Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in The Crown.Photo: Netflix/YouTube
Hold onto your crowns.
On Thursday, Netflix released the first trailer for the highly anticipated season 5 ofThe Crown, coming to the streaming serviceon Nov. 9. Keeping with the tradition of casting new actors to reflect the real-life royals as they age over the decades, season 5 starsImelda Stauntonas Queen Elizabeth,Jonathan PryceasPrince Philip,Lesley ManvilleasPrincess Margaret,Dominic WestasPrince CharlesandElizabeth DebickiasPrincess Diana. West’s teenage sonSeamuswill also appear as a youngPrince William.
Opening with scenes of the devastating 1992 fire at Windsor Castle, the trailer features a voiceover fromQueen Elizabethsumming up a year that also saw the separations ofPrincess DianaandPrince CharlesandPrince AndrewandSarah Ferguson— a year the Queen later famously called her “annus horribilis” (Latin for “horrible year”).
“How did it come to this?” asks the Queen, while Charles sums up how he wants the monarchy to be more modern and reflect “the world outside.”
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Elsewhere, Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) lurks in the background, Princess Margaret attends a party in full royal highland regalia and Diana is seen with Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi was her boyfriend anddied alongside her in Paris.
Netflix/YouTube
Speaking withEntertainment Weekly,show creator Peter Morgan spoke about what King Charles might think of the show, which will follow the decline of his marriage to Princess Diana.
“I think we must all accept that the 1990s was a difficult time for the royal family, and King Charles will almost certainly have some painful memories of that period,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that, with the benefit of hindsight, history will be unkind to him, or the monarchy. The show certainly isn’t. I have enormous sympathy for a man in his position — indeed, a family in their position. People are more understanding and compassionate than we expect sometimes.”
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Just ahead of the trailer’s release, the streaming servicereceived criticismfrom Oscar winner Dame Judi Dench, who said she believed the show should carry a disclaimer at the start of every episode.
“The closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism,” Dench, 87, said in a letter toThe Timespublished Wednesday.
“Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series — that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence — this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent,” Dench added.
“No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged,” she continued. “Despite this week stating publicly thatThe Crownhas always been a ‘fictionalized drama’ the program makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.”
The fifth season ofThe Crownwill bereleased on Nov. 9. Seasons 1 through 4 are now streaming on Netflix.
source: people.com
