The ambitions for Netflix‘s hit series “The Crown” have been fairly big since day one. The reported plan is to track the life of Queen Elizabeth II across six seasons, with each season covering a decade in the reign of her royal highness. Mentioned early on, but semi-forgotten, was the additional idea by the team behind the show to recast lead actress Claire Foy (now a Golden Globe winner for her role) in later seasons, as Queen Elizabeth II will be considerably older. And according to the show’s writer Peter Morgan, that approach remains one of their guiding forces.
“I feel that when we reach 1963-64 we’ve gone as far as we can go with Claire Foy without having to do silly things in terms of makeup to make her look older. She can’t help the fact she’s as young as she is, and if we were to go further forward we’d probably need to think about the issue of recasting everybody and so those conversations are happening now and I couldn’t tell you where we’ll come out,” he told Screen Daily.
“It’s a big thing to go on again. If we were to do another couple of seasons it would be with a fresh cast and everything that that entails, so everybody needs to look at one another and say ‘what is the appetite’ and under which circumstances and what terms would we do it. I’ve got strong feelings about how far you can go as an actor, I think you can age ten years younger than they are and ten years older and no more,” he added.
As much as Foy is terrific in her role, it makes sense to switch her out after covering nearly two decades as Queen Elizabeth II. But as we wait for news on what the future holds for “The Crown,” the second season is very much underway, with Deadline revealing that Michael C. Hall and Jodi Balfour have joined the cast as John F. and Jackie Kennedy, while Matthew Goode is also on board as Princess Margaret’s photographer husband Tony Armstrong-Jones. As for the story, Morgan teases what lays ahead in the next batch of episodes.
“It takes us up to 1963. We left season one with the Suez crisis about to unfold, so the first couple of episodes cover Suez, and within the royal family itself Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong-Jones marry, we deal with a young Charles and his education, we deal with a visit to Buckingham palace of JFK and Jackie Kennedy, so it moves into a slightly post-Edwardian time,” he said. “We finish with Britain about to elect Harold Wilson as prime minister, so there’s a political change as we move into the era of ‘Look Back In Anger‘ [the ground-breaking social-realist play], what Suez did to Britain, and how much social change there was.”
Lots to look forward to. No word yet on the launch date for “The Crown” season 2, but probably a safe bet it’ll arrive by the end of the year.