Behind the scenes on The Crown
Picture the scene… Margaret Thatcher and husband Denis are at Balmoral, stony faced as the Queen and her family persuade them to play Ibble Dibble, a boisterous drinking game that involves being dabbed on the face with a burnt cork.
Add the fact that Thatcher is being played by X Files star Gillian Anderson, who makes an astoundingly convincing Iron Lady, and you have one of the best scenes from the new season of The Crown.
We were on the set to watch some of the filming and talk to the cast and creator Peter Morgan. We have also seen every episode of the fourth series, which kicks off on Netflix next month. Jealous? You should be. This series picks up in the late 1970s and covers a tumultuous decade, with the Queen, again being played by Olivia Colman, and the Royal Family at the centre of drama and turmoil.
Prince Charles meets and marries Lady Diana Spencer, Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister and clashes with the Queen, the IRA assassinates Lord Mountbatten, and Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, leading to war in the South Atlantic.
The Queen’s dealings with Thatcher are key to the new series. Anderson, 51, says: “A large part of it is about her relationship with the Queen, which was challenging because they were alike in some ways and very dissimilar in others.
“And I think the differences sometimes were infuriating for both of them. We address that tension between them quite a lot through the entire series.”
At one stage Prince Philip, played by Tobias Menzies, 46, warns the Queen: “Two bears can’t live in one cage.” And Denis Thatcher (Stephen Boxer) comments: “Two menopausal women.”
When the Thatchers visited the royals at Balmoral they found themselves completely out of their depth, mortified by that game of Ibble Dibble.
Anderson, who is in a relationship with writer Peter Morgan, describes it as a “famously challenging first visit to Balmoral”. The Thatchers were apparently so confused and repelled by the royals’ behaviour and love of blood sports that they left early.
Anderson says: ” I think Maggie Thatcher expected that there would be a lot more seriousness and cultural and political conversation about everything when she was there. That’s not what her experience was. I think that was a real shock to her. The country was in deep trouble, and for them to be spending that amount of time away playing games, she just couldn’t believe it.”
Emma Corrin, 24, who plays Diana, says: “They play these stupid games and they love them.”
Morgan, 57, relies on sources close to the royals to tell him secrets and details. For series four, he says: “We had a lot of interesting people knocking on the door wanting to tell us things.”
One episode deals with Michael Fagan, the intruder who broke into Buckingham Palace in 1982 and sat on the Queen’s bed to tell her his troubles.
Another episode tells how Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) uncovered the fact that two of the Queen Mother’s nieces, who were believed to have died, were in fact still
alive, living in a mental home, amid concerns that a strain of mental illness may run in the Royal Family.
Camil la Parker- Bowles, played by Emerald Fennell, meeting Lady Diana for lunch in the Ménage a Trois restaurant is also depicted.
Morgan says: “It really happened. After Charles proposed to Diana, Camilla invited her to lunch, which was the one time they met.”
There was an occasion when the Queen, apparently wondering if she would make a good mother, asked an aide to arrange a lunch for her with all of her four children.
Morgan says: “We cast actors to play Andrew and Edward although we hadn’t planned to.”
Andrew is played by Tom Byrne, 23, and Edward by Angus Imrie, 26.
Morgan says: “I loved writing those scenes. I’d never imagined Edward in the show, so I asked my research team to find out what he was doing at that time.
“It was heartbreaking because at the time he was being badly bullied at school.”
But featuring Andrew, who the FBI want to question over his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was no simple matter.
Morgan says: “Andrew, although it is hard to believe given recent events, was the most popular prince and the absolute pin-up of the Royal Family. It was tricky to write because you couldn’t know everything that would happen to Andrew, but you still had to sow seeds so that you knew that one day it could all go a bit naughty.”
To recreate Diana’s marriage to Charles in 1981, Emma says it took 10 people to help her into the wedding dress, which The Crown’s team made by working with Elizabeth and David
Emanuel, who designed the original. Emma says: “I think the marriage was such a mistake from the outset. It was doomed from the beginning and was arranged when neither of them was ready for it. “She was so young and naive and had these dreams of what she thought her life would be like. And Charles was in a completely different space.” For the fifth and sixth series, Imelda Staunton will play the Queen; Jonathan Pryce, Prince Philip; Lesley Manville, Princess Margaret, and Elizabeth Debicki will be Diana. The fourth series was filmed mainly at English locations and in Elstree Studios, but there was also a month of filming in Spain, where Almeria doubled for an Australian sheep station visited by Charles and
Diana during a six-week tour in 1983. Josh O’Connor, 30, who plays Prince Charles, says: “The Australian episode sees the most emotionally tumultuous moments in the series, really.”
The series also deals with Diana’s bulimia and separation from Charles and Margaret’s struggle with her role.
We also see Prince Charles asking: “What does one have to do to get some kindness in this family?”
And he describes his family as “the ghastly politburo”.
Josh says of the royals: “They’re incredibly lonely figures. They’re totally isolated and have no real relationship like we would have.
“Every scene that I do with Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth, I’m thinking, ‘If it was my mum I’d probably run and give her a hug’. Totally inappropriate in the circumstances.”