you all did to my mother and I won’t let you do it again” and then doing what nobody on the show has done, despite how much they really should have, and simply walking away would be a perfect capstone.
Peter Morgan has said that he has this personal rule where he doesn’t cover events that have happened less than 20 years ago. And given all the shit he’s getting from inaccuracies with this latest season (since there are now many people who were alive back then to refute him) you understand why.
William and Harry have been married for about five minutes.
Johnny Lee Miller is old enough to play John Major? That’s a head trip.
I know – did that not jump out to y’all? Then again: Dominic West as Charles.
Ugh. What terrible casting. Casting someone with a personality to play John Major.
Oh come on. Give us another season adapting the whole Harry and Meghan drama. Meghan could play herself! She’s already got a deal with Netflix.
i really hope michael sheen is going to play tony blair again
I’m genuinely shocked that I looked at that picture of her and didn’t immediately feel a twinge of disgust, the way I do when I see her as Dolores Umbridge.Edit: and seeing her in QE2 garb, I now realize how much she looks like my own beloved English grandmother.
I first saw Staunton in Vera Drake, so the switch to Umbridge was a fun bit of whiplash. Kind of like watching JK Simmons in Oz, then Juno.
It’s especially fun if you’ve seen The Singing Detective. Staunton had a MUCH harder time keeping Michael Gambon under control in Harry Potter.
I’m most excited to see Leslie Manville as Margaret. The only role I remember Manville from is The Phantom Thread, but she was so good in that and I can see how that will translate perfectly to The Crown.
I love British history – not modern history so much – so whenever I hear a real politician/royal’s name and don’t recognize it, I know they won’t be around for long.
(an odd move, considering Emma Corrin could’ve realistically played Diana up until the show gets to her death)The show doesn’t want to get into changing some actors but not others, particularly when that would involve going from seeing Corrin opposite 31-year-old Josh O’Connor to 51-year-old Dominic West.
Really looking forward to see this.