Imelda Staunton next in line to the throne for final series of The Crown
The fifth season will end the story of the monarchy five years after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales
THE creator of The Crown has confirmed the Netflix series will stop after the fifth season as a show insider revealed it will not cover recent royal dramas involving the Duke of York and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Confirming that the Oscar-nominated actress Imelda Staunton will succeed Olivia Colman to play the Queen in the grand finale, Peter Morgan said yesterday that he had scrapped plans for a sixth season which would have taken viewers up to the present day.
Instead, it is understood the critically acclaimed programme, which has a global audience of 73 million, will end on the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.
Morgan said: “I’m absolutely thrilled to confirm Imelda Staunton as Her Majesty the Queen for the fifth and final season, taking The Crown into the 21st century. Imelda is an astonishing talent and will be a fantastic successor to Claire Foy and Olivia Colman.
“At the outset I had imagined
The Crown running for six seasons but now that we have begun work on the stories for season five it has become clear to me that this is the perfect time and place to stop. I’m grateful to Netflix and Sony for supporting me in this decision.”
A show insider told The Daily Telegraph that Morgan had revised the timescale after signing a multimillion pound deal to make other programmes for the media streaming service.
“It will end on the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002,” said the source.
“It was going to go on beyond that and include battles on the Buckingham Palace balcony and Prince Charles’s desire for a slimmed down monarchy but Peter wants to quit while he’s ahead. “He wanted to keep The Crown as his baby and didn’t want to hand it on to anyone else. That doesn’t mean to say the Palace is off the hook, because he’s got other royal ideas.”
The source denied any suggestion that the Palace leaned on Morgan to spare them the embarrassment of the show covering more recent scandals. “The Palace hasn’t had anything to do with it at all. It’s a business decision.” Staunton, 64, who won a best actress Bafta and Oscar nomination for Vera Drake in 2005 and played Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films, said she was “genuinely honoured” to be starring in the conclusion to the lavish series. She will take over the role first played by Claire Foy and then Colman, who made her debut as the monarch in the third series, which launched on the platform in November 2019.
The first season covered the period from the Queen’s 1947 marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh to the disintegration of her sister Princess Margaret’s engagement to Group Captain Peter Townsend in 1955.
The second season covered the period from 1956 to 1964, including the Suez Crisis.
The third series followed events including the Aberfan mining disaster, the Moon landings and the early romance between Prince Charles and Camilla Shand. The fourth series is currently in production at Elstree Studios and locations across Britain and will see the introduction of Diana, Princess of Wales, played by Emma Corrin, and Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson. The fifth and final season will cover the 1997 death of Diana and how the monarchy recovered after being criticised for its handling of the tragedy.
‘It will end on the Golden Jubilee. It was going to go on beyond that … but Peter wants to quit while he’s ahead’