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TAKING THE CROWN The area
In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, the eponymous king declares ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ The trials and tribulations of monarchs provided sufficient material to keep the playwright going for years. It’s little surprise; being a monarch is never dull. Our own Queen’s reign of 68 years has had its challenges, but what makes for a challenging life also makes great TV.
And one of the best series on our screens at the moment is The Crown, which over 73,000,000 households have watched since it debuted in 2016. Series four is now available to stream and if the faces are familiar, then the locations should be even more recognisable, because both Burghley House & Grantham’s Belvoir Castle make admirable representations of Windsor Castle in both series three and four of the drama. We spoke to Director Ben Caron, about what compelled him to film in the area and what the latest series has in store for viewers…
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What attracted you to Belvoir Castle and latterly to Burghley House? Both are great locations. Unfortunately, we were unable to make the schedule work for our usual Windsor visits to Belvoir Castle and therefore had to seek an alternative.
We went through a number of options with Martin Childs, Production Designer. One of the early contenders was Burghley House. Burghley is not too far from Belvoir Castle, situated in Stamford and they were very keen to be involved with the show. The interior frescos at Burghley were actually painted by the same artist as those at Windsor and once Martin visited, he loved the house and the next step was to convince production that this would be our next Windsor. It soon became everybody’s new favourite location!
When does season four take place? Season four of The Crown starts in 1979 and goes all the way through to 1990. I’m very excited about season four because I think it’s our finest. We’ve got two characters coming into season four played by two sensational actors, and that is Margaret Thatcher – born of course in Grantham –and Lady Diana Spencer, who lived for a time in nearby Althorp, in Northamptonshire.
We see the Thatcher years and we also witness the journey of Diana. Diana goes from young adult to mother of two children, and through all the highs and lows of a marriage that ends in divorce from the Prince of Wales.
What happens during season four? It’s jam packed. We’ve got Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands, sibling rivalry, and Michael Fagan, the Palace intruder and sat on the bed of the Queen of England. Additionally, in 10 Downing Street we have rivalry between the two Heads of State; the Queen and Margaret Thatcher. It’s a relationship where you think they are going to get on and very quickly descends into difficulties between two very similar personalities.
What did you think of the scripts? When I read our writer Peter Morgan’s scripts, there’s always a sense of, ‘oh, I know what’s coming up.’ And of course, there are the big moments in the season. There is the wedding, which everyone’s going to be
excited about and there’s Thatcher. There are all the things that I remember now that I’m coming into a decade in which I was alive. But there are also the brilliant unknown stories that Peter gets his magnifying glass out and scratches beneath the surface of.
Is there a particular scene you’re really proud of? This season I directed the opening episode and episode three. In episode one, there are a couple of scenes that really stand out for me. One, is the first time we meet Diana.
When Peter first wrote that scene it felt really mythological in the sense that there was this other worldly person that was camouflaged in her.
Then, we had this encounter with Charles, brief though it was, but it left some indelible mark on him that we would then return to later. We knew as an audience watching how important the first meeting was. I remember thinking about Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet and specifically about that moment when they met around the fish tank. I thought about how fun it would be to stage the scene so that Diana was hiding in front of the greenery and only for a brief moment, you had this moment of eyes locking.
What were the specific challenges of this series? With every season of The Crown, and this is season four, we always start with what we can bring that is new and different. I like to think The Crown has a very modern approach and doesn’t fall into that sort of classic period drama. The Crown season four covers the 80s, which was referred to as ‘Thatcher’s broken Britain,’ and so we were sort of interested in how we could bring a little more of that visceral reality of how Britain was at that time. We looked at trying to maybe slowly steer the season away from the slightly more fairy-tale approach in the earlier seasons and more towards the grittier version of life in the 1980s.
How does this season look different to the last? In terms of making season four different from a camera point of view, without getting too technical, we have brought on new cameras and new lenses. We tested lots of cameras and lenses at the beginning of the season and I think our audience will still feel like they’re watching The Crown, but that it has the feeling of something that is taking us into the 1980s.
What was it like changing cast last season? I think season three was a huge challenge for our cast. They had the unenviable task of taking the baton from previous actors in seasons one and two. Coming back for series four, though, was like welcoming back old friends. It was a challenge, and it’s daunting to think we might do the same for seasons five and six, but I think all of those actors –not just in terms of how the audience are responding to them – also looked forward to coming back to season four.
How well does Olivia represent The Queen? I think she is brilliant. She turns up, knocks it out of the park and then goes home. I genuinely don’t know how she does it. I don’t even think she knows how she does it.
She is one of the most amazingly gifted, warm, generous people that exist in the world, and we are incredibly grateful to her
on set. I think she is the matriarch on camera, and she is the matriarch on set.
What does Gillian bring to the part of Thatcher? The role of Margaret Thatcher is such a hard character to play because there are many people that have opinions about her. She was a divisive political figure.
Gillian has a sort of razor-sharp focus. I know she has spent months and months and months trying to scrape underneath the surface of Margaret Thatcher. I think this is probably one of the hardest roles that she’s done because you’re stepping into the shoes of someone that everyone has an opinion about. Gillian’s performance is very nuanced, and it might make the audience think a little bit more about who the real Margaret Thatcher was.
Why was Emma the right person to play Diana? When she stepped into the room, she had that amazing quality of vulnerability and strength. When we brought Emma in for the third casting session she was incredibly emotional. I remember saying to her, ‘your life is going to change now very quickly, you’re going to experience things that Diana experienced and that you should draw on that.’ >>
THE CROWN Series Four Summary...
At the end of the 1970s, the Royal Family is preoccupied with safeguarding the line of succession by finding an appropriate bride for Prince Charles; still unmarried at 30.
When Lord Mountbatten is assassinated by the IRA the family is rocked to its core and Charles loses his mentor. In the wake of that grief, a young Lady Diana Spencer enters the frame and the die is cast.
Their wedding in 1981 is an occasion which unites the entire country in celebrating this seeming fairytale romance.
As the season progresses and relations between the Waleses become strained, so too do relations between the Queen and her Prime Minister, Britain’s first female Prime Minister – Margaret Thatcher.
Though on paper the two women seem to be cut from the same cloth, they often disagree about the appropriate governance of the country and the Queen’s constitutional obligation to remain silent is put to the test.
By the end of the season the Prime Minister is ousted by her own cabinet after eleven and a half turbulent years in power, and the Queen finds herself head of an increasingly disunited family.
Set between 1979 and 1990, season four will take viewers to incredible places including South Georgia, where the invasion of the Falkland Islands sets Britain on a war footing, and across the world to Australia, where the Waleses embark on a politically sensitive tour after republican Prime Minister Bob Hawke has been elected.
Viewers also revisit Balmoral Castle, where both Thatcher and Diana will be subjected to the infamous ‘Balmoral Tests,’ and the beaches of Mustique, where Princess Margaret retreats during a difficult period in her life. n
Above: Ben Daniels as Antony Armstrong-Jones, First Lord Snowdon; Marion Bailey as The Queen Mother; Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret; Olivia Colman as HM The Queen; Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip; Erin Doherty as Princess Anne and Charles Dance as Lord Mountbatten. >> I am so happy with what she has brought to the screen. I think people are going to be completely and utterly wowed by her.
How much effort is it to turn a location like Burghley or Belvoir into a royal palace? Martin Childs and Alison Harvey are our designers. They do the most extraordinary job every season. When I arrive on set first thing in the morning and I walk in one of the rooms that they’ve set-decorated and set designed, every time it’s just ‘wow.’
They have the task of moving The Crown through the seasons without being too heavy handed with it but being representative of that time and of that era. They find things that have a trigger for us as an audience. There are things that take us back to a visceral memory with those fabrics, colours, and props. All of these things are inherently what create the feeling of a season.
The research team too has been there since season one. They have grown, not just in the size, but also in terms of their confidence. There hasn’t been a TV show that I’ve ever worked on that has that amount of real knowledge of the subject matters that they are dealing with.
What will the reaction be to season four? We try our best with each season and we wouldn’t let it out of the door if we didn’t think that it was the best version that it could probably be. At some point every shoot runs
out of money and runs out of time, so it’s never as good as you would like it to be. I shrug when people say ‘I prefer season one or season two,’ I don’t know what that means.
Beside that, grandfathers are watching with granddaughters; mothers are watching with daughters, fathers are watching with daughters, or sons.
The Queen has been sort of central in absolutely everybody’s lives since the minute they took their first breath. The fact that she’s as central to your grandfather’s life as she is to your mother’s, as she is to your daughter’s or our son’s is extraordinary. People make sense of The Crown in individually different ways, which is still remarkable to me. n
Crown Jewels: Facts & Figures...
How many locations are used in total for series four of The Crown? Roughly 90 locations. About 75% of filming takes place on location.
What has been the most challenging prop item to source? Food with the right packaging and old mobile phones.
How many photo frames of the principle cast are there? There are about 70 silver photo frames of different characters for all the sets.
What props are on the Queen’s desk? Various racing related objects - a horseshoe pen holder, horse hoof letter opener, bespoke Royal ER gilt embossed stationery blotters and diaries, lots of photos of her family (particularly her father). Also bespoke leather frames made – again – with the Royal crest embossed on them.
How many cigarette holders did Helena have as Princess Margaret? There were about 12 options overall but Helena picked a favourite and pretty much used that one, it’s a thick horn cigarette holder. The only time she would use a daintier holder would be during a party scene on occasion. She had approximately eight different antique cigarette cases, but again she had a couple of favourites that she used more regularly than others. How many Corgis are featured? Mainly featured are two Corgis, called Lily and Prince. From time to time there are additional Corgis to form a larger family/royal group of Corgis for bigger setups, including puppies. Which cars does the Queen drive? She is driven in a Rolls Royce Phantom VI. She drives a series two Land Rover (‘Defender’) in Balmoral.
How many audiences between the Prime Minister and the Queen took place this season? There are a total of 11 audiences between Elizabeth and Thatcher in the series.
How many wigs does each principal character have? Six wigs each, taking a minimum of three weeks to create.
How many costumes does each series necessitate? Around 400 in total. The total number of costumes made for the Queen are 120, for Diana that figure is 80 individual pieces.
How many handbags does the Queen have? She has a collection of 86! We used six handbags. Most of these were bought from the company The Queen actually uses, Launer of London.
How many fittings does each cast member have until a costume is ready? Usually two or three but can be up to four if it is a complicated piece for instance, Diana’s wedding dress or The Queen’s trooping of the colour riding habit.
How many uniforms feature in this series? Approximately 1,500 uniforms, for Trooping of the Colour and there were a lot of foreign uniforms for Mountbatten’s funeral. The biggest uniform day was the Falklands Victory Parade which featured all three forces.
How many prime ministers in the Queen’s reign? Boris makes 14!
How many Prime Ministers featured in the Crown so far? We’ve seen eight.
How many Royal residences are there? In total there are 23. These are: Buckingham Palace (London), Windsor Castle (Windsor), Palace of Holyroodhouse (Edinburgh), Hillsborough Castle (Ireland), Sandringham House (Norfolk), Balmoral Castle (Aberdeenshire), Craigowan Lodge (Aberdeenshire) Clarence House (London), Highgrove House (Gloucestershire), Llwynywermod (Carmarthenshire, Wales), Tamarisk (Isles of Scilly), Birkhall (Aberdeenshire), Kensington Palace (London), Anmer Hall (Norfolk), Frogmore (Windsor), St James’s Palace (London), Gatcombe Park (Gloucestershire), Ivy Cottage (Kensington Palace), The Royal Lodge (Windsor), Bagshot Park (Surrey), Barnwell Manor (Northamptonshire), Wren House (Kensington Palace and Thatched House Lodge (Richmond).
How many Royal residences feature in The Crown? Eight; Buckingham Palace, Balmoral, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, Sandringham, Highgrove, Clarence House, Gatcombe Park.
How often do the audiences between the Queen and Prime Minister take place? The Queen meets the Prime Minister for at least 30 minutes every Tuesday when the House of Commons is sitting.
How many audiences did Thatcher and the Queen have? We’ve calculated they had over 200. n
By Royal Appointment: Frescoes by Verrio
Over 90 filming locations were used during the filming of The Crown. Mark Walledge is the production’s Supervising Locations Manager and says that working at Belvoir Castle and Burghley House created super locations for the series. In previous seasons of The Crown, Belvoir Castle’s driveway and its exterior has been used to represent Windsor Castle, and the castle’s Elizabeth Saloon and Regent’s Gallery are used as the Queen’s private reception rooms. Burghley House features heavily in series four, with Josh O’Connor’s Prince Charles courting Lady Diana Spencer in the Heaven Room, the same room in which HM The Queen delivered her 25th wedding anniversary speech at the end of series three. Verrio’s Heaven Room is just one of the state rooms in Burghley House and its fresco is regarded as the artist’s greatest masterpiece. It depicts ‘Gods and Goddesses disporting themselves, as Gods and Goddesses are wont to do…!’ and even features a cameo of the artist at the forge of the cyclops. Verrio painted a number of frescoes at Windsor Castle, of which only three have survived fire or reconstruction works. His Banquet of the Gods fresco in the King’s Dining Room was completed in 1684. Verrio then worked at Burghley, completing the Hell Staircase in 1697. It was his last commission before Verrio went blind The Artist and the artist was unable to complete The Heaven Room, which was finished by Thomas Stothard Antonio Verrio in 1799. n Frescos which appear in both Burghley House and in Windsor Castle were painted by Antonio Verrio (1636-1707) who served the Crown for over 30 years, bringing Baroque murals to England.
