The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Times, actors are changing as ‘The Crown’ enters 1960s, ’70s
“The Crown” opens with a clever acknowledgment that time has passed for Queen Elizabeth II and taken with it the Emmywinning actress who played her in the Netflix drama’s first two seasons.
In the scene, postage stamp portraits are displayed for the monarch: one with Claire Foy’s likeness as the alluring young queen, the other showing a woman edging toward middleage mundanity. A subordinate clumsily tries to gloss over the physical differences, but Elizabeth, now embodied by Olivia Colman, will have none of it.
“One just has to get on with it,” she says, tartly, advice for herself and the audience that will meet other series newcomers, including Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret and Tobias Menzies as royal spouse Prince Philip, when the 10episode third season is released Sunday. Josh O’Connor and Erin Doherty join the cast as Charles and Anne, the grown offspring of Elizabeth and Philip.
Peter Morgan, the series’ creator and writer, said transparency was the proper approach.
“I thought, let’s just get it out in the open. It’s always best to, as it were, be honest and direct about it: We’re changing cast. This is the new one,“he said in a phone interview from London this week, with production for next season’s episodes in progress.
There’s change as well in swinging 1960s Britain, where this season of “The Crown” begins with the Labour Party narrowly winning power and Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins) installed as prime minister. Cold War rumors that Wilson is a Soviet spy are feverishly circulating, a reminder that the spread of dubious information predates the internet. When the allegation reaches the queen via Philip, she sensibly asks the source. His nonchalant reply: “Friends at the club.”
Current events echo elsewhere in “The Crown,” including frustration over economic disparity that exposes the monarchy’s expensive upkeep to criticism, and fraying international relations, particularly between Britain and the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson.