Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ Season 5: Truth, Fiction, Cast And Plot

Is The Crown series presenting fiction as fact or facts as fiction? Is it simply a work of imagination based on contemporary historical events or is it closer to using the British royal family‘s joys and pains in a twisted version of their reality for financial gain?

The controversy continues as Netflix releases details of what’s ahead for the next season of the popular program about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II, which gets ever-nearer to present history and recent events.

Although “The Crown” has been praised for its attention to detail, it’s a dramatization with fictional conversations that throw any claim of accuracy into doubt. As a result, many critics in Britain have called for disclaimers to be added to the episodes.

As the two photos above illustrate, fiction can become too close to real. Or as actress Imelda Staunton, who will take over the role of Queen Elizabeth II from Olivia Colman for The Crown’s seasons 5 and 6, explained to BBC radio: “I think my sort of extra challenge is that I’m now doing the queen (who) we’re a little more familiar with. With Claire Foy (the queen in seasons 1 and 2), it was almost history and now I’m playing one that people could say ‘she doesn’t do that,’ ‘she’s not like that,’ and that’s my personal bête noire.”

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Princess Diana’s everlasting attraction

The fifth season of The Crown – the penultimate of the series – will look at the 90s, a turbulent period of recent history for the royal family, in more detail.

Season four ended at Christmas 1990.

Margaret Thatcher had resigned in November 1990 and was no longer prime minister and Charles and Diana were in the midst of their marital disputes but still married.

As Tattler reports: “The drama attracted more viewers than Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s actual wedding, with 29 million people tuning into the series within its first week of release.”

Given the general interest, the fifth season will pay particular attention to the tragic story of Princess Diana, the end of her troubled marriage to Prince Charles, and her efforts to achieve independence.

As costume designer Amy Roberts told ELLE.com, the final scene of season 4 hints at how the character’s costumes are an indication of what’s to come: “For instance, when Diana joins the family Christmas photo at Balmoral wearing a “killer dress” in the final episode, it’s “a moment when she starts putting on armor. That’s what she does in the next series. This is the first real moment where she thinks, ‘Well, I’m going to fight you lot. I’m going to survive.’”

But as with the preceding seasons, season 5 also will deal with other major events occurring within palace walls and in British politics.

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New prime ministers, three major royal divorces including those of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, Prince Charles and Princess Diana and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, the deaths of the queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and the Queen Mother are among them.

A refreshed cast of Oscar-nominees

For the fifth season, the roles of the royals will be given to a new cast of Oscar-nominated actresses and actors who will interpret them for two seasons, as is now the custom in the high-profile series.

Diana, Princess of Wales: Elizabeth Debicki

Elizabeth Debicki will take on the role of Princess Diana for the final two seasons.

She follows relative newcomer Emma Corrin in her single-season portrayal of the young, headline-making royal. The Australian actress is known for her roles in The Night ManagerThe Great Gatsby, Tenet and Everest, among others.

“It is my true privilege and honor to be joining this masterful series, which has had me absolutely hooked from Episode One,” she wrote on Twitter.

It’s rumored that given her excellent portrayal of Lady Diana, Emma Corrin will make cameo appearances in flashbacks to the tragic princess’s younger years.

Queen Elizabeth II: Imelda Stauton

The Irish-English actress Imelda Staunton will take over the role of Queen Elizabeth II from Olivia Colman for The Crown seasons 5 and 6.

She will be the third actress in the role. The young queen was played by Claire Foy in seasons 1 and 2 and Colman in seasons 3 and 4.

Staunton is an Oscar-nominated actress who also won the Bafta – the British version of the Academy Awards – for Best Actress for her role in Vera Drake. She’s also widely known for her role as Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films and for her roles in Pride, Return to Cranford, The Girl, Flesh and Blood, A Confession and the Downton Abbey film.

Prince Philip: Jonathan Pryce

Renowned Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce is set to take over the role of Prince Philip from Tobias Menzies, who played the royal in seasons 3 and 4, replacing Matt Smith who originated it in seasons 1 and 2.

Pryce earned his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Pope Francis in the Netflix film The Two Popes.

He’s also recognized for his roles in The Wife, Evita, Tomorrow Never Dies, Pirates of the Caribbean and Brazil, as well as TV shows including Game of Thrones and Taboo.

Princess Margaret: Lesley Manville

Oscar-nominated Lesley Manville will play Princess Margaret in seasons 5 and 6, taking over from Helena Bonham Carter, from seasons 3 and 4, and Vanessa Kirby in seasons 1 and 2.

Manville is another highly-regarded British actress who has received five Bafta and one Oscar nominations.

She’s best-known for her roles in Phantom Thread, River, Another Year, Maleficent and in TV series including Save Me, World on Fire and Harlots.

Rumored Prince Charles: Dominic West

It’s been reported that British actor Dominic West is in ‘late-stage discussions’ for the role of Prince Charles.

Prince Charles was previously played by Josh O’Connor, who was introduced in season 3 and played the role also in season 4

Dominic West is best known for roles in The Wire and The Affair. More recently, he appeared in the first two seasons of Sky One comedy series Brassic. He’s set to appear alongside Lily James in the upcoming BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s classic novel The Pursuit of Love.

The plot

Given that some of the events that happened in the ‘90s, including the post-mortem of Princess Diana, were depicted in the 2006 film The Queen, which was written by The Crown creator Peter Morgan, it’s expected that they will be part of season 5.

It’s also expected that it will dwell on what Queen Elizabeth acknowledged as the ‘annus horribilis’ (horrible year) of 1992, which saw the breakdown of three of her children’s marriages and a severely damaging fire in Windsor Castle.

“1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure,” she said during a speech to mark the 40th anniversary of her accession to the throne. “In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis.”

That year, Charles and Diana announced their separation, although their divorce wasn’t official until August 28, 1996.

Around that time was also the publication of the book Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton, which caused a global sensation because the princess provided the author with a number of tapes detailing her innermost conflicts and thoughts — although at the time she denied any involvement.

The time period includes Diana’s famous TV interview on the BBC’s Panorama with journalist Martin Bashir, which is still making waves 25 years later, during which she said that “there were three of us in this marriage,” referring to Prince Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, today the Duchess of Cornwall, and talks about her eating disorders and her difficult relationship with the royal family.

Almost a year after her divorce, the princess was killed in a car accident in Paris along with her boyfriend at the time, Dodi Fayed, an Egyptian film producer and son of billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, as their car was chased by paparazzi.

Among other key moments likely to feature in the upcoming episodes are the queen’s 1997 golden wedding anniversary, the rise of the Labor Party’s Tony Blair to prime minister in 1997, the deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother in 2002 and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.

According to Deadline, the final seasons will “take the story up to the early 2000s,” which opens the possibility that season five will cover Charles and Diana’s divorce, and that her tragic death could be held for the sixth season.

“To be clear, series six will not bring us any closer to present-day – it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail,” Peter Morgan has said.

Most probably, the series will avoid depicting the college courtship between Prince William and Kate Middleton and their wedding and other recent pageantry and scandals such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s relationship and wedding or their decision to step down from their senior roles and move to the United States.

Nor will it deal with the ties of Prince Andrew and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the prince’s forced retirement from royal duties.

“I feel uncomfortable writing about events within a certain time period,” Morgan told Entertainment Weekly. “I think there’s a certain amount of time within which, if you write about it, what you do instantly becomes journalistic. Because it’s too close to the moment.”

“Let’s wait 20 years and see what there is to say about Meghan Markle. I don’t know what there is to say about her at the moment. I wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t presume. She’ll only become interesting once we’ve had 20 years to digest who she is and what her impact has been.”

The filming of the episodes is not scheduled to start until June 2021, which means that The Crown season 5 will not arrive on Netflix until 2022.


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