Claudia Harrison, The Crown's New Princess Anne, Queued for Nine Hours to Pay Respects to Queen Elizabeth

When Queen Elizabeth passed away at Balmoral in early September, the cast and crew of The Crown were just beginning to work on the show's sixth and final season. Quickly, the production paused filming out of respect for the late monarch, with series creator Peter Morgan sharing, "The Crown is a love letter to her. I’ve nothing to add for now, just silence and respect."

For actors who portray Queen Elizabeth's family on the final two seasons of the show, the loss of the long-serving monarch hit them as British citizens, but also as people with some perspective on what it's like to be in her family.

"You're coming at it in a double way, and you can't control your reactions," Claudia Harrison, who plays Princess Anne in the final two seasons, tells Town & Country. "You don't know how you're going to feel. You feel one thing, being a British citizen and this lady's been part of the fabric of your country for as long as all of us remember. And then of course, we've spent the last two years playing her family. We're watching these people on television. You just can't help feeling that you think how they might be feeling."

Harrison was moved to queue with hundreds of thousands of others to pay her respects to the monarch as Queen Elizabeth's coffin lay in state in Westminster. She waited for nine and half hours, and she is grateful for the experience.

"Like all the other hundreds of thousands of people doing it, I didn't really know why I was doing it," she says. "And I did it and it felt completely right, and it just felt like a mark of respect. And the queue became this kind of cultural phenomenon. It's a brilliant thing to mark her passing."

She was not in Westminster Hall when Princess Anne joined the Vigil of the Princes with her brothers. She jokes that if she were there at the same time as the Princess Royal, "I would've felt I needed to signal who I am."

Harrison isn't the only member of the fictional royal family to have a deep emotional response in the aftermath of Queen Elizabeth's death. "It was traumatic," Marcia Warren, the show's final Queen Mother, tells Town & Country. She said it felt like she'd "lost a daughter."

Warren, too, felt protective her fictional daughter, The Crown's final Queen Elizabeth, Imelda Staunton, and was glad the actress had a few days off following the monarch's passing.

When Staunton did return to set, she had a scene with a lot of supporting artists (commonly called "extras"). As Harrison recalls, "It is a thing to see her in her costume and see her on set. For the supporting artists, Imelda said it was very emotional for them to see this person again."

Dominic West, who plays King Charles, echoes this to Town & Country. "It was poignant and, in some ways, sad," West said of the Queen's passing. "But in most ways, I think it was such an amazing life and such an amazing death, really, that it didn’t feel very sad."

For other Crown actors, the media coverage of the Queen's death reinforced their insight into their characters. For James Murray, who takes on the role of Prince Andrew (and all the baggage that comes with playing the controversial royal), he tuned in to all the coverage surrounding the Queen's death and funeral with a different perspective.

Murray couldn't help feel sympathy for the royal family in having to display their grief so publicly. "You spend all your time at work playing a family, playing the family dynamic, that's how you find the truth in the roles," Murray tells Town & Country. "So when you see them at a funeral or whatever it was, you have deep sympathy."

He continues, "even in their grief, they're being watched by arguably more people than ever. The funeral was the biggest television spectacle, wasn't it? That must be tough. You haven't just lost a mother, but now you've got to put on a face."

Indeed, as Harrison watched the royals during that week surrounding the Queen's death, she kept thinking of the exhaustion of what they had to go through. Yet, for her, the aftermath of the Queen's death answered the question that season five circles around: What is the point of the monarchy? What's the role of the British royal family?

"I feel like we've got a few answers in the public outpouring of affection, emotion, and need for this, other than politics and other than individuals who are careerists, is [the royals]. And it is that dignity and duty—the inexplicable strength that comes from something like that, that's part of our fabric. There's a public need for it, for sure," Harrison says.

"What's our role? That's what season five is. Arguably, that's the big question," Murray adds. "And since the passing of the Queen, that was very much answered with the reaction that the world gave. That they are incredibly necessary and relevant and the main stitch of the fabric, certainly in our country, and arguably in most places around the world such an important family and idea. The constitution, the monarchy, in my opinion, are so important still."

Ultimately, he says, many are grieving the loss of Queen Elizabeth. But now, viewers "can see a depiction of her done fantastically through Imelda Staunton. Now [The Crown] is a way to keep her memory alive."

The Crown season five is now streaming on Netflix.

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