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Imelda Staunton On Playing Queen Elizabeth in The Crown's Final Season

Fans of the The Crown are excited for the show's sixth season—part one of which is now on Netflix, with part two coming in December—not least for Imelda Staunton's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth.

Staunton—the Oscar-nominated actress perhaps best known for playing sickly sweet Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter series—took over the job for seasons five and six. "I have loved watching The Crown from the very start," Staunton said when her casting was confirmed in January 2020, per the Hollywood Reporter.

"As an actor it was a joy to see how both Claire Foy and Olivia Colman brought something special and unique to Peter Morgan’s scripts," she continued. "I am genuinely honored to be joining such an exceptional creative team and to be taking The Crown to its conclusion."

In September 2021, Netflix released a short video of Staunton, seated on a set of the Queen's office, talking about taking over the role and the start of production on the fifth season.

"I'm delighted to be here, inheriting the role of Queen Elizabeth from two outstanding actresses," she said. "I will do my utmost, to maintain the very high standard that they set."

And while Staunton might have expressed some nerves about stepping into the Queen's shoes, her predecessor, Olivia Colman, had no such reservations about the casting. When asked whether she'd given Staunton any advice on playing the iconic monarch, Colman told Variety, "No! Who gives Imelda Staunton advice? She will be incredible. I can’t wait to watch her."

Ahead of the show's sixth and final season, she opened up about her feelings about returning to the character and the show's culmination. "Doing the last season did carry a lot of weight. We started and then, very soon after, the Queen died, so it was quite difficult, to be honest," she said. "We carried on with as much dignity and grace as they have always done on The Crown but, obviously, there was a very different temperature in the world, in England and even more so on The Crown. We couldn't do anything differently; I had to carry on, but we were all a wee bit sad. I think it probably just informed our temperature, if you like, rather than alter the material at all. But, there's no doubt, it was different."

She added, "I knew in 2019 I was doing it, so I've been living with her for a long time so, if anything, I felt more comfortable this time. I was so frightened doing it and this time I felt a bit more grounded really. And it's a luxury to be able to keep with something for so long."

She's spoken about the controversy over whether to put a disclaimer on the show.

Previously, Staunton was asked to address an ongoing controversy surrounding the show. In late November 2020, UK Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden called on Netflix to affix a "health warning" to the beginning of each episode, labeling the series as a work of fiction. "Without this, I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact," he told the Daily Mail. Netflix later announced that it had no intention to do so.

Since then, many figures, including former Prime Minister John Major (who is portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller in the fifth season), Judi Dench, and Staunton's fellow castmate Jonathan Pryce have weighed in on the question of whether the show should include a disclaimer.

And what does Staunton think of all this? Should The Crown have a fiction warning? "I think that is up to producers and directors," Staunton said on the BBC radio show Woman's Hour in 2021, per Variety. “This isn’t verbatim; this isn’t taken from diaries. You’ve got to use your imagination, and I’d like to allow the audience a bit of intelligence. You can’t know that’s what Margaret and Elizabeth were talking about.”

Just ahead of the fifth season, she spoke out on the issue again, saying that some backlash is "understandable" following the death of Queen Elizabeth in September 2022. "It is understandable people still feel a bit… like their nerve endings are still a little bit raw," she told Deadline. "We’re in it… so we don’t think it’s undignified. We think it’s honest and true and respectful. Peter Morgan’s been writing about the Queen since Helen Mirren [was in The Queen]. He obviously adores this family in many ways, and he’ll show both sides of the characters, for good or for worse. He’ll show them and make no judgement, he’ll leave that up to the audience."

the crown queen elizabeth olivia colman
Olivia Colman plays Queen Elizabeth in The Crown’s recently released third season.Sophie Mutevelian

At the time of Staunton's casting announcement, Netflix also revealed an unexpected decision about The Crown's future: the show, originally thought to last six seasons, would end after its fifth. Morgan called it "the perfect time and place to stop." But nearly six months after that news, the streaming service reversed course again, announcing that The Crown would, in fact, span six seasons. This time, Morgan said, "As we started to discuss the storylines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons. To be clear, Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present-day—it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail." (That same period, to be clear, will end in the early 2000s.)

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