‘The Crown’ cast members open up about ‘legacy’ of final season: ‘It was challenging, difficult, and yet utterly rewarding’

Friday night at the FYSEE space in Hollywood, Netflix hosted the last-ever industry panel with the cast and crew of “The Crown.” The regal drama series aired its final season in November and December, and it has already competed at kudos like the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Now, the upcoming 2024 Emmys will be its last hurrah on the awards circuit. Taking part in the combined in-person and virtual discussion for Season 6 were cast members Imelda Staunton (Queen Elizabeth II), Elizabeth Debicki (Princess Diana), Lesley Manville (Princess Margaret) and Khalid Abdalla (Dodi Fayed), plus executive producer/writer Peter Morgan, casting director Robert Sterne, set decorator Alison Harvey, composer Martin Phipps, hair & makeup designer Cate Hall, and costume designers Amy Roberts & Sidonie Robertsas.

Morgan began the discussion by addressing the fact that Season 6, unlike the prior cycles, took place within recent memory. “Obviously, you’re more mindful of people close to the events that actually happened,” he stated. “But it was 20 years ago. So for me, that’s not journalism, that’s history. And you have to remember that all these dramatic events are part of what happened in the number one family in the UK, and it’s both defining for a nation’s character, but also some of the ripples of the Diana story, the tragedy of her death. Those became international events. And so while you are always very mindful of the fact that this is close to some people’s lives and indeed their families, exploring history is a legitimate thing for drama to do, and it’s what ‘The Crown’ has always done. In some ways, writing deeper history was more difficult because you felt you were guessing a little bit more. Whereas, in this final season, I have strong memories of what happened and therefore I felt slightly more confident in my authorship.”

More from GoldDerby

• Emmy mystery solved: How often do the deaths of characters lead to wins?

• Jordan Samuel ('Fellow Travelers' makeup): 'Hopefully we honored the people that the story was about' [Exclusive Video Interview]

• Paul W. Downs is an Emmy triple threat for 'Hacks'

SEE‘The Crown’ can join a unique Emmy list with a victory for Elizabeth Debicki

Staunton spoke about her two years on the show, as well as the recent death of the iconic woman she portrayed. “The legacy of ‘The Crown’ was probably foremost in my mind,” she began. “Because as Peter said, this is a drama about real people. So I was very honored to carry the baton, and I think it was challenging, difficult, and yet utterly rewarding for all of us to do these final two seasons. There’s no doubt that it was more difficult being the more recent Queen for me. I tried not to let that affect me, because I just had to also look at the script I was given. I just feel that we all took in her death. It was a terribly difficult and sad time. But then we carried on as I imagined she would’ve done. So it was a pretty extraordinary time.”

Debicki, who has already cleaned up at awards shows like the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and SAG Awards, detailed the “many layers of prep” required to play Princess Diana. “I think the biggest hurdle was a psychological one of giving myself permission to do it,” she readily admitted. “It was really unlike anything I’ve ever done as an actor. By the time I came on board, there was a machinery that was churning in the most incredibly efficient way, which meant any research I wanted to do was available to me. We had an amazing movement coach named Polly Bennett, who I workshopped things with. In terms of the movement, it was about understanding the map of a person’s body and why a person moves in a certain way. That was a whole journey. That was fed by the research I was doing and the amount of visual research I watched. We have a dialect department that are incredible, so there was so many layers. And then we received the script, and that was fascinating but also really terrifying because I thought, ‘How will I get this right?’ It was a big challenge, but a very satisfying challenge in the end.”

SEE‘The Crown’ cinematographer Adriano Goldman on shooting the final episode [Exclusive Video Interview]

Abdalla referenced the “huge responsibility” of taking on the role of Dodi Fayed. “Here is this man who, as I put it, has been on supermarket shelves and in the public eye for 26 years, and yet somehow people don’t know until this,” he noted. “There was just the word ‘playboy’ and of course the reputation of his father. There was an incredible opportunity to deconstruct that and discover the person who I think he was underneath it. Some of that’s from the research around the time, and you get the first hint from journalists and stuff who spoke to his friends who were always very upset with the reputation that had begun to be in the public eye, and spoke to friends and people who knew him. And there’s a 17-second recording, which is an extraordinary thing, because it’s literally him calling into Larry King to ask Burt Reynolds to do an impression of Tony Curtis doing Cary Grant.”

Manville got to play the “vulnerable” side of Princess Margaret in the final season, particularly in the episode “Ritz” which chronicled her strokes and eventual death. “We know this woman historically, but you’ve also seen through Seasons 1 to 4,” she began. “You’ve had a wonderful picture of this woman’s life, this extraordinary life, this glamorous life. To a degree, a royal without a portfolio. So she had a pre-reign to be more daring and more true to herself perhaps than a lot of the other members of the family. What Peter wrote so beautifully in that episode was a woman who you’ve seen — you’ve celebrated her and she has celebrated her own life, and you have all that rug pulled from under her feet. And of course, illness and being incapacitated does not sit well with her.”

After the Q&A, the final episode, titled “Sleep, Dearie Sleep,” was shown to a packed audience. And then attendees got to explore the enormous FYSEE space where they saw costumes from Season 6 that were worn by Staunton and Debicki. All seasons of “The Crown” are now streaming on Netflix.

PREDICT the 2024 Emmy nominees through July 17

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions

Best of GoldDerby

• How Walton Goggins unlocked his dual roles on 'Fallout' [Exclusive Video Interview]

• TV reality roundtable panel: 'The Golden Bachelor,' 'RuPaul's Drag Race,' 'Squid Game: The Challenge,' 'The Traitors' [Exclusive Video Interviews]

• Toni Ireland ('The Traitors' producer) on being 'really overwhelmed by the success' of Season 2 [Exclusive Video Interview]

Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.