Times, actors are changing as ‘The Crown’ enters 1960s, ’70s

In this im released by Netflix, Olivia Colman portrays Queen Elizabeth II in a scene from third season of " Crown," debuting Sunday on Netflix. 

In this im released by Netflix, Olivia Colman portrays Queen Elizabeth II in a scene from third season of " Crown," debuting Sunday on Netflix. 

“ Crown” opens with a clever ackwledgment that time has passed for Queen Elizabeth II and taken with it Emmy-winning actress who played her in Netflix drama’s first two seasons.

In scene, post stamp portraits are displayed for monarch: one with Claire Foy’s likeness as alluring young queen, or showing a woman edging toward middle- mundanity. A subordinate clumsily tries to gloss over physical differences, but Elizabeth, w embodied by Olivia Colman, will have ne of it.

“One just has to get on with it,” she says, tartly, vice for herself and audience that will meet or series newcomers, including Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret and Tobias Menzies as royal spouse Prince Philip, when 10-episode third season is released Sunday. Josh O’Conr and Erin Doherty join cast as Charles and Anne, grown offspring of Elizabeth and Philip.

Peter Morgan, series’ creator and writer, said transparency was proper approach.

“I thought, let’s just get it out in open. It’s always best to, as it were, be honest and direct about it: We’re changing cast. This is new one,” he said in a phone interview from London this week, with production for next season’s episodes in progress.

re’s change as well in swinging 1960s Britain, where this season of “ Crown” begins with 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 spre of dubious information predates internet. When allegation reaches queen via Philip, she sensibly asks source. His nchalant reply: “Friends at club.”

Current events echo elsewhere in “ Crown,” including frustration over ecomic disparity that exposes monarchy’s expensive upkeep to criticism, and fraying international relations, particularly between Britain and United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson ( explanation offered: Johnson is peeved over Wilson’s refusal to support his Vietnam policy). season ends in late 1970s.

Morgan said he wasn’t “engineering” parallels between n and w, but realistically depicting a “country really at its own throat” during that period.

“You have left and right screaming at each or, and t hearing and t listening to one ar,” Morgan said. “In a funny way, it was reassuring because what show has continually reminded me of, again and again and again, is that crisis is default position rar than harmony. But we project a harmony into past.”

series artfully weaves toger political and personal. re’s a tender scene in which Elizabeth visits a frail Winston Churchill (John Lithgow, who won a 2017 Emmy for role); a wrenching disaster that tests queen’s capacity to serve as comforter-in-chief, and a national ecomic crisis that gives second-fiddle Margaret a chance to shine.

Morgan is an esteemed chronicler of authority and privilege, earning Acemy Award screenwriting minations for “Frost/Nixon,” about journalist David Frost’s TV interviews with former U.S. President Richard Nixon, and “ Queen,” featuring Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance as monarch grappling with repercussions of Princess Diana’s death. In 2017, Morgan earned British Film Institute’s highest hor, BFI Fellowship.

Ben Caron, an executive producer and director for “ Crown,” called Morgan’s writing “ very best of best.”

“But edit is when Peter’s innate understanding of his own material comes into play. He is brutal with his own work — cutting out whole scenes, speeches, moments — in order to refine, refine, refine,” Caron said in an email. “It’s a writer’s instinct as much as a filmmaker’s, this whole idea of, ‘Why use 10 words when you can use one?’ It often means we lose a lot in edit, scenes that we’ve slaved over, beautifully shot work, prized moments, but his instincts are always, always right.”

Morgan said he’s become comfortable with dramatizing famous, but mits that finding his approach to modern genre wasn’t easy. His breakthrough came on “ Deal,” a British TV movie about Labour colleagues and rivals Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

“ really big leap of terror for me happened in 2003, really when I first started writing Tony Blair in a serious way and broke with trition of only dealing with political figures and our leers through satire,” inste creating fully realized individuals, he said.

Morgan doesn’t mingle with royal family, but he did have a brief encounter with Prince Charles in 2015, when heir to throne invested him, among some 80 ors, as a Commander of Order of British Empire — in Morgan’s case, an hor recognizing his services to drama.

“So you’re a scriptwriter?” Charles asked him, ding his view that what a writer chooses to leave out is more important than what’s included — a comment that Morgan says he didn’t take as a veiled mess (it was, to be fair, before “ Crown” h debuted, but after “ Queen” h taken a hard look at House of Windsor).

“I don’t think he h faintest idea who I was,” Morgan said, matter-of-factly. “I think he would have been far more excited and far more interested to meet people involved in conservation, or farming or even in science and invention. It’s hard to imagine, for those of us in London, New York or Los Angeles, but re’s a huge world out re that doesn’t give a () about what we do.”

“ Crown” has proven compelling to audiences and, although Netflix doesn’t release ratings, Morgan happily ted that views have jumped for this season’s preview trailer. He’s mulled both viewer dedication to series and his own (“Why am I still doing this?”) and concluded part of answer is canvas it offers to examine latter half of 20th century.

“On one hand, you’re looking at history and you’re looking at a family and you’re looking at British constitution. But because se people are such strong connective tissue ... you’re also looking at your grandfar, your grandmor, your far, your mor, your own childhood and your children’s childhood,” he said.

He hn’t foreseen that series “would be story of our lives,” he said, invoking Warren Buffett’s name and ecomics to bolster his resolve to stick with “ Crown” to its end, whenever that may come.

“In a funny way, I think it’s important that I carry on doing, because it’s a bit like compound interest,” Morgan said. “It becomes more profound more of it re is.”