"The Crown," the upcoming season 3 (spoilers)

That's a pretty bad copy of Charles' investiture coronet.

Churchills death is probably a big thing.

The cast we know for sure:

Elizabeth II: Olivia Colman (The Favourite, Broadchruch)

Prince Philip, Duke of Ednburgh: Tobias Menzies (Outlander, Game of Thrones)

The Princess Margaret: Helen Bloody Bonham-Carter (Sweeney Todd, A Room with a View)

Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon: Ben Daniels (The Exorcist)

Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: Marion Bailey (Vera Drake, Mr. Turner)

Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales: Josh O'Connor (The Durrells in Corfu)

Princess Anne: Erin Doherty (Call the Midwife)

Camilla Shand-Kydd: Emerald Fennell (Call the Midwife)

Harold Wilson: Jason Watkins (The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries, Being Human)

Lord Snowdon designed it so probably a copyright issue on the Coronet.

Doesn't seem that bad a copy to me, it was pretty crap.

We know the series will cover the years 1964-1977.

Events in the lives of the royal family that have already been confirmed as to be shown in the new season:

*The funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965 (in which the Queen broke precedent by attending)

*The queen's 1966 visit to Wales after the Aberfan tragedy, wherein the collapse of a colliery pile killed 116 children and 28 adults in a Welsh mining town

*The televised ceremony for the investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales in 1969

*The queen's visit to Paris in 1972 to mark the joining of the UK into the European Common Market, and her final brief meeting with her uncle the Duke of Windsor

*Prince Charles's early and unsuccessful courtship of Camilla before his long round-the-world tour with the Royal navy

*The queen's opening of the Montreal Olympics in 1976 (in which Princess Anne competed in the equestrian events)

*The dissolution of Princess Margaret's marriage to Anthony Armstrong-Jones, and her scandalous affair with her much younger toyboy Roddy Llewellyn

* A visit of someone in the royal family to Washington DC in the late 60s/early 70s (may be the Snowdons to the LBJ White House, Prince Charles to the Nixon White House, or the queen and Prince Philip to Gerald Ford's White House--it hasn't been confirmed yet)

What will also almost certainly be shown:

*the royal family's participation in the ground-breaking TV documentary about them in 1969

*Princess Anne's marriage to Mark Phillips in 1972 and the attempted kidnapping of her soon after

*the election of 1964 that sent Harold Wilson to No. 10 Downing Street

*the funeral of the Duke of Windsor in 1973, which brought Wallis, Duchess of Windsor to the UK for the first time in more than 35 years, and saw her interact with the Queen Mother, her much-loathed nemesis

What we reportedly won't see until Season 4:

*the childhood of Diana Spencer and her courtship by and marriage to Prince Charles

*the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher

Let us never forget what Josh O’Connor has underneath his royal trousers

o dam h Bonham carter ruins anything she in

she a stinker and fug and out of order!

Olivia Colman was bad casting. A decent actress she may be, I do not see her as the Queen.

Thanks for that R7!

What the hell is that on her head?

It's her personal salute to the outer space PAN-AM stewardess from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

BUMP

When is going to be released on Netflix FFS?

Sometimes in the 1st half of 2019

The fake Coronet looks better than the real one. What the hell were they thinking?

It's the same one.

They would be mad to omit a cameo from the young Diana. The final episode of the season simply MUST be her first meeting with Charles.

First time I’ve ever wanted to see Prince Charles naked.

Weird fact about Prince Charles' original investiture coronet: the top ball is an actual Ping-Pong ball plated gold. The ACTUAL coronet!

It was actually designed by Louis Osman, not by Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon (although the latter designed many of the physical accoutrements and designs for the investiture ceremony).

[quote]They would be mad to omit a cameo from the young Diana. The final episode of the season simply MUST be her first meeting with Charles.

They've said they won't show her until season 4. The third season ends in 1976; Diana did not meet Charles until 1977, when he started dating her sister, Lady Jane Spencer. He did not start dating Diana until 1980, the year after the assassination of Lord Mountbatten (which was a major reason for Charles proposing to her, and which was a major event in the royal family's lives).

Does William have to wear that when he becomes Prince of Wales?

Out of all the actors, I wish they'd kept Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret — she was wonderful.

They will probably melt it down and make a new one if William is invested as Prince of Wales.

They could actually get away with altering it if they just removed the ball from the top with the little dangly things. It would still look very 1969, but sort of cool. They could also remove the arch.

Vanessa Kirby WAS great, although she was so much taller than Margaret, who at 5'0" was often referred to cattily as "the royal dwarf."

I had know idea that Edward VII who had been the most recent Prince of Wales had absconded with his coronet when he abdicated. How cheeky. The BRF got it back after he died.

I think you mean Edward VIII, r26. Edward VII did not abdicate.

The Duke of Windsor took many pieces of jewelry from the royal collection with him when he abdicated that simply did not belong to him, but to the Crown. They had a really hard time getting a lot of them back. He really was a selfish, greedy, thieving monster.

Thanks r27, I was too lazy to double-check.

They are shooting both seasons 3 & 4 back to back. I've read in other articles that we might get a small intro to Diana at the end of season 3. They have not named the actress yet.

One will not change the coronet for any reason. This is a solemn investiture based on centuries of history.

WTF is wrong with you people?

The Queen's hat is hideous. I can't believe she wore that (but she did)

Goodness, Brenda—they had three different Welsh coronets in the last century. Surely William can have a new one. BTW, the Charles coronet need not (and indeed cannot) be “melted down.” It’s gold-plated plastic.

It looks like Charles Dance will be laying the plum role of Uncle Louis Mountbatten, who will spend much of the season trying to groom Prince Charles to rule and find a suitable mate for him.

Olivia Coleman will completely ruin this season. No offence to her, but she looks FAR more like Margaret and it is distracting. I don't understand why they couldn't use ageing makeup on Clair Foy, and the same with Matt Smith. They looked the part(s) and had excellent chemistry. This season will end in tears and thrown tomatoes, I fear.

*Claire! I am so sorry!

R34, I agree. I think it was a miscast. Would have preferred Keeley Hawes.

Emerald Fennell is great. Will be interesting to see her as Camilla.

She's only 5 years older than Josh but she reads a bit older than him.

Keeley Hawes actually LOOKS like an older version of Claire Foy. Why they didn't cast her is a mystery.

Roddy Llewellyn; names that sound gay.

[quote] One will not change the coronet for any reason. This is a solemn investiture based on centuries of history. WTF is wrong with you people?

Oh Brenda, you don't know you own family's history. You yourself oversaw the change in the coronet Charles used from the one your uncle David used nearly sixty years previously for his own investiture ceremony.

Two new photos of couples from the new season: Elizabeth and Philip, and Margaret and Tony.

(Disappointingly, Tobias Menzies is not carrying himself the way the military-trained Philip does)

Honestly, the worst miscasting is BBC as Margaret.

This will end in tears. Obviously too late to recast, sadly. HM looks like Margaret, Philip looks like Antony Armstrong-Jones. What a fucking disaster.

I'm dreading watching this. I loved the first 2 seasons which were perfectly cast, I'm hoping to be proved wrong.

I believe TM will do a good job portraying Phil.

I was hoping Charles Dance would play Phillip in seasons 5-6.

I love Tobias Menzies, but he's not doing it for me as Philip. My interest in this season went straight down the shitter when Paul Bettany changed his mind.

Don't like the choice for Charles, either.

I can live with Menzies but I think Colman is all wrong... looks wrong and will probably sound wrong.

The Crown has the same casting director as Game I’d Thrones. I’m having some faith.

I also believe the original cast could have been aged a bit. I'll try not to be cynical. They did such a wonderful job casting the first couple of seasons. It's difficult to imagine some of the scenes with any other cast. The scene where the Queen realizes she's not just queen of England, but of Kenya as well, is one of those bits.

BTW, It may be an message that isn't supposed to survive, but I've read, several times, that the Queen's entourage was surprised by Maasai people stopping on the side of the road, to offer their tributes to her. No one could figure out how the Maasai could have gotten the news, but they did, and they paid tribute to their new Queen.

[QUOTE] Roddy Llewellyn; names that sound gay.

He was, he also had an affair with The Earl of Snowdon.

Nicky Haslam outed the before Tony died, it was never denied.

I remember when they announced Tobias I was appalled. He's a fine actor. I like him. But he is too wrong for Philip. They needed someone who has that angularity Philip has. Tobias is all rounded and soft.. Olivia is brilliant, but not as Betty Windsor. I don't see why they couldn't just let be and age the actors in place. Our problem, I believe, in part is because Claire Foy and Matthew Smith were so successful. I believed them. Now I have to get used to a whole new cast. I suspect they will not be well received.

I hope TM doesn’t read these posts.

I hope he does r54, though likely most filming is done already, it might help him step up his game.

Colman looks NOTHING like QE2. This is going to be a fucking travesty. At least they got the casting of Charles right.

They could have kept Foy, Smith, and Kirby for one more season, with a bit of aging makeup. Then they'd have only had to recast once. Apparently the current plan is to recast AGAIN for Season 5, so even if we like the new crew we have to start all over again in two years. Seems like bad planning.

It would have been possibly to use makeup age the cast of seasons 1&2 for season 3, but then they would have looked odd by season 4 (when Elizabeth and Philip and Margaret are all in their 50s ) and then absolutely ridiculous in seasons 5&6. So they've taken the right approach by spreading the casting over different seasons.

I have a lot of faith in the producers for their casting decisions, given how good they were for the fist two seasons. I never would have guessed Vanessa Kirby would have been right for Margaret, "the royal dwarf," given how tall Kirby was, but she was fantastic in the role. So I think we have to entrust them for the future seasons, although Dataloungerslove to piss and moan about these things. And so far I think they've chosen very well. We've seen that Menzies can be sharp and scary in "Outlander," so I am sure he can be requisitely rough on Charles this season and then on Diana and Edward the next. Bonham-Carter looks far more like Princess Margaret than Kirby already did, and she grew to be a fine actress after "A Room with a View." I worried Josh O'Connor is too hot to play the young Charles, but he looks terrifically dorky in the picture at the OP. And Ben Daniels (with his aura of hardness and sexual sleaziness) is basically born to play Lord Snowdon.

The trickiest casting seems to be Olivia Colman as the queen; but I think it's telling that she's the casting choice that the actual British fans of the show have been happiest about. She showed in Broadchurch she has enormous tragic range, and in The Favorite that though she can be very funny she can also be quite poignant--and in the final scenes of that movie she showed how much she can say with just her eyes and her gestures (which is absolutely crucial to playing Elizabeth II). She doesn;t look a lot like the queen, but she also doesn't look UNlike her, either.

One thing, too, is that if you look over the first two seasons you see how much time is also given to the queen's prime ministers--Churchill, Eden, and Macmillan all had as big of roles to play as anyone except for the queen herself. So I will be very interested to see how Jason Watkins is as Harold Wilson, and whoever they get to play the part is as Edward Heath. Supposedly Gillian Anderson is being considered for Margaret Thatcher for Season 4, which would be brilliant. In the previous British miniseries "The Queen," Lesley Manville was amazing as Thatcher, whom she played as absolutely terrified of the queen when she was not in front of her (she would get blinding headaches whenever asked to speak with her over the phone), but unyielding and obdurate when actually face-to-face with her.

I'm pretty certain that Keeley Hawes would have been ruled out early in the casting process as she seems to get every job on UK TV, shame really she looks similar and might have been good.

I think The Crown should have been a stand alone miniseries and the first season should have been it. The fact is, none of the Royals are interesting enough people to merit this long running series about them.

But isn’t The Crown a ratings success? I really enjoy it and don’t mind the changing of the cast since they get such great people—except for Hall as JFK.

From the looks of those pics it looks as if they haven't given Coleman contacts for blue eyes. Foy had unmistakably blue eyes, as does the Queen. It's part of the bit. Part of the problem, too?

I watched a couple of episodes but I really disliked Claire Foy so I stopped. The girl that stars in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel bothers me in the same way.

I will be watching this next season with Olivia Coleman, loved her in Broadchurch.

r58 did people think that Foy looked like the queen?

Foy could look like the queen if she got smacked upside the face with an ugly stick!

And we have season 4 news!

Gillian Anderson is signed to play Margaret Thatcher.

[quote]I really disliked Claire Foy

There's always one.

Their scenes together should be fun. Apparently Thatcher was terrified of the queen, and so overcompensated during their meetings by constantly lecturing her.

Bitch tastic

Gillian Anderson has been the romantic partner for two years of Peter Morgan who created "The Crown," so it was pretty inevitable she would show up somewhere.

According to the Queen's biographers, Margaret Thatcher was one of the few prime ministers the Queen supposedly didn't like (the other one she really didn't care for was Tony Blair,). The ones the queen supposedly liked the most were Churchill (whom she once admitted was her favorite, in a rare personal admission) and Harold Wilson. She also supposedly liked Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan (though you would never know it from The Crown, where she seems to hold them both in contempt), and was a friend since childhood of Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home.

Makes sense she liked Churchill since she was so young and I'm assuming he was a great help to her. I like the portrayal of their relationship in the crown regardless of its accuracy.

Anderson is too pretty to be Thatcher. I guess most actors are better looking than real life counter parts.

Churchill was a desperately needed father figure when she lost her own father at such a young age. But she loved his famous wit, and former equerries later said during their meetings they could hear them laughing loudly together behind closed doors.

R67 I really like her but I found her boring in season 2 and she was much too pretty to portray the mannish Elizabeth ll.

Charles Dance should be great as Mountbatten

r75 it's hardly a stretch for him, after playing Tywin Lannister.

Keeley Hawes in the UK is now sort of like what Mary Tyler Moore was to the American TV-watching public.

So that while MTM might have been reasonable physical casting for Jackie Kennedy, she was too much of an icon on her own to play another icon.

Of course, by now, what with The Favourite and all of the award shows to follow, Olivia Colman is quickly becoming too familiar as well.

R77, Dickie Mountbatten was a schemer, but he wasn't assertive or powerful like Tywin. Charles Dance will have to play him as a weak, arrogant man.

I adored Claire Foy as young Elizabeth and I loved the way they portrayed her relationship with Matt Smith as her Prince Philip. While I like Olivia Colman, I have a problem with her succeeding Foy.

It really bothered me that Princess Margaret towered over the queen in this show when it was the other way around in real life!!

R79 well shes back to being really short with Bonham Carter. Maybe that just really liked that actress. I thought she was great.

I'm very sad that Kirby and Goode won't be able to portray the nasty downward spiral of Margaret and Tony's marriage in the late 60s/early 70s. I know they're both a bit young, but dramatically speaking they would have rocked those scenes.

I really don't understand why they couldn't have kept Alex Jennings as the Duke of Windsor. Jennings is 61, and Windsor was only 77 when he died. Make Jennings a bit greyer and more jowly, and you're golden.

He apparently was very disappointed at not being able to continue Windsor's story.

R81 Why not use makeup effects to age the actors? It would not be difficult to make them look a few decades older. Matt smith has already done this. just laziness IMO . The new actors will throw off the vibe of the show.

It's especially weird given that apparently Windsor will only get one more big episode, when the queen goes to see him in Paris the year before he dies.

I am curious who will be playing him and who will be playing the Duchess of Windsor, since that's not been divulged yet. Also who will be playing prime Minister Heath.

I don't know if Foy and Smith could have portrayed fiftysomething Phillip and Elizabeth, but if the current season is supposed to (as rumored) end around 1971/72, then they certainly could have kept them for one more year.

I have faith in Tobias Menzies. He'll do fine.

As will Olivia Colman.

The guy playing Charles is pretty cute!

Maybe I didn't want to do another season!

Is this being released this summer? Are they still filming?

"Aging" makeup never works convincingly. Better to skip a couple of decades and use different actors.

I have no problem with them replacing the main cast (age makeup limits expressions) but if the Duke of Windsor only has one or two more appearance, just use Jennings.

It's going to be weird seeing other actors take on the parts. Last night I discovered that Peter Morgan's "The Audience" is available on youtube with the original London cast (including Helen Mirren as the queen), and I watched it all the way through: Morgan lifted key scenes, even down to the same dialogue, in "The Crown" for the queen's first audience with Churchill and for the queen's big audience with Anthony Eden when she discovers he's already planned to have a joint British-French-Israeli invasion of the Suez Canal. Mirren said her lines very differently from the way Claire Foy does in those scenes, and I have become so used to how Foy plays the part of the queen that I kept felt Mirren was doing it wrong, even though she preceded Foy in the role.

Mirren is much steelier and more assured than Foy, even in her scenes as a young queen. Foy always seems so gentle and hesitant.

(Interestingly, the play "The Audience" does not show any of the queen's audiences with Harold Macmillan.)

I think Keeley Hawes would have been much more suited to play Margaret than Elizabeth. Maybe she’s waiting to play someone on it when her partner Matthew McFadyen is free from Succession to do it, too?

I really hope Francesca Annis plays Margaret in Season 5, when I assume she dies.

They’re not shooting S3 and S4 back to back. Colman has said in interviews that S3 finishes up sometime in February and that she’s committed to playing the role until sometime in 2020.

Olivia looked so heavy in The Favourite, which I assume was desirable for the role.

Did she finish that before shooting The Crown? Did she go on a crash diet?

Yes, R94, she did The Favourite last winter. The Crown began shooting in November.

Was Lord snowden a top?

People throwing hissy fits over a new cast. We have known from day one there is a cast change over every 2 seasons, that has always been the concept of the show.

R97 We like Foy so we think that concept sucks!

Why didn't they just give the young actors prosthetics to age them up?

Olivia Coleman will kill it and everybody will be get over it. Seeing new actors interpret the characters is the fun.

I'm reserving judgement about casting until we see the first real trailers for the season.

I hated Olivia Colman's self conscious performance in The Audience... there's nothing less funny than someone TRYING to be funny. She's so full of herself.

sorry I meant The Favourite, not the Audience... all these fucking royal movies with "The" in the title make me quite dizzy

I don't think she'll try to be funny in The Crown. She certainly didn't try to be funny in Broadchurch.

She was fantastic in The Favourite. R102, your opinion is definitely in the minority.

r105 if you think humor comes from that slapstick approach, I feel sorry for you.

When does the new season premiere?

I thought she was funny in Broadchurch. She was cute.

And I loved her in Hot Fuzz as a sort of slutty/trashy policewoman. Funny movie.

In what season will they get to all the Markle drama ? I wonder who they will get to play her ghastly father and sister.

I'm assuming it will end in the 90s

They're only doing the sixty years from the queen's marriage, so they will almost certainly never get to Meghan Markle.

Ending it a little after Diana's death would be a fitting place.

If the Queen dies before the series ends, they should keep going past the 90’s.

At the very least, I'm sure we'll get to Margaret and the Queen Mother's passings.

Why would her dying affect that? The creator said he only wants to do six seasons.

R114 right they have to go through Margaret’s passing she is a big part of the series.

So early to mid 2000s?

I would guess they go not much further than the queen's Golden Jubilee in 2003. I just don't think they're going to depict the marriages of William and Harry--they're too recent, and it's not very clear yet whether the marriages are really going in the long term or what information about them is reliable. When it comes to the royal family, it's much easier to get reliable information about something that happened forty years ago than something that happened two years ago.

Kelsey Grammer as Thomas Markle. R109

The Royal Family are not interesting enough to warrant this kind of multi season series. Peter Morgan is such a one track pony.

Jesus, this thread is dreary as hell. Am I the only one excited for the new cast? They’re making the right decision to recast every two seasons if they want to portray every decade of her reign. Claire Foy and the rest would ridiculous and the costs would skyrocket. A series with a new cast every 2 years is fairly unique and keeps it fresh.

They’ve gotten this right before. Have faith. You probably actually don’t know better.

Will Mirren reprise her role as the elderly queen come seasons 7 and 8?

I am r121.

r122 fuck that would be horrendous. Enough already.

I love Olivia Coleman. She has a great range - from "Peep Show" to "Tyrannosaur". I am happy she is getting recognition which she deserves.

Mirren has already said that she would not appear in The Crown.

[quote]Peter Morgan is such a one track pony.

r120, did you mean "one trick pony" or "one track mind"?

Peter Morgan's next project:

Queenie! The Musical!

Maybe they had scheduling problems with Foy and Smith. I think Paul Bettany would've done a better job as Philip than Tobias Menzies will do. I still see him as the pervert in Outlander.

No, R129, it was ALWAYS the concept that after two seasons an entirely new cast would be brought it. It was a,creative decision.

The Crown has its Diana and her name is Emma Corrin:

When is the premiere of the new season?

Not announced yet, R132.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the story first:

[quote]They're only doing the sixty years from the queen's marriage, so they will almost certainly never get to Meghan Markle.

But she's prepared to star as herself!

Perhaps a flash forward? Come on, they’d have to skip to Liz and Phil’s deaths/funeral, anyway. And Charles’ coronation.

So the latest is Netflix says this will premiere sometime after July 1st. I’m guessing it will be in September.

R135 if they want ratings markle and her trash family will bring them.

I am blocking all the Markle crazies.

r132 November, according to Menzies.

Yes, the Markle haters are insane.

I could hang onto Josh O'Connor's ears for dear life.

I have to congratulate them on being fairly tight-lipped about the next two seasons--the casting lists have (by necessity) mostly been released (though we still don't know who is playing the Duke and Duchess of Windsor this coming season, nor Edward and Andrew as young men in the fourth season), but they've not dropped many details about the upcoming storylines. I hope there's lots of screaming fights between Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and that we also get to see her discovering the nasty notes he would leave for her randomly in books ("Here are ten things I absolutely hate about you..."), which she would find long after he left them--like little emotional landmines.

I hope in the upcoming season we get at least a scene or two with Diana's fucked-up parents and Diana as a child.

Philip seems to be at death's door, but Liz may well live past the show's filming. They have about four years left before they finish filming all eight seasons they've promised-- and Liz is only 93. Her mother died at 101.

November 17th.

this bitch again...

[quote]I don't understand why they couldn't use ageing makeup on Clair Foy, and the same with Matt Smith.

Because it's expensive and time consuming, it hinders the actor's ability to act naturally, and, above all else, it is noticeable, distracting, and stupid, considering the series is set to portray the entire life's arc of a living historic figure from girlhood until old age. The have to recast at some point, so why not periodically?

Since no one has actually seen the new seasons I find this constant handwringing about the recasts silly. I'm excited for a fresh take with a new (and very talented) cast.

[quote] I don't understand why they couldn't use ageing makeup on Clair Foy, and the same with Matt Smith.

Because over the course of the series they are going to cover sixty years of the Queen's life. Even if Claire Foy had been able to pass for the Queen in her late forties this season, she would certainly not be able to pass for being in her sixties and seventies in later seasons.

Can’t wait to spend the weekend of November 17th binge-watching season 3. Olivia Colman is my kween! x

Some are already complaining because she's not wearing blue contacts. But I'm fine with it.

Looking good!

A very brief teaser for Season 3 was released today, but it shows Olivia Colman in character, wearing the State Diadem and the Order of the Garter.

That queen hat in OPs picture cracks me up.

Colman had to slim down considerably for this, and even still she's chunkier than the real Queen was at this age. But I'm sure we'll get over that quickly when watching it.

r152, it's a pretty good replica of the hat Elizabeth II wore for the real ceremony.

She was trying to be fashion forward in the late 60s, and it produced some bizarre results.

I hope they show Josh O’Connors cock. It’s heavenly.

Keeley Hawes is 6 feet tall. Too difficult to make that work here.

Not if she plays Lyndon Johnson.

[quote]R136 Perhaps a flash forward [to Meghan M]?

Big Liz probably has this all in the works already. She knows the People will demand it, and she hitches her creaky wagon to MM’s rising star at every opportunity.

Seeing the trailer in R144, I wonder why they are marketing this like a horror movie.

Everyone on this promo shot has the wrong eye colour, btw. Not that I'm bothered, but it's an interesting little detail.

Also, shaving off (bleaching?) Tobias' eyebrow is a CHOICE.

*eyebrows

finally. it's been so long. they skipped last year.

[quote]A very brief teaser for Season 3 was released today, but it shows Olivia Colman in character, wearing the State Diadem and the Order of the Garter.

Do we think her looking in at Philip having sex with a chambermaid was the correct choice for a trailer?

I used to love England, now I'm not even sure I want to visit for the next ten years.

EW has released today ahead of its September issue a photoshoot of the new stars of "The Crown"

The one who looks the most fabulous--by far--in these photos is Helena Bonham-Carter as Princess Margaret during her most glamorous phase.

Olivia Colman here emphasizes the Queen's warmth (as opposed to in this week's Netflix teaser, trailer where she showed the Queen at her iciest and most forbidding).

You can tell Helena Bonham-Carter is from an aristocratic family. She is superb at being haughty.

Wasn’t Lord Mountbatten a big ol’ queen? I know there was some sort of homo-ness in that part of the family.

He was said to fuck men when he was younger, but I don't think he did when he was middle-aged and elderly.

[quote]He was said to fuck men when he was younger, but I don't think he did when he was middle-aged and elderly.

Typical DataLounger

Critics have received their Season 3 screeners.

Gillian in full Iron Cunt drag as I type.

[quote]Gillian Anderson will play Margaret Thatcher in The Crown Season Four, now in production.

And of course Netflix will release it one episode per week. The bastards.

Queen Olivia Colman, an epic budget and a cast of thousands: a year behind the scenes on The Crown

Great pics inside.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

The Guardian just did a superb piece on the upcoming season. here are some interesting facts:

*There's been a lot of speculation as to how far seasons 3 and season 4 will go chronologically, given that the previous seasons have ended with momentous events: season 1 ended with the public dissolution of Margaret's affair with Group Capt. Peter Townsend in 1955; Season 2 ended with the resignation of Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister in 1963 after the scandal of the Profumo affair. Apparently season 3 will end with the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977 (elsewhere it has been hinted that in the last episode we will see in this last episode Charles and Diana's first meeting that same summer). Season 4 will end with Margaret Thatcher's resignation in 1990, so all of Season 4 will be about Thatcher's term as prime minister (starting in 1979).

*Each season has had a dominant theme focusing on a character or 2. Season 1 was about Elizabeth's underconfident start as queen, and season 2 was about the problems in the marriage of Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The original intention was that season 3 would focus on the queen's very warm relationship with Prime Minister Harold Wilson (supposedly her favorite of all her PMs), but because of Josh O'Connor's supposedly first-rate performance, it instead became more about Prince Charles's early adulthood and his unreadiness to succeed to office.

*Although Dataloungers scream bloody murder when actors don;t look like historical figures they portray even down to eye color, they actually tried to put blue contacts on Olivia Colman so she could match the queen's (and Claire Foy's blue eyes). Everyone agreed it made her seem muffled and masked, even when tried to change her eye color with CGI, because so much of acting the queen is done with her eyes since she says so little (even to her close family). So they decided ultimately to let Colman be allowed the full range of her performance by keeping her eyes brown.

*Also, perhaps as a riposte to people like Dataloungers who believe that actors playing historical figures have to be exact lookalikes, there's much discussion among the showrunners that Colman does not look much like Elizabeth II nor does helena Bonham-Carter look like Princess Margaret--but they assert (I think convincingly) that it's all in the performance, so that the twon women can fully inhabit the personae of the Windsor sisters with almost uncanny accuracy.

*In addition to the already leaked episode plots about the queen's visit to Wales after the horrific Aberfan landslide disaster in 1966 and the episode centering on Prince Philip's feelings about the landing on the moon, there will be an episode centering on Winston Churchill's funeral (which had already been guessed at by series fans) and an episode about Charles's education in the Welsh language prior to his 1969 investiture as Prince of wales, where he had to deliver a speech in Welsh.

*Geraldine Chaplin will be playing the Duchess of Windsor!

Great photo from the article of O'Connor as Charles delivering his Welsh investiture speech looking anxious and underconfident, and the queen looking at him with an inscrutable expression.

I married my husband in 1978. I wonder if I will be showing up in Season 3 or Season 4? No doubt it was very difficult to cast me as they needed to find someone with poise and a commanding presence.

I will wear my "Jerry Falwell" brooch in honor of all my DL viewers. My Blackamoor brooch has gotten quite a workout lately and I need to send it out for cleaning.

It has been leaked Derek Jacobi will be playing the Duke of Windsor. This upcoming season will show his last meeting with his niece the Queen in Paris in 1972, not long before he died.

Love Claire Foy. Does Matt Smith always have his face down looking up or is that his characterization of Phikip.

I think that the original for that weird space helmet thing Colman is wearing at r176 for Charles's investiture ceremony was designed by Norman Hartnell.

Hartnell really did try to keep up in his designs for the queen, even when the 50s (his great era) were over. It's just he didn't always succeed.

Teaser trailer.

new teaser

New teaser trailer released today for the upcoming season, showing Olivia Colman as QE2, and addressing head-on the changes in her appearance from young queen to...

"Old bat?" Colman asks.

"Settled sovereign," a senior courtier says.

(She compares an old stamp design with Claire Foy's face with a new one with her own face on it.)

Is there a more perfect demonstration that posters don't check even one reply above them before posting something, or what? 😂

I guess the embargo is no more or at least lessened, seeing how the critics are discussing the characters openly now?

r184, if you have someone blocked, then you can't see if you're duplicating the news in their posting.

The whole of DL shouldn't be spammed with duplicates (and triplicates in this case) constantly because you happen to have someone blocked. That's your issue to sort out.

r187, I will do whatever I like. I have nothing to "sort out."

Don't like it? Too bad!

Love that clip at R183. Nicely done.

Sort yourself out.

r181 I don't like that they addressed the casting change head-on like that. Comes across as too fourth-wall breaking.

[quote] Sort yourself out.

Oh, if [italic]only[/italic] anyone had to do what you told them to do.

If only!

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I love Colman but it's going to take a bit of convincing for me. Foy was perfect.

I had big doubts about Colman but she's grown on me a bit as I've seen little bits of video. Shame about the brown eyes and Olivia Colman's voice is so distinct... I have a hard time thinking it's anything other than Olivia Colman trying to sound like the Queen,

Why not address it head on r191? It's what all the viewers are thinking about

A touch of meta-ness works well.

I can't wait to see

JOSH O'CONNOR AND JOSH O'CONNOR'S GIANT PENIS

in the credits.

[quote](spoilers)

I am still waiting one of you bitches to divulge one plot point we don't already know!

Yeah, one can only spoil so much. It's known history!

Yes the concept of "spoilers" for real life has always been kinda funny to me, but you still see that a lot on productions that are based on true events.

Spoilers for this show do not have to do necessarily with history, since a good portion of this show is just made up for dramatic purposes.

There's no record (nor is it likely) that the queen met with Lord Altrincham in secret after he criticized her publicly, as we saw last season; and there certainly is no record that Jackie Kennedy ever privately met with the queen at Windsor to apologize for mocking her and Buckingham Palace, and in the process confessed she and JFK had amphetamine injections or that he was abusive to her (!). The queen finding Philips' photograph of the Russian ballerina 9implying he had an affair with her), and also her dressing down the Duke of Windsor for being a Nazi sympathizer and co-plotter during WW2 also seem to be the screenwriters' inventions.

I think the exchange between Queen Elizabeth and Camilla Parker Bowles, when she first appears, is mostly made up.

Queen: Your great grandmother was nothing but a common whore using her feminine wiles to lead astray the King of Christendom's greatest empire.

Camilla: Your uncle was a Nazi and married a man in drag. What's your point?

[Quote] also seem to be the screenwriters' inventions.

But are they? Is r201 right?

While the overall events are real, of course the particulars are how exactly things happened and conversations occured are dramatized. It is a TV show.

There is also no other way to do it, the writers will never know all the details of what exactly happened behind closed doors.

I've seen some previews and honestly Olivia Colman's voice as QE 2 is very nasal and annoying. I wish they would have just left Clare Foy and Matt Smith stay and age them. And I don't care for either of the choices for Princess Margaret. ugh.

[bold]Queen of the Screen: Olivia Colman on fame, fortune and [italic]The Crown[/italic][/bold]

[quote][bold]On role research:[/bold] “I don’t really enjoy research,” Colman admits, as we chat over breakfast on the hotel’s roof terrace. “But for this, I have to accept it. I can’t just sit like me, I have to sit like her, and look like pictures of her. They have been teaching me how to walk – I’m really terrible at that, I have no physical awareness. I walk a bit like a farmer, one of the directors said.”

[quote][bold]On the Queen’s voice being another challenge:[/bold] “I thought that general ‘posh’ would do it, but apparently not. Really unusual vowel sounds,” she says. Like what? “Well, it’s not quite this, but if you’re saying ‘yes,’ you say ‘ears.'” She bursts out laughing. “It’s fun to do, isn’t it? Very hard to stop. Ears.”

I hear the Queen watches it and laughs her tiara off.

Too bad for you, r205.

R207 Is that true? The series is not funny. It's rather sad actually.

R207 Is that true? The series is not funny. It's rather sad actually.

...

Shot from Spain: first look at Emma Corrin as Princess Diana, as she and Josh O'Connor re-create Charles's and Diana's 1983 trip to Australia.

(note that they are evidently not in character in this shot, given the PAs behind them in 2019 clothing)

[quote] Even if Claire Foy had been able to pass for the Queen in her late forties this season, she would certainly not be able to pass for being in her sixties and seventies in later seasons.

I'm not entirely sure about that, Her Majesty has very good skin. Even now, in her 90s, she isn't very wrinkled, probably because she doesn't smoke. It is hard to believe she is only eight years younger than her mother was when she died. The Queen still looks a good 20 years younger than the Queen Mum did and she looks many years younger than Phillip who is only around four years older.

It wouldn't have taken that much ageing makeup for Foy to have continued to play the role, especially for the 1960s and 70s, basically they would have just needed to gradually add grey to her hair. The main problem is that the rest of the cast would have had to be aged alot, because the people they are playing, for the most part, really visibly aged, a lot, over the years. So it is best to just replace everyone.

During the 60s and 70s the queen colored her hair. Even on her cootch

[quote]The Queen still looks a good 20 years younger than the Queen Mum

That's because Mum was a drinker. I've seen alcoholics in my time, but that woman could put it away. She actually sloshed when she walked.

Thanks for sharing that, R206. I love Olivia Colman and can’t wait for this. I’ll be bingeing as soon as it’s out! x

Looking at that photo of Emma Corrin as Princess Diana, I am amazed at how weird that hair do was, although it was all the rage at thee time (tons of women tried to copy it). You can't even see her forehead. It looks like she's trying to hide bad acne.

The real Diana and Charles at Ayers "Yep, There It is Alright" Rock, aka Uluru, in central Australia, 1983.

R217 Why do you need to see people's forehead. I love bangs.

Agreed, bangs are everything. Good bangs, that is.

Gang bangs, that is.

[quote]Looking at that photo of Emma Corrin as Princess Diana, I am amazed at how weird that hair do was, although it was all the rage at thee time (tons of women tried to copy it).

I love that scene in Educating Rita where the ugly woman comes into the beauty parlor and says "Make me look like this" and holds up a picture of Diana.

I hope they styled that blonde wig to appear better than it looks in that photo.

[quote]I hope they styled that blonde wig to appear better than it looks in that photo.

It's British tv. It's probably a left over from the Benny Hill days.

Charles and Camilla! Of course the actress is much prettier than old horse face.

[quote]Charles and Camilla! Of course the actress is much prettier than old horse face.

I wonder who they are going to get for Seasons 5 & 6? It's probably going to have to be one of the famous names so that her feelings aren't hurt. I imagine Penelope Wilton or Harriet Walter.

I wish they weren't rushing along so much. I'd rather they stayed more in the land of more ancient history. It's hard to forget what you know or have lived through.

I still remember the very first episode there is this one scene showing fully naked Phillip ( Matt Smith ) facing King George. I just don't understand the necessity of it.

There's your explanation.

[quote]showing fully naked Phillip ( Matt Smith ) facing King George. I just don't understand the necessity of it.

They've been trying to get Matt Smith to appear naked for several years. He was supposed to appear naked in "Christopher And His Kind" but he was contracted as Doctor Who and the producers of that show wouldn't give their consent because they didn't want him to spoil his Doctor Who image.

One thing about this show is it has a lot more sex than you'd expect. They showed quite a bit of Matthew Goode as Tony Armstrong-Jones having sex with his Japanese girlfriend, and also the couple he regularly fucked.

They want the sexiness in it because it makes the show more attractive to viewers. They of course cannot show Elizabeth and Philip having sex, but they did have the one scene last season where they suggested he was asking her for a blow job. And they can show his ass because Phillip famously sleeps in the nude.

I expect in the coming season we will definitely see nudity from Snowdon and his other lovers. We will also almost definitely get to see quite a lot of skin from Roddy Llewellyn, Margaret's 1970s boytoy.

Weirdly we did not see much of Margaret's skin the last two seasons, and I'm not sure why, since she was a well-sexed woman.

R225 She wasn't bad looking in her younger days. She also isn't that bad looking today. But, for whatever reason between 1980 and the early 2000s she look horrible.

Matt Smith refused to do full frontal for that Mapplethorpe movie.

[bold]Helena Bonham Carter sought Princess Margaret's blessing through psychic[/bold]

[quote]Some actors avoid excessive research, but for Helena Bonham Carter to play Princess Margaret in The Crown meant reading all the biographies, talking to friends, ladies-in-waiting and relatives, and consulting an astrologer, a graphologist and a psychic. The last meeting meant she could talk to the princess herself, the actor told Cheltenham literature festival.

[quote]“She said, apparently, she was glad it was me. My main thing when you play someone who is real, you kind of want their blessing because you have a responsibility. So I asked her: ‘Are you OK with me playing you?’ and she said: ‘You’re better than the other actress’ … that they were thinking of. They will not admit who it was. It was me and somebody else."

[quote]“That made me think maybe she is here, because that is a classic Margaret thing to say. She was really good at complimenting you and putting you down at the same time. Then she said: ‘But you’re going to have to brush up and be more groomed and neater.’ Then she said: ‘Get the smoking right. I smoked in a very particular way. Remember that – this is a big note – the cigarette holder was as much a weapon for expression as it was for smoking.’”

Eurgh, I love her, she's a riot!

Are they interpreting Margaret wrong? Yes, she was a glamorous party girl in her youth, but I think by the 1970s wasn't she a married woman with children and started her descent into being irrelevant? Didn't the focus of their lives begin to shift away from Margaret and onto the antics of Diana and eventually Sarah Ferguson?

HBC is probably a good choice for Margaret. Short, overrated as a beauty, eccentric, seems full of herself.

Geraldine Chaplin as Wallis! That's exciting.

R235 Margaret didn't really fade from the spotlight until the 1980s, which is when Diana and Fergie came around. The 1970s was when she had her divorce, the first one in the senior Royal Family. And she was a major part of the international jet set in the late 1960s-1970s.

I love the actor playing Charles. I'm watching him in the Durrells of Corfu, and he's wonderful.

Don't we all r239? He bared his low hanging dong in a gay film. What's not to like.

Emma Corrin as Princess Diana on the Set of Netflix’s “The Crown”

[quote]Emma Corrin as Princess Diana on the Set of Netflix’s “The Crown”

Too much resting bitch face. Diana always had that "deer in the headlights" look.

To be fair, she's standing in direct sunlight in that photo. Her eyes look better when she's in the shade.

We are already bitching about Season 4 when Season 3 hasn't even come out yet!

Who will be the queen in seasons 5 and 6? Mirren?

That's what Peter Morgan wants, but Helen Mirren has gone on record a couple times, including as recently as last week saying she doesn't want to do it.

I guess we'll see if he can get Netflix to throw her a boatload of money to change her mind, or we will have to go with someone else.

It's not going to air on Netflix until fall 2020.

That Diana has a really fat face!

Only until the bulimia scenes!

It seems S3 has been taking forever, maybe because screeners went out to critics at the end of August and they make us regular folks wait til mid November.

I don't think it's been taking forever--we did get the release date several months ago, and now we just have to wait for it.

I am surprised, though, we have not yet received a proper full trailer for the season--just the teasers so far.

It just feels like a long time when people I follow on Twitter have been talking about season 3 since August. Like I said, screeners went out so early relative to the release date.

They have elaborate reasons why they release TV shows when they do. it has to do with their overall Netflix schedule, with planning what time of year the most people will want to settle in to see it, and also planning to optimize awards attention (especially if it is a high prestige show like this that is likely to garner nominations).

[quote]They have elaborate reasons why they release TV shows

PBS freely admitted they broadcast Downton Abbey in January because it was their lowest viewership period and they wanted to up their donations during that time period.

Has the Season 3 broadcast date been announced yet?

R255 Nov 17th

I admit to a lot of noises in my head but once upon a time I thought the original release was supposed to be in July. Anybody else recall that?

Trailer is out.

Pay no attention to the Japanese characters.

Big dicked Josh O'Connor seeks to break up Charles and Camilla to have Prince of Wales all to himself shock!

R7 R19 Prince Charles was circumcised, so if they show nudity, they'll have to either use a prosthetic or make sure the actor's foreskin is retracted fully.

Josh O'Connor is really evoking Charles. Just going by this, Helena Bonham Carter seems like a misstep, but we'll see once the actual episodes are out.

I suspect Bonham Carter will carry it off really well. I just can't get past Olivia Colman. I love her... but she looks nothing like the Queen... sounds nothing like the Queen. I felt the same about Foy, who inhabited the role in the end.... but Colman... the brown eyes distract me. She'll do fine but I suspect there will be more carping about the second batch than praise.

[quote] I just can't get past Olivia Colman.

I think in the end, we disassociate the story with the living person. It becomes sort of a parallel universe. I never really bought Helen Mirren playing the Queen. She was sort of this grand matriarch with clipped speech but she really didn't seem to be *the Queen*. Carol Burnett, on the other hand, I totally believed as the Queen.

Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher

[quote]Carol Burnett, on the other hand, I totally believed as the Queen.

I still don't think anyone has imitated the queen's voice better than Burnett did.

Until she was an old woman, the queen had a very high squeaky voice, and British actresses have always been afraid of capturing that high pitch because it sounds disrespectful. But Burnett was fearless.

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They better cover the Princess Anne kidnapping, she is fantastic!

Trailer without the Japanese subtitles.

[quote]They better cover the Princess Anne kidnapping, she is fantastic!

I almost think they would have to. They need plenty of drama for this series and that fits the bill.

I love the new trailer. What could be more depressing than one minor member of the oryal family saying to another, "I believe we all have a role to play," when obviously none of them do but the queen herself?

Also: I bet in a billion years Bob Dylan never imagined 'The Times They Are A-Changin'" would be re-purposed for this use.

And the costumes for this era are so hilariously ugly.

That pink hat in the beginning...NO.

Oh, yes...

I'm impressed. It looks like Hurricane Bonham Carter is going to the steal this thing... yet from the snippets it seems more through restraint than hamming it up.

Maybe her acting coach, Sybil the Soothsayer, really worked.

[quote]I'm impressed. It looks like Hurricane Bonham Carter is going to the steal this thing... yet from the snippets it seems more through restraint than hamming it up.

She's actually quite a good actress when she has a director that guides her in the right direction. But good directors these days are few and far between.

Mirren is tired of Elizabeth.

[quote]Mirren is tired of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is tired of Mirren.

I'm not a Helena fan at all, but she seems great. Colman has a puss on on in every scene in the trailer, I hope she captures the Queen's lighter side. Charles looks grim.

And his posture looked terrible.

[quote]And his posture looked terrible.

I thought that too.

Charles's posture was infamously awful when he was young. He always looked slumped over until about the mid-Eighties when his marriage began to fall apart.

I think it had to do with his father always barking orders at him.

r271, they're being very careful to reproduce the clothes the royal family wore on actual famous public occasions: as r272 shows, that's a reproduction of the actual weird hat the queen wore on Jubilee Day in 1977. It's like the infamous space-age helmet-hat she wore in the photo at the OP forCharles's investiture--and it would look weirder to the Uk audience if she **didn't** wear those clothes, since people in the UK remember thekm so vidily for those famous occasions.

The queen's couturiers had a problem in dressing her when she was young and middle-aged: they wanted to look very much like she was in step with the times, so she wore extravagant clothes that were sometimes a bit outlandish. The problem was that often they themselves were not in step with the times (they dramatize this in season 2, when for her dinner with JFK and Jackie, Norman Hartnell dresses her in what would have been an absolutely beautiful dress in the 50s, but which is about ten years behind the times in 1963 and so looks old-fashioned and dowdy at the dinner next to Jackie's then- au courant dress).

Only in the 1950s, early in her reign, did she look in step with the times. By the 80s her couturiers just gave up and kept dressing the queen in clothes that always looked like they were incredibly dated, but looked all her own style. This was probably the best solution.

Charles's bad posture hen he was younger probably does have to due with his low self-esteem relative to his family when he was young. As with almost all Princes of Wales in the last 3 centuries, his parents thought he was unfit to inherit the crown (in his case, because they thought he was weak and too sensitive), and so as again as with almost all Princes of Wales they constantly let him know they did not approve of him. He has complained to his biographers in the past that when he was a child his mother was distant and chilly and that his father was too harsh and stern. In the PR film they made in 1969, "The Royal Family" (which has never been shown in whole again since it was first broadcast), supposedly the film shows that no one in his family ever listened to him when they got together at meals, except for his two younger brothers who hero-worshipped him then.

As everyone knows, Charles did not really want to marry Diana, and married her only because he thought she was the sort of woman (pretty, aristocratic) his family expected him to marry. I think it was only when his marriage broke down that he began to stand up straight because he no longer really cared what his family thought of him. He began to flaunt his relationship with Camilla more openly, and his family could do nothing to stop him because he had his own money through the Duchy of Cornwall. Eventually they had to come round to respecting him because he stood up to them and went his own way.

[quote]He has complained to his biographers in the past that when he was a child his mother was distant and chilly

And that is on display in newsreels. The Queen and Philip took a long trip (was it to India?) and left Charles behind. There is newsreel footage of their return. When the Queen returns after weeks away, she walks up to Charles and pats him on the back and then continues on. What type of mother wouldn't hug their small boy after weeks away?

I think in the 1950s, in public, most of them.

[quote]What type of mother wouldn't hug their small boy after weeks away?

I don't know. What did he win in her absence?

Princess Anne has contradicted Charles's accounts of their mother's chilliness, and said she was a very good mother to them growing up even though they were raised mostly by nannies (as most aristocratic children were in the UK before the 1960s).

Of course, the queen may have been chillier to Charles because he was always a reminder to her of her death. Apparently many of the monarchs of the UK regard the heirs to the throne with suspicion because they think, "His life will only be meaningful after I die, and so he is waiting for my death." Apparently the queen is one of the few heirs to the throne who had a happy childhood, and the others were usually second sons who were surprised to find they stood in line to inherit the throne (like George V and George VI).

The queen supposedly decided to be a very different kind of mother when Andrew and Edward were born, and was very demonstrative of her love for them in the 60s and 70s (probably because she had become used to her duties by that time, and also because she realized it was expected of her). That could not have been fun for Charles to watch, remembering how different his own childhood had been.

One thing they have shown on "The Crown" so far is that they have shown Claire Foy being affectionate (if formally so) to the very young Charles and Anne, but they have occasionally had other characters (like the Queen Mother) criticize her for being distant towards and uninterested in them. And we have repeatedly seen Philip (Matt Smith) be harsh and critical with Charles but loving towards Anne.

George VI did not have a happy childhood. His father was an obsessive martinet, his mother a chilly intellectual preoccupied with collecting jewels and bric-a-brac, and he and his older brother suffered an abusive nanny in their very early years. He was forced to be right-handed though naturally left-handed, which caused him to develop a stutter. He also wore painful braces to correct his knock knees. He didn't really begin to shape up as a person until Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon took him on.

I gather there's been some revision of Queen Mary's mothering... she wasn't that bad when the King wasn't around. I can't remember where I read it.. might have been that cool book The Quest for Queen Mary... because the Duke of Windsor was interviewed for it and I think he was the one softened on her mothering in it... in anyway if you tolerate this thread you should love this book... from Amazon:

'A scary portrait of put-upon servants and potty aristos ... this is arguably the most riotously funny volume published this year' Max Hastings, Sunday Times

'One of the funniest, most eccentric books of the year' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years. Now published in full for the first time and edited by the highly admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers, this is a riveting, often hilarious portrait of the eccentric aristocracy of a bygone age.

Giving much greater insight into Queen Mary than the official version, and including sharply observed encounters with, among others, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Duke of Gloucester, and a young Queen Elizabeth, The Quest for Queen Mary is set to be a classic of royal publishing.

IIRC, the Queen more or less said she had Andrew and Edward because she wanted a do over. Chuck and Anne were very small when she came to the throne (and when she was covering for her dad beforehand) that she wasn't able to be as much of a mother as she would've liked because she was adjusting to THE THRONE. Hence the ten year break between Anne and Andrew.

R287, I wonder if that's why Elizabeth had a happy childhood. Perhaps her father, having suffered such a difficult upbringing, was determined to give his daughters a loving home. I'm sure his not being the heir made it easier to have a normal home as well.

Yes Elizabeth was an absentee mother to Charles and Anne, but Andrew and Edward gave her a chance to do it over again and be more involved with her kids.

R284, perhaps that would have been true for English mothers - although I think that's a bit unfair as well - but it's definitely not true for American mothers. Quite the opposite, in fact.

In the first place, Americans of the '50s would have considered it odd, to say the least, for any other mother to go off for months and leave her children. If such a separation had arisen out of necessity, the returning mother would be expected to show natural and abundant affection at the reunion. That's all still true.

I think Americans of that time assumed the Queen's reserve with her children was purely a public pose because of her role and that she was affectionate in private. She was (and is) well-liked over here. People wanted to think well of her.

[quote]Princess Anne has contradicted Charles's accounts of their mother's chilliness, and said she was a very good mother to them growing up even though they were raised mostly by nannie

Anne is a tough broad and probably could handle it better. Charles has always been a bit of a softer person, god knows how he hated the tough atmosphere of Gordonstoun. He wanted a more traditional loving presence from his Mother, and is bitter he did not receive it.

Well, no Americans were Queen of the United Kingdom, R292, so those are interesting feelings but they really have no particular relevance, except to prove that the American experience must be the measure by which all things ever and anywhere must be assessed.

George III and Charlotte were very critical of their eldest child George IV, who was selfish and pleasure-loving, but who was made worse by his parents' dislike of him.

Victoria and Albert were absolutely rotten to their eldest child Bertie, who later reigned as Edward VIII: they told him he was stupid, and Victoria blamed his for Albert's death (Albert died of typhoid while he was fighting with Bertie).

As a result, Bertie was very warm and kind to his sons, Albert Victor (the Duke of Clarence, who died in his early 20s), and George V.

George V was awful towards his children, and bullied them constantly. His eldest son, Edward VIII, ran away from him as much as he could, and hius bullying gave George VI a stammer.

George VI, his second son, was very warm to his daughters as a result, but spoiled Margaret too much.

[quote] Well, no Americans were Queen of the United Kingdom,

Not through lack of trying.

[quote]Only in the 1950s, early in her reign, did she look in step with the times.

R281, I agree. Perhaps one could also say that, in the '50s, the times were in step with Elizabeth in that she had the perfect figure for the era, being petite and voluptuous. Fitted jackets and full skirts suited her. The shift in style at the end of the '50s to a slim silhouette must have really challenged her designers.

Add to that the fact that the Queen seems to have believed dowdiness a requirement for the job. She was only 37 in 1963. There's no reason why she couldn't have worn the Chanel-type suits with unfitted jackets and straight skirts that were standard attire for well-dressed women at the time, nor any reason she couldn't have adopted a more contemporary hairstyle. Millions of women who weren't as thin or fashionable as Jackie Kennedy managed it.

R294, my comment was in response to this exchange:

[quote]What type of mother wouldn't hug their small boy after weeks away?

[quote]I think in the 1950s, in public, most of them.

"Most of them", not "most of them who were Queens of the UK". In fact, point of the exchange was to contrast Elizabeth's public behavior with that expected of other mothers.

"Most of them" is a pretty inclusive term, so the American experience is as relevant as any other.

The queen is expected always to stay with English designers: she would be accused to being unpatriotic if she wore Chanel. By the 1960s she had a long relationship with Norman Hartnell, and he never was interested in unfitted jackets or straight skirts.

Also, she could not have worn the big bouffant hairdos her sister and the Duchess of Windsor and other women wore in the 1960s because though her tiaras would fit over them, the Imperial State Crown (which she used to always wear to the opening of parliament every year) would not. They also would have been impractical to wear for her long hours of meeting people, especially overseas--Margaret, who was incredibly vain, had her hair done up sometimes several times a day, and the queen was too busy for that.

Plus fashionable isn't her... she's got a distinct look that she informed, from what I gather. It hasn't changed a lot over the years.

Victoria was a cunt to her all children

I don't recall anyone oozing emotion when it came to their children in the 1950s and 60s if we're drawing on broad generalizations from our own point of view, R298. I don't recall it even reflected on idealized American TV programs about families. Find me June Cleaver or Kate Bradshaw ever kissing a child of hers once. As I recall, an entire generation of psychotherapy was created, staffed and prospered owing to the distance of parents all around the Western world. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, were public displays of emotion terribly common by prominent public figures, unless you count DeGaulle kissing a few hands. But whatever... you just keep telling us what's right in your vast experience.

It would have been hilarious had the queen worn the hip fashions of the 60s!

Perfect for opening Parliament!

A bold and dramatic look for bold and dramatic occasions--like meeting LBJ and Lady Bird!

R299, good point about bouffant hair, although I wasn't thinking of big hair - just straighter and a bit fluffed up. Yes, I can see it would have required restyling to fit under the crown and would have been harder to maintain than stiff, set hair.

And I did say "Chanel-TYPE" suit - one would think there would have been English designers who imitated the look. Nevertheless, I see your point about Hartnell.

Anyway, what R300 said ... I agree.

interesting comments about the clothes. I assumed it was a conscious decision not to look like some movie star or some trendy singer or some desperate social climber keeping up with "fashion." But it might have been less intentional.

She's always said she'd rather be lady living in the country. Is that probably reflects in her style. Plus she is big on precedent and tradition, so Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies endured for a long time... into the late seventies (Hartnell) and eighties (Amies.)

Her valet or some such explained beautifully once why the queen dresses the way she does. Fashion and trends are never the point. She must look unaffected by fashion. Her dress must exude authority. Relatability to the common man. She must exhibit familiarity and sameness to convey steadiness and comfort. I am paraphrasing.

That may be the case today, r309; but as this show demonstrates, that certainly was not anyone's belief during the first 25 years of her reign.

R309 I just love all that.

R309 That is true but at the same time over the last 25 years or so while Angela Kelly has been overseeing Her Majesty's clothing, her sartorial game has been the best it has been since her early reign.

It's been revealed that a big part of the later part of the series will focus on a triangle that Camilla Parker-Bowles was involved in--but this time SHE will be the wronged woman!

Her husband Andrew Parker-Bowles (played by "Broadchurch"'s Andrew Buchan) had an affair with Princess Anne (Erin Doherty)--which sent Camilla eventually back into the arms of Anne's brother Charles after his round-the-world tour in the early 70s.

Look for this to be a key storyline in episodes 8 & 9.

R313 Errrgh, fuck Camilla that horse face cunt. The Windsors have her spot on

[quote]Andrew and Edward gave her a chance to do it over again and be more involved with her kids.

And that seems to have worked out so much better!

Olivia Colman is good but a tad pedestrian looking. Maybe I've watched too much Peep Show.

helen Bonham carter has spoiled a lot of movies! bummer.

Bonham Carter is bringing her battiness to princess Margaret. So far so good after one episode.

[quote]Maybe I've watched too much Peep Show.

As if that is even possible.

How does the actor playing Prince Philip talk without ever moving his upper lip?

Can you imagine the Queen having to live with Blunt under the roof for 8 years, after he, was outed as a Soviet mole? How creepy.

R320 He seems to talk inward - not outward. It's fascinating.

I like Tobias better as Philip than Matt though.

Liz looks like Catherine O’Hara wearing a space helmet.

The Welsh mining town disaster episode was heartbreaking. It cleverly foreshadows the Queen's response to the death of Princess Di.

The episode with Princess Alice, the Queen's mother in law, was very moving. Bravo.

Jane Lapotaire as Princess Alice was FUCKING AMAZING.

I think Charles Dance will still end up as Philip in S5 and S6 even though he’s playing Dickie Mountbatten.