NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks to Imelda Staunton about the joys and challenges of portraying Queen Elizabeth II in the final season of Netflix’s The Crown.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This month, Netflix viewers say goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II. The streaming service’s sweeping historical drama “The Crown” is ending its six-season run with a final batch of episodes, and it does so a little more than a year after the real-world death of Queen Elizabeth. Great Britain’s longest-reigning monarch is played in this final season by Imelda Staunton. I spoke to her last week to ask her what it was like to bring Queen Elizabeth’s story to an end, and also what it was like to portray the queen during one of the most difficult moments in her 70 years on the throne – the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE CROWN”)
IMELDA STAUNTON: (As Queen Elizabeth II) If you don’t mind, I’m concerned with being a grandmother to William and Harry. That’s my priority. And I’d rather not be lectured on how or when to grieve or show emotion.
DETROW: After Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, the queen came under intense criticism for her initial lack of a public response. And in the series, created by Peter Morgan, the monarch is also clearly frustrated and bewildered by the very un-British outpouring of emotion that followed Diana’s death. Staunton told us that was important to show.
STAUNTON: Well, I think it was great that Peter didn’t shy away from that and that he did show the monarch not responding as she probably should have to the death. And I think she had no idea, obviously, I mean, that that was going to happen, that response was going to be so intense. And it was wonderful to play a person who was torn. I don’t think she’d ever been put in that position ever before. So I think she wrestled with it greatly. And I think her sense of duty at that time was to the immediate family. And it was puzzling, I think, to her,…
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