The Crown: Here’s how Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter and others compare with the real royals

The third season of The Crown welcomes a new cast as it tells the story of the modern British monarchy. The series starts off in the swinging 1960s of London and Olivia Colman is Queen Elizabeth II. Helena Bonham Carter is Princess Margaret and Tobias Menzies is royal spouse Prince Philip.

Josh O’Connor and Erin Doherty join the cast as Charles and Anne, the grown offspring of Elizabeth and Philip. Casting and costuming were almost as crucial as the scripts by Peter Morgan. The stellar work by the production crew and make up department is best realised when one compares the pictures of the actors in the show to their real life counterparts. Check out these comparisons:








Talking about the new season, 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 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 (the explanation offered: Johnson is peeved over Wilson’s refusal to support his Vietnam policy). The season ends in the late 1970s.

Morgan said he wasn’t “engineering” parallels between then and now, but realistically depicting a “country really at its own throat” during that period. “You have the left and the right screaming at each other, and not hearing and not listening to one another,” Morgan said. “In a funny way, it was reassuring because what the show has continually reminded me of, again and again and again, is that crisis is the default position rather than harmony. But we project a harmony into the past.”

The new season releases on Netfllix on Sunday.

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