Five Things to Think About as You Watch The Crown
My take on the fifth season — no spoilers!
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Hello! Here to interrupt your Crown binge with some Crown thoughts. You’ll find five things I took away from the season below. To accommodate both the bingers and the savorers among us, I am doing three different discussion threads on Instagram. Check my feed! Or click below for the first one on episodes 1 to 3. I’d love to hear what you think.
Also, I’m hard at work on this year’s So Many Thoughts Gift Guide. If you have any favorite royal-themed ideas, or you are a small business owner from our SMT community, send me a note with your suggestion. You can email me at Hello@SoManyThoughts.com, please put “gift guide” in the subject.
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Take care, friends. 💗
Five Thoughts on the Fifth Season of The Crown
How about that Revenge Dress recreation!
Are you a binger or a savorer? I am normally the latter, drawing out my favorite television shows one episode at time in order to enjoy them for as long as possible. But I tore through this season of the Crown a few weeks ago in preparation for my interview with Dominic West, who takes over as Prince Charles. (You can read my Town & Country piece here.) It’s always fun to get a sneak peek of something; seeing it before any of the reviews were published was especially helpful. As you dive in, I wanted to share five thoughts I had on the season. Note: No big spoilers ahead, but there are some scenes and plot points discussed.
Dominic West told me the monarchy is legitimate fodder for “inquiry and scrutiny.”
Enough with the pearl-clutching over The Crown’s existence
The condemnation of the series ahead of the fifth season’s release was really something, wasn’t it? In a letter to the Times, Oscar-winning actress Dame Judi Dench voiced her concern that “overseas” viewers may take it as “wholly true” and called the fifth season “both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.” Royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith advocated for a “big warning right at the beginning in black and white stating that it is a fictionalized drama. Doing anything other than that is totally disingenuous.”
Let’s be very clear here: The Crown is not real. I think what people are reacting to is that it can feel real because it goes to such great lengths to make it look real. I think it’s widely understood that the imagined dialogue in private moments is made up; the danger, by my estimation, has always been more about the aftertaste of a pivotal scene or charged episode. Viewers can leave with a lingering feeling about what they saw on screen and, in some cases, project that onto the real life people being portrayed. In that sense, The Crown is profound, as viewers can — subconsciously, even — form an opinion on one person or the whole pageant.
However, it is imperative that we all remember that the Windsors are a public family in a position of immense privilege and power, both real and perceived. As Dominic West, who takes over the role of Prince Charles, told me in my interview with him for Town & Country, that makes them legitimate subjects for “inquiry and scrutiny.” (Totally unrelated but with Dominic’s accent he drew out the “quire” in inquiry and I found that delightful.) I deeply appreciated that Dominic is both a big fan of Charles and he is willing to be critical of the monarchy.
“It makes anything stronger to be tested,” he told me. “We’re bowing to these people—who are they? What are they doing? Do they deserve our reverence?”
One last bit of perspective from my chat with Dominic: There is a longstanding tradition — for centuries, even — of dramatizing the monarchy in ways people have deemed both fair and unfair. If something like a TV show stands to threaten the monarchy in a meaningful way, it has bigger problems.
The Crown really does consider several view points.
Every story has two — or more — sides
I got a DM this week from someone who had read the reviews of this season (linked at the bottom of this email) and asked if I thought it was harsher on Diana and gentler on Charles. That was not my takeaway! I was, admittedly, watching in prep for a piece about the heir.
One thing I think it is worth noting is that, generally speaking, Diana’s side of the story has been the dominant one for 25 years now. In researching her for my book, it was particularly notable how many people in her life had talked incredibly openly about her after her death. The floodgates seemed to open up, which is understandable — a lot of people had a lot of reasons to share their experiences with Diana and her life within the monarchy. Since 1997, Diana’s story has been told and retold in countless ways, from the meticulously researched book by Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles, to the heavily fictionalized Kristen Stewart portrayal in Spencer.
But The Crown is about the monarchy in a much broader sense. Peter Morgan has said repeatedly that he seeks to offer everyone a fair shake and that each of these stories are told from two or more sides. Any assertion of Charles’s side of the story, or as is the case in the Crown, the Queen and those around her — those are all lesser known and, perhaps most importantly, lesser sought out. Which is to say I can see how someone would think this was a kinder portrayal of Charles because it is not just Charles from Diana’s POV.
How much do you think they actors look like their real-life counterparts? And how much does it matter?
Release the need for a spot-on resemblance
There has been a lot of chatter about the actors cast this season and whether or not they resemble their real life counterparts. And I think that’s because the Crown is now in the 1990s, the closest we’ve come to what these people actually look like now. To be sure, it’s still three decades ago; we’re not that close. But the middle-age-and-beyond place we meet the cast is far more familiar than back in the 1950s where we started with Claire Foy as a 25-year-old Queen Elizabeth II.
The other thing that is tricky about this season is that there are fewer unknowns taking on these roles and more bigger names. Josh O’Connor as Charles wasn’t super familiar; Dominic West taking over the role, with his time on The Wire and The Affair, is much different. He was just in the Downton movie! He’s everywhere. Imelda Staunton, who plays the Queen, has had a storied career, too. Harry Potter fans have said they have a hard time disassociating her from her Dolores Umbridge role.
What feels truest to me, and what I wrote in my Town & Country story, is that the casting department seems to pick people that embody the roles in spirit, too. Dominic might not look like Prince Charles at first glance but he nails the simmering resentment that comes with feeling trapped. So look for that essence, if you will?
Also, as part of a piece I wrote about The Crown fashion for the Financial Times, I had the chance to listen to the talented costume, hair, and makeup designers talk about their work on the season. And it gave me a much better understanding of how they think about the characters and how closely they try to imitate the real-life people.
Cate Hall, the lead hair and makeup designer, emphasized how important it is that they nail a person’s shape, their outline. “I always think if someone looks like the person from behind, then we’re kind of winning,” she said.The goal is not to erase the person playing the character, either. “We are trying to include enough of the actor so that what we’re not doing is parody,” Hall said. And, as I wrote in my FT piece, from there, the baton is passed on to the viewer. “I rely on the intellect and the maturity of the audience that they will fill in the gaps,” she said. “They don’t need someone to have a prosthetic nose in order to inhabit the drama.”
(This is a total aside but Cate said her favorite wigs to make were John Major’s and Camilla’s. The power of a signature hair style!)
One of several costumes that looks like an exact replica of the actual ensemble.
The fashion walks the fact-versus-fiction line, too
To my eye, there are three categories of costumes: Nearly exact replicas, amalgamations of several outfits, and wholly imagined looks. What I hadn’t considered was how those three play into one another—until I had a chance to listen to costume designers Amy Roberts and Sidonie Roberts discuss their work. The believable pieces, like the recreation of the Revenge Dress, help establish a trust with the audience. Patternmakers get the most credit here, for remaking famous pieces based on photographs and do so in a way that looks believable on a totally different person.
From there, they piece together other aspects of a character’s style using key elements and shapes (there’s one black-and-white ball gown that Elizabeth Debicki wears as Diana that feels like the bodice of one dress the late princess actually wore and the skirt of another). They've done an admirable job of keeping the ‘90s silhouettes streamlined, meaning they look less dated and more desirable to today’s eye.
All of the rooted-in-truth allows for the moments when the costume team can have the most fun — in private. A lot of this season happens out of the public eye, inside royal residences. I found this to be the most revealing, to be honest. It’s a glimpse into the way they see these characters. There’s one scene where the Queen is in the stables and Charles comes to meet her. She’s in her Barbour jacket and pleated skirt; he’s in a double-breasted suit. Such a contrast! Also, all of Diana’s sleeveless turtleneck sweaters were divine.
Last thing: If you, like me, watch the fashion closely and get irked by the small ways in which it is off — which I definitely have in past seasons! — let me offer this reframing. Every time something seemed a tad amiss, I took it as a reminder that this, in fact, fiction.
Episode three was one of my favorites.
Enjoy ‘eating vegetables’
As a viewer, I used to greet the prime ministerial tangents with an unwelcome sigh. I’ll admit I have thought: Can’t we just get back to the juicy royal bits?. As Crown creator Peter Morgan told me before the premiere of season four, “When you’ve got Charles and Diana as a narrative, everything else feels a bit like eating vegetables, right?” and called the other narratives “slightly more tired.”
That is true. And it’s also true that, after all this time, I have come to deeply appreciate the additional context and storytelling those other plot points reveal. It’s so unique to the Crown, to bring in the outside world — and so important, as none of this happens in a bubble.
I found there were fewer of those moments in the fifth season, which freed up time to focus on the blow-by-blow of Diana and Charles’s long, slow, painful march to divorce. However, I very much enjoyed the times when the storytelling goes off in one direction. I did not expect the looks into Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed and his filmmaker son, Dodi, whom Diana started dating shortly before her death. The third episode, called Mou Mou, was one of my favorite of the entire season. I can’t wait to watch it again.
This season recreates the toughest decade of Her Majesty’s reign.
But mostly: This is not a pick-me-up of a watch. There’s a reason the costume designers leaned away from bright shades and into autumnal tones this season, intending to channel the melancholy of the family as it falls apart. I found it particularly difficult to see the portrayal of the Queen. Coming off of the mourning period, when Her Majesty’s life was celebrated in such spectacular fashion, it’s sad to see a recreation of the darkest period of her reign.
However, there’s one more season to come, which is shooting now (so presumably will be out next fall?). It will cover Diana’s death and we know they’ve cast an actress as Kate Middleton, so I think it’s safe to say it will reach into the 2000s. How far remains to be seen. More so than any event the series tackles, I’m very interested to see what tone Peter Morgan strikes — his final verdict on this family.
I would love to hear your thoughts on The Crown. Check my Instagram feed for three discussion threads on the first season.
If you’re looking for more, here are reviews of the season from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Telegraph, the Times of London. You’ll note quite the difference in tone between American publications and the British ones.
Happy watching! 📺 I will be back in your inboxes soon with more on The Crown. Stay tuned, as they say.
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Loved season 5 of The Crown and the ways it wove in non-Royal stories as well as those of the House of Windsor. Mou Mou was a definite highlight.