What Really Happened Behind The Scenes Of The Crown

Over the course of six extraordinary seasons, the Netflix drama "The Crown" told the story of Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned as Britain's monarch for an unprecedented seven decades until Queen Elizabeth's tragic death in 2023. A lavish, big-budget production (the entire series reportedly cost a staggering $530 million, per Collider), "The Crown" became one of the streamer's most-watched series while basking in critical acclaim, winning an impressive 24 Emmy Awards out of 87 nominations. Meanwhile, because the show was inspired by true events, not actually depicting them, "The Crown" dredged up continual controversy for playing fast and loose with the truth.

Yet the show's most brilliant masterstroke was casting different actors to play the queen and the rest of the royal family at different ages. Claire Foy portrayed Her Royal Highness as a young woman for the first two seasons, chronicling her wedding and coronation at age 25. Olivia Colman stepped into the role for the next two seasons to play the middle-aged monarch, and Imelda Staunton was the elder Elizabeth for the final two seasons.

When it was all over, fans were saddened to see it go, yet curiosity has continued to linger about the show, particularly about what took place on the other side of the camera while the series was filmed. To find out more about that aspect, read on for a deep dive into what really happened behind the scenes of "The Crown."

Much of the drama in "The Crown" takes place within Buckingham Palace, which has been the British royal family's London residence since it was constructed in the early 1700s. Obviously, filming within the actual palace was an impossibility, which presented a major challenge for the show's production designer, Martin Childs. As Childs told Vulture in a 2017 interview, he researched the palace extensively in order to bring as much accuracy as possible to the sets that were built.

"I researched everything I could learn about Buckingham Palace, including visiting its state rooms as a tourist," he said. "One place you are never allowed to go, for obvious reasons, are the private apartments. There are, however, rough layouts available." Despite the show's massive budget, only so many sets could be constructed, meaning that Childs needed to find actual spaces that could be used to depict the palace. The largest and most grand of these was Lancaster House, a posh London mansion that had also doubled for Buckingham Palace in "Downton Abbey" and "The King's Speech." In fact, Lancaster House has become a go-to Hollywood filming location, also used in other Netflix series "Halston" and "Bridgerton," per The Hollywood Reporter.

Childs' commitment to accuracy, however, could only extend so far. "Knowing that it's a drama and not a documentary gave us license not to invent, but to create a vision of scale and untold wealth rather than slavishly reproduce the actual rooms," Childs explained.

Starring opposite Claire Foy in the first two seasons of "The Crown" was Matt Smith, cast as the queen's husband, Prince Philip. While Foy had an extensive roster of screen credits, she wasn't particularly well-known at the time. The same, however, could not be said about Smith, who had spent four seasons in the high-profile role of the Doctor in beloved series "Doctor Who."

Unfortunately, that led to controversy when it was revealed that Smith was being paid considerably more than Foy — even though he was playing a supporting character, while Foy's QEII was the focus of the show. While the revelation didn't affect what Claire Foy's relationship with Matt Smith was like, she admitted she understood why their wage gap had made headlines. "I'm not surprised that people saw [the story] and went, 'Oh, that's a bit odd,'" she told Entertainment Weekly in 2018. The show's production company, Left Bank, addressed the matter, "We want to apologize to both Claire Foy and to Matt Smith, brilliant actors and friends, who have found themselves at the center of a media storm this week through no fault of their own."

While speaking at a conference in Israel, Left Bank executive Suzanne Mackie announced that a decision had been made that would prevent future incidents of salary disparity on "The Crown." "Going forward, no one gets paid more than the queen," she said, notes The Hollywood Reporter.

His portrayal of British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill won John Lithgow an Emmy Award — one of six presented to the star over the years. In playing Churchill, not only did the American actor have to develop a convincing British accent, he also strived to capture Churchill's distinctive nasally tone. To do that, he used a low-tech trick: stuffing cotton in his nostrils. "It was rather repulsive watching me pluck cotton out of my nose after every scene, but they just had to put up with it," Lithgow told USA Today. He also experimented with putting pieces of apple in his cheeks. "I carved out two apple balls and stuck them in my teeth, and everybody thought that was a good idea," he recalled. "But as I spoke, my mouth filled up with apple juice, so that was not going to work." Instead, specially-made "plumpers" were devised to fit inside his cheeks.

Then there were significant physical differences between the two men (Lithgow is 6 foot 4 with a slim build, while Churchill was 5 foot 6 and portly). That required a padded fat suit, which added 80 pounds of weight to his frame. Because Churchill's suits had high waists, that contributed to making Lithgow appear shorter than he actually was. When it came to his diet, Lithgow threw caution to the wind. "I ate a lot and I drank a lot of beer," he told The Spokesman-Review. "I kept on rationalizing it by saying, 'What the h*ll, I'm playing Winston Churchill.'"

One of the most stunning aspects of "The Crown" was the series' costumes, which spanned numerous decades' worth of changing fashions and featured intricate ceremonial garb worn by the queen. That was particularly true of the episode chronicling Elizabeth's coronation, which presented a monumental challenge for costume designer Michelle Clapton, who was tasked not only with replicating the queen's coronation gown, but also the wardrobes of the numerous coronation guests. "We created all the dresses, the robes, the anointment gown, and it was just a huge task," she said in a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair. "We had a work room with five or six people creating the principals' costumes, and then various work rooms creating elements for the other dresses — embroidered pieces — just endless pieces."

Yet the star of the show was the queen's gown, and Clapton enjoyed a huge stroke of luck when she learned that Angels Costumiers had commissioned Swarovski — which had created the original back in the 1950s — to create an exact replica in 2012, in celebration of the queen's diamond jubilee. As it happened, that replica gown had been on display at London's Harrod's department store during the jubilee year, and then packed away in storage. Luckily, the gown fit Claire Foy almost perfectly, so few adjustments needed to be made.

While "The Crown" costume designer Michelle Clapton lucked out by using a replica for the queen's coronation gown, that was not possible when it came to recreating her wedding gown for the episode focusing on her regal nuptials when tying the knot with Prince Philip. As a result, she spent a reported $47,000 to recreate the gown.

Speaking with Harper's Bazaar in 2016, Clapton revealed that recreating that particular gown was her biggest challenge during the show's first season. "I thought it was so important that it was as close as we could possibly make it," she said. "And we had a lot of people working on it; we had to bring in more and more people to work on the team to finish the embroidery and create all the different panels and the appliqué. It was a tough number."

That was particularly true of the gown's 15-foot train, which took six people more than six weeks to embroider. "We had another girl who just embroidered the bodice, which took three weeks," Clapton recalled. Meanwhile, another challenge had to do with star Claire Foy, who had recently had a baby, "so that was quite difficult because her shape was changing; we had to continue to adjust and embroider over seams sometimes," Clapton added.

The second actor to play Elizabeth II in "The Crown," Oscar-winner Olivia Colman, portrayed the character's stoicism during a period rife with tragic details for the queen. What "The Crown" got wrong about Queen Elizabeth was revealed by her friends, and if that was the case, it certainly wasn't due to Colman's lack of effort. In order to hone in on her performance, she was inundated with research. "I absorb best through watching videos, and I've spent hours and hours doing that," Colman told The New York Times, noting that she'd also worked extensively with voice coaches to master the queen's clipped speech patterns. She also enlisted the help of a movement coach, but admitted she struggled to recreate the queen's regal posture. "I walk a bit like a farmer, not a queen, and I'm not a very good physical impersonator," she said. "So there is a dollop of artistic license."

Another obstacle was the fact that Colman tends to wear her heart on her sleeve, prone to becoming emotional at the drop of a hat. That would not do for the every-steady queen. "She is our rock," Colman proclaimed during an appearance on "The Graham Norton Show," revealing the trick that she came up with to keep her emotions in check. "So they give me an earpiece and they play the shipping forecast to me," she revealed with a laugh.

Introduced as an adult in the third season of "The Crown," Prince Charles was played by Josh O'Connor. He was joined in Season 4 by Emma Corrin as Princess Diana, with that season chronicling their courtship, wedding, and early marital struggles. Both actors earned critical acclaim for their performances, with O'Connor even taking home an Emmy (Corrin did score a nomination).

A key scene took place when the couple traveled overseas on a royal tour and got into an argument. "That was one of the greatest moments I had on 'The Crown,'" O'Connor told IndieWire. "They purposely built this amazing ranch in the middle of the desert," Corrin added, "but the thing I remember from that is the flies." As the actors recounted, as the day wore on, increasing numbers of flies began showing up. "It was like 4:30 p.m., whatever, and honestly, I could not do a single take without a fly going into my eyeball — and, like, big flies — or in my mouth," O'Connor said.

"It was funny for the first, like, couple of takes," Corrin recalled, admitting it grew increasingly less so as the buzzing insects continued their assault. "The worst thing was we'd get three-quarters of the way through the scene, and I'd see a fly land on the side of Josh's nose and I just had to sit there. We'd both know it was there. And it was just awful."

One thing about "The Crown" that even diehard fans likely didn't realize was that the commitment to authenticity was also reflected in the camera lenses used. In order to capture the spirt of each era, lenses specific to that time period were utilized in order to subtly demonstrate the passage of time — a technical shift that mirrored the cast changes that took place as the series evolved.

As the series' director of photography, Adriano Goldman, explained in an interview with Panavision, the goal was to create a T.V. series that looked like movie. "My job is to serve the story and to serve the director's vision," he said. "Of course, the show needs to evolve. You don't want to shoot Season 6 the same way you shot Season 1. I mean, that was the 1950s, now we're in the 2000s."

That evolution came about when Goldman had an epiphany. "[Series creator] Peter Morgan wanted to change the cast every two seasons. When I understood that, I think my first sort of idea was, 'What if I change my lenses every time the cast changes,'" said Goldman in a Netflix promotional video. As a result, he tracked down 1950s-made lenses for the first two seasons, and then period-appropriate lenses and different cameras for subsequent seasons. "I know that's very subtle, but it was something for me to adjust to the period and to a new cast," he added.

When delving into the truth about Josh O'Connor, who played Prince Charles in "The Crown," the role proved to be a star-making one for him. Since then, the once little-known actor has seen his career explode, starring in several movies (including acting alongside Zendaya in "Challengers," leading an all-star cast in the "Knives Out" sequel "Wake Up, Dead Man," and landing a major role in Steven Spielberg's 2026 blockbuster "Disclosure Day").

He's garnered legions of fans, some of whom happened to be famous. After his first season as Charles, O'Connor revealed that both Bradley Cooper and Alec Baldwin reached out to tell him how much they enjoyed his work. That's heady stuff for any actor, and O'Connor has confirmed that becoming an overnight sensation sent him reeling. "It was a f***ed-up time," O'Connor told Variety. "I found it so impactful, people stopping me. You want to be in stuff that's successful and seen, but I think sometimes we underestimate how powerful even a slight loss of anonymity can be."

Sure, he'd had plenty of experience as an actor prior to "The Crown," but had never before been in anything so wildly popular. "It's been two years of my life, cumulatively, making the show. And then the rest of my life has just been talking about it," he said, referencing the endless interviews he's given about playing Charles. "It's a strange dynamic; you spend more time talking about your work than you do making it sometimes."

Part of the untold truth of Helena Bonham Carter is that she was the second of three actors to play Queen Elizabeth's younger sister, Princess Margaret (played by Vanessa Kirby in the first two seasons, and Lesley Manville in Seasons 5 and 6). Of the three, Bonhan Carter was seemingly the only one to seek the princess's permission from beyond the grave.

During an appearance on "The Graham Norton Show," Bonham Carter revealed that she wound up in contact with the late royal, via the abilities of a friend who happened to be a psychic. While they were together, her friend told Bonham Carter that Margaret was with them. Bonham Carter, who had been offered the role but hadn't officially taken it, felt that would be the opportunity to broach the subject with the dead woman she'd be portraying — and asked Margaret's ghost whether she had any objections to her taking the role. According to Carter, Margaret (via the medium) said she preferred her to the other actor that had been in the running for the part.

In addition, Margaret offered a very specific piece of acting advice. "She said, 'Get the smoking right. I smoked in a particular way, and always remember that the cigarette holder is as much a weapon for expression as anything else,'" she recounted.

While the cast changed over the course of six seasons of "The Crown," there was one constant throughout the show: the queen's beloved corgis. Over the course of her lifetime, Elizabeth II owned more than 30 of the short-legged canines (at one point, there was even a "dorgi," the result of an unforeseen hookup between one of the queen's dogs and Princess Margaret's dachshund), notes the BBC.

In "The Crown," however, the same two Pembroke corgis portrayed the queen's pets during the entirety of the show: Lily and Prince. The dogs have a unique rock 'n' roll connection, in that their owner is Gerry Cott, former guitarist with Sir Bob Geldof's old band, the Boomtown Rats.

In order to respond in certain ways in specific scenes, a very particular treat was used to bribe the pets, with the dogs given small bits of cheese as an incentive. "You sort of worry that they're going to have a heart attack when you're giving it to them," Claire Foy told Vanity Fair in 2016. "These Corgis are cheesed up to the max — they're eating like a whole block of cheddar every day. It's scary."