'The Crown' Fans Might Find Parallels Between Princess Diana & Duchess Meghan

We're taking a look at behind-the-scenes details and fun facts about the regal hit Netflix show, The Crown. From pay disparity disputes, to John Lithgow's problematic height when playing Winston Churchill, here's everything you need to know about the popular series based on the life of Queen Elizabeth II.

As Peter Morgan told Vanity Fair, "Diana struggled to fit in with the institution in a way that it’s impossible not to see the parallels with Meghan Markle and Harry. So the story feels both incredibly vivid historically, but also it really shines a lot of lights on where we are now."

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the show's creator, Peter Morgan, opened up about how the COVID-19 pandemic had affected Season 4 of The Crown. "The truth is, yes, we are missing at least two weeks of filming," he explained. "I just hope you can’t tell where."

During an interview with Glass magazine, actress Emma Corrin opened up about taking on the iconic role of Princess Diana. "I needed to shut off all the noise that was saying, ‘this is huge. It’s her, how are you going to do this? What will people think?'" she explained. "It was terrifying and it’s not conducive to good work."

The Crown's creator, Peter Morgan, knew it was important to include Princess Diana's battle with bulimia in the new season. "It just struck me that to not represent it would be to deny the former Princess of Wales some of the true complexity of her character," he told Vanity Fair. "Her own suffering made her have compassion for other people. ... Everyone has vulnerabilities and frailties. And she wore hers on her sleeve—which, of course, is the opposite of royalty."

Fans of The Crown are in for a treat. When the series re-creates Princess Diana's fairytale wedding to Prince Charles, actress Emma Corrin will be wearing an almost exact replica of Diana's gown. "The Emanuels, who designed the original, gave us the patterns, and then it was made for me," Corrin revealed to British Vogue. "I walked out and everyone went completely silent."

In 2018, The Crown’s producers revealed at a panel that Matt Smith, who played the queen’s husband, Prince Philip, was paid more than Claire Foy, who portrayed the monarch herself. The pay disparity was reportedly due to the fact that Smith was more popular when the show began, thanks to his days on Doctor Who. Since the show began, Foy has won Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actors Guild Awards for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II.

The Crown’s production company, Left Bank Pictures, publicly apologized to the actors for the differences in pay. It was reported months later that Foy would receive about £200,000 ($274,000) in back pay, but the actress later clarified that the news was “not quite correct.”

Following Foy and Smith’s pay dispute, producer Suzanne Mackie declared, “Going forward, no one gets paid more than the Queen.” Such was the case when The Crown introduced its new cast for Season 3, including Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II and Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip. Ahead of the Season 3 premiere, Menzies revealed that he was paid less than his costar.

“It’s an area that, as you may appreciate, I’m wary to step into,” he told Harper’s BAZAAR UK. “I think broadly speaking, yes, greater transparency will lead to greater equality and that is absolutely the direction of travel that I think is necessary and good. It’s interesting … my understanding is, that this time round, I’m paid less than Olivia.”

Although Harry and Meghan’s stepping down has fans eager to see the events play out in the Netflix series—maybe even with the Duchess of Sussex playing herself—producer Suzanne Mackie doesn’t offer much hope for that possibility.

“To be honest, whatever the life of The Crown is after where we are now, I doubt we’ll ever go as far into the present day,” she told Press Association in January.

At the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards, just days after the real-life queen agreed to Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s decision to step down as senior members of the royal family, The Crown’s stars offered their best wishes.

“They can probably do anything,” said Josh O’Connor, who plays Prince Charles. “I’m sure they’re very talented and can go off and do whatever they want.”

Erin Doherty, who portrays Princess Anne, added, “I think the world is their oyster. It’ll be very interesting to see what they do but now they’re masters of their own destiny and good luck to them.”

The latter half of Season 3 starts to focus more on the younger generation of royals, including Prince Charles—the oldest child of the queen and Prince Philip, and the heir to the throne—who gets invested as the Prince of Wales in one episode. The grand sequence was filmed where the real Charles received his Prince of Wales title more than 50 years ago: Caernarfon Castle in Wales. Actor Josh O’Connor, who portrays the next in line to the throne, called it a “really powerful scene.”

In an excerpt from Harry: Life, Loss, and Love, royal biographer Katie Nicholl suggests that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle bonded over watching the series when they were engaged.

"An accomplished cook, Meghan loved to make extravagant dinners for Harry, and they enjoyed staying in and eating her delicious homemade meals and watching films and TV shows like The Crown on Netflix," she wrote.

The Crown is only set to run for six seasons, but it's later seasons are expected to delve into the modern members of the royal family—including the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

The former actress apparently has a standing invitation to play herself on the drama, if she wants to come out of retirement for the role.

"I want to see an episode where Trump comes to Buckingham Palace," Left Bank creative director Suzanne Mackie said of potential future episodes dealing with modern times.

As for Meghan Markle, Mackie said, "She can play herself."

The actor, who is taking over the role of Prince Philip in Season 3

"I wasn't massively interested in the royals before I took the part," Menzies told the Radio Times. "I wasn’t someone who read about them or involved myself with them, but I’ve been very intrigued by [Prince Philip's] life. He’s a pretty interesting bloke. He’s a complex person, with complex stories. I have a lot of regard for him."

When it was time to cast The Crown's next incarnation of the Duke of Edinburgh, Paul Bettany was reportedly on the short list for the part. The casting seemed perfect, but ultimately, the timing just wasn't right.

"We discussed it," Bettany said when asked about the casting rumors. "We just couldn’t come to terms on dates really. [That] is all that happened."

The Crown made a name for itself during its first two seasons for its lavishly gorgeous sets and sky-high production budget. In Season 3, the show's recreated Buckingham Palace is getting an upgrade.

Left Bank, the production company behind the show, requested more studio space for its sets at Elstree Studios.

According to Variety, Left Bank specifically "sought planning permission for a new Buckingham Palace main gates and exterior, including the iconic balcony on which the royals stand at key moments. The Downing Street plans show a new Number 10 and the road leading up to the building itself. The sketches for the new work, seen by Variety, show an aerial view of Downing Street with a Rolls Royce pulling up outside Number 10."

For a while, it was considered common knowledge among The Crown fans that Princess Diana would make her debut at the end of Season 3. This turned out to be untrue, however, and casting director Nina Gold had to personally shut down the rumor.

"Diana’s not in this season," Gold told Vanity Fair. "When we do get to her, that is going to be pretty interesting."

During the show's first two season, it garnered more than 25 major awards and even more nominations. The Crown's major wins include three Primetime Emmy awards, two BAFTA Television awards, and three Screen Actors Guild awards.

This is especially true in the UK (perhaps unsurprisingly). According to article published by the Royal Television Society in November and December 2016, when season one was originally released, a full 9 percent of Netflix users in the UK watched The Crown—numbers that beat out hits like Breaking Bad, Narcos, Orange Is the New Black, and Gilmore Girls.

The show is popular among U.S. viewers too. According to Deadline, Nielsen’s SVOD Content Ratings showed that The Crown averaged nearly 1.3 million total viewers and nearly 600,000 in the 18-49 demo for the Season 2 premiere.

In December 2017, Deadline reported on Nielsen's findings about The Crown's audience. According to Neilsen's data, almost two thirds of people who watched Season 2 of The Crown during its first three days of streaming were 35 or older and with 50 percent over 49. Nielsen also found that 40 percent of the drama's viewers came from households with combined incomes of more than $100,000. Finally, women made up 65 percent of the viewers during those first three days following the Season 2 drop.

As BAZAAR.com reported in April 2019, Emma Corrin had approximately 60 Instagram followers when her role in The Crown was revealed.

Despite her newbie status, creator Peter Morgan knew right away that Corrin was his Diana. He told The Hollywood Reporter, "Emma is a brilliant talent who immediately captivated us when she came in for the part of Diana Spencer. As well as having the innocence and beauty of a young Diana, she also has, in abundance, the range and complexity to portray an extraordinary woman who went from anonymous teenager to becoming the most iconic woman of her generation."

Foy told Vanity Fair in 2016 that the notoriously uncomfortable undergarment actually helped her get into her role. "I’d just had a baby when I started filming, so I had to wear a proper corset because I was about five dress sizes bigger than I normally am. The corset helps you not slouch. Now we’re doing the second series. I’m not wearing it anymore, but it stays with you, that posture, and being a lady."

In a 2017 interview with British Vogue, Foy revealed, "On the first day of filming, I found myself halfway up a Scottish mountain with engorged boobs and no way of getting down to feed my baby."

The challenging moment made her wonder if she'd made the right decision booking the Netflix show. Foy explained, "I had to ring my husband and tell him to give her formula... as I sat in a Land Rover trying to get my broken breast pump to work, I felt I’d made the worst mistake of my life.”

In an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Foy revealed that starting work on The Crown so soon after giving birth took its toll on her. She explained, "I was a lunatic... I was sort of breastfeeding and being the queen. It was an odd thing to do."

Later on during the show she joked, "I did make a lot of milk during that job," to which her co-star Matt Smith retorted, "You were like a cow."

During an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Matt Smith revealed that he'd met Prince William prior to The Crown's release. To his embarrassment, someone revealed to William that Smith was set to play his royal grandfather, and proceeded to ask if the prince had any advice for the actor. According to Smith, William simply shook his hand and said, "Legend. He's an absolute legend."

Despite being an Oscar-winning and seriously in-demand actress, Colman jumped at the chance to play Queen Elizabeth. She explained to Entertainment Weekly, "I was incredibly uncool about it." She continued, "The producers went, ‘So…’ [I said,] ‘Yes! Yes! I’m really excited! Thank you very much!’ I loved the first two seasons."

In May 2017, the Daily Express reported that the queen had seen the first season of The Crown—and that she enjoyed it. According to the Express, she watched it with her son, prird, and his wife, Sophie, the Countess of Wessex.

The paper's unnamed source said, "It has been a longstanding arrangement that they drive to Windsor at the weekend to join the Queen for an informal supper while watching TV or a film. They have a Netflix account and urged her to watch it with them. Happily, she really liked it, although obviously there were some depictions of events that she found too heavily dramatized."

During a conversation with The Guardian, Matt Smith, who plays Philip in the series, said that he had heard through the grapevine that Prince Philip has not seen the show. Smith's friend reportedly asked, "Philip, I’m just wondering, because I have some friends who made The Crown, have you watched any?” Philip's response: "Don’t. Be. Ridiculous.”

According to the Daily Express, the queen wasn't very happy with the way Prince Philip and Prince Charles's father-son relationship was portrayed in Season 2 of The Crown.

The Express reported, allegedly via a "senior courtier," that Queen Elizabeth "was particularly annoyed at a scene in which Philip has no sympathy for a plainly upset Charles while he is flying him home from Scotland. That simply did not happen."

Claire Foy gushed about her costars Matt Smith and Vanessa Kirby in an interview with Metro.co.uk: "On our last day, the amazing [cinematographer] Adriano Goldman had asked all the [electricians] to put multi-colored lights in all the lights around Buckingham Palace. So when me and Vanessa Kirby finished it turned into a disco and everyone was like 'Woooo.'"

If you watch The Crown and think, "Wow, that looks expensive," it's because it is. According to the BBC, the first two seasons cost $130 million—or between $6.5 million and $13 million per episode.

Even though Netflix is notoriously tight-lipped about viewing numbers, the streaming giant has described The Crown as "very popular." What's more, the Royal Television Society reported that in November and December 2016, nine percent of Netflix users watched The Crown. That may not seem like a lot, but to put the number in perspective, that means it beat out hits like Breaking Bad, Orange Is the New Black, and Gilmore Girls.

Season 1 costume designer Michele Clapton told BAZAAR Australia the queen's wedding gown was the "most elaborate [and] time-consuming" costume. She told BAZAAR.com, "I thought it was so important that it was as close as we could possibly make it. That whole procession with the bridesmaids and the train and everything was something which I though, 'If we don't get that right, then we don't actually have the right to make anything else up.'"

Felicity Jones, who you might know as Jyn from Rogue One, reportedly auditioned to play Queen Elizabeth in the series, according to the Mirror.

"I tried to cast almost everyone in Britain before Claire Foy," The Crown creator, Peter Morgan, told Variety. "It was weird. Every time I went to a read through where we were doing auditions for 'The Queen,' I was interested in actress A or B I would skip the bit where Claire was in there. And then after about the fourth time, I went, 'This one is sensational, who’s this?' And they said, 'Pete, she’s been in four times. And you’ve gone for a better-known actress.' She very queen-like[,] slipped in and has proven to be very queen-like. Brilliantly effective."

The real breakout stars of The Crown are, of course, the corgis, and their costars have some hilarious stories to share about them. "Oh my god—the corgis. I’m not much of a dog person, to be perfectly frank. I really loved them, but they’re just, in general...the corgis are odd," Claire Foy told Vanity Fair. "They love cheese, like cheddar cheese." She also said, "These corgis are cheesed up to the max—they’re eating like a whole block of cheddar every day. It’s scary."

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Natural brunette Smith wore a wig to play the fair-haired monarch.

"To achieve the likeness and the spirit of the time and the aging process, we had to resort to doing wigs," the show's makeup and hair designer, Ivana Primora, told Deadline. "Matt Smith’s not a blond, so we tried to get as close to the real characters as we possibly could."

During an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Smith shared a story about almost dying while filming the series: "These horses were being a bit frisky," he said. "We were meant to get on them and trot off and have this lovely love scene, which didn’t even make the cut. In my stupidity, I got on the horse and cantered around and then it just went. I tried to grab a branch and everyone was shouting, 'Oh my God, don’t grab the branch!' So I went under the branch and then down a ravine." He continued, "I was so scared. As it galloped towards a herd of zebra, a huge man grabbed it by the reins and saved my life."

Lithgow won an Emmy for his portrayal of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and he used some unusual methods to perfect his performance. "It was rather repulsive watching me pluck cotton out of my nose after every scene, but they just had to put up with it," he told USA Today about mimicking Churchill's nasally voice.

"The audience bring their own discernment and their own understanding of John as an American to the part," Morgan said of the casting decision. "Yes, Churchill had an American mother but that’s a poor argument to make. It’s an astonishingly versatile piece of acting by one of the world’s great character actors. We’re privileged to have him."

According to The Guardian, "There was the height thing. Churchill was 5’6”; Lithgow is 6’4”." Because of the major height difference between the actor and the historical figure he was portraying, the set had to be adjusted to take into account Lithgow's stature.

The actor told The Guardian, "He was a little bulldog, and I’m a big lummox." And per the publication, "Lithgow stoops as much as he can in The Crown, and they scaled up the fake door to 10 Downing Street to make him look shorter."

Unsurprisingly, The Crown wasn't able to film in the actual Buckingham Palace. To recreate the Palace for the show, the research team took tours of the Palace—public tours. "We went on tours," Annie Sulzberger, who leads the research team, told Refinery 29. "Like any other members of the public—and they had no idea why we were there."

"Nine is my favorite," she told Town & Country. "There's a lot of Churchill and [Graham] Sutherland, who is played by Stephen Dillane, a really brilliant actor. And I think it's where their relationship changes—Elizabeth and Churchill. The statesman becomes the subject. But it's also my favorite episode for Philip and Elizabeth's relationship. I think it's the hardest one, but I think it's really true, and brilliantly directed. I really found it very touching that episode; I loved it."

"There were particular designers who were quite closely associated with the Queen, but with Margaret I know she wore Dior and so there was always a bit of a flare and her wardrobe was a bit more daring," costume designer Michele Clapton said. "I knew she was inspired by Paris so I looked at the shapes from there and throughout the process we saw some really beautiful pieces. I think I copied one outfit and then tried to do an interpretation of the others."

"I always thought the Queen, even in season and listening to her, would have been just a country wife if she hadn’t been elevated to royalty. She seems to have a liking for sweet things and something pretty and her colors were quite simplistic," Clapton said. "I also sense that clothes were really unimportant to her, so I tried to show that in the fact that the colors chosen for her are not sophisticated. Although the dresses are beautiful and I think she enjoyed wearing them they weren’t really important to her, unlike Margaret."

"We couldn’t solely use vintage because it’s so rare to find vintage costumes of that level of beauty you’d need for royals, and then they’d have to fit the actors,” costume designer Michele Clapton told Grazia. "We decided really early on to make 80, 90 percent of Elizabeth’s wardrobe; it just seemed the best way forward. We had a really busy workroom from day one, making inspiration boards and working out the pieces that we might have to copy."

Costume designer Michele Clapton told BAZAAR.com designing for each character was a "partnership" with its respective actor. "We mold and talk and discuss and move forward. We didn't have a lot of prep time once we started—I had about 10 weeks—so you have to move quite quickly and you have to have an amount of background information. Ultimately it's a drama, it's not a historical documentary. We have artistic license, to some extent, and so we use that when we can."

"We had lots of people helping us," Foy said of preparing for the role during an interview with Town & Country. "It wasn't just me and Matt doing it on our own. I don't think we would have got very far. There was a team of researchers..." Smith added, "A lot of books. And we sourced as much audio and visual footage as we could find and really immersed ourselves in both the royal family and their emotional journey and the events that happened in their life, but also the cultural and political context of the '40s and the '50s."

During an interview with BuzzFeed UK, Claire Foy and Matt Smith tried their hand at royal trivia and, well, they didn't do great.

The Crown creator, Peter Morgan, is no stranger to fictional versions of Queen Elizabeth II (he also wrote The Queen, starring Helen Mirren), but he says he doesn't want to meet the monarch in person. "I hope never to meet her," he told Radio Times. "I’ve spent so long thinking and writing about the woman it would feel unnatural and uncomfortable. I’d just be embarrassed."

When asked by Variety why he wanted to tell the story of The Crown, series creator Peter Morgan admitted that he didn't want to at first—but a scene in another project about Queen Elizabeth inspired him. "I’m sick of writing the world of Elizabeth," he said. "But when we did the play The Audience the scene between Churchill and the young queen struck me as having lots of potential—this young 25-year-old girl and this 73-year-old, this daughter and this grandfather. And yet he was so in awe of her. I thought, I’d like to try writing this as a movie, Churchill and Elizabeth. Like Educating Rita. And then as I got writing, I thought actually her marriage is quite interesting, too. So let me just go back a bit. And then before I knew it, I thought this needs more time. That’s when I first rang the producer and thought, this could be a TV show. And Netflix just jumped at it."

The show's theme was written by Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, and Rupert Gregson-Williams. Series creator Peter Morgan apparently gave the composers very specific instructions about what the music should sound like. “Peter Morgan was very specific about how he wanted to feel like we had tectonic plates shifting in the world,” Gregson-William said. “He wanted it to feel regal, but without being pompous, and we had lots of conversations. In fact, that theme took quite a long time, a lot of time talking and not writing, and eventually we got it."

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"Peter Morgan's scripts for The Crown aren't full of prescriptive description," production designer Martin Childs told Architectural Digest. "I love them for a lot of things, and, as a designer, I especially love them for that. They tell the story in movement and dialogue, inviting me and my team to create a world in which that story can believably take place."

Queen Elizabeth's friendship with Lord Porchester (Porchey) caused problems for her and Philip during The Crown's first season. Elizabeth and Porchie were close in real life as well, and there were even rumors of an affair between the two—though there's no real evidence to suggest an affair ever happened.

"We always try to get this feeling that these people are living in this huge, vast space, in particular when you get to Buckingham Palace," executive producer Stephen Daldry told IndieWire. "It’s a gilded cage in lots of ways, so you want to always get this sense of a huge, unfriendly place that they are rattling around in."

In 2016, while participating in the Visionary Women panel, Netflix content boss Ted Sarandos explained that the series is expected to last six seasons. "It's a crazy idea to come in with a 60-hour pitch. The idea is to do this over six decades, in six seasons presumably, and make the whole show over eight to 10 years," he said.