The Crown: The secrets behind multi-million pound Netflix production

Published

1 year ago

December 1, 2023

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The second instalment of the sixth series of The Crown is set for release on 14 December.

Seven years on from its initial release, the programme has been a smash hit for Netflix and has seen some of the UK’s greatest acting talent – including the three queens Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton – take on the challenge of portraying some of the most recognisable people in the world.

Behind the glitzy multimillion-pound production is a vast production team working on the finest of details to capture each decade of the Royal Family precisely.

Martin Childs, a production designer, and Alison Harvey, a set decorator, have worked on all six seasons of the show and produced almost 2,500 sets in that time.

The pair say the “luxury of time and money and people” that the Netflix production affords allows the detailed and spectacular sets we see on our screens.

“We did go through the schedule quite quickly,” Harvey said.

“We did have people devoted to certain things like drapes. [I’m] on a job at the moment – we’ve got no people and no money and no time. So we’re very lucky to have those facilities available to us on such a great well-received project.”

The abundance of resources allows Childs and Harvey to capture not just the familiar castles and regal settings – they were excited to capture the royals’ private interiors as well.

“It’s a kind of a slightly imagined film version,” Harvey said.

“We research and research and research until the research runs out,” Childs said.

“I think it might be Peter Morgan who coined this phrase ‘informed imagination’ – and it’s one I like very much because it helps describe what we finish up having to do,” he added.

The first four episodes of the sixth season were released on 16 November and captured the last eight weeks of Princess Diana’s life.

While many of the scenes from the 1997 crash and its aftermath are seared into the public’s imagination, Childs was averse to recreating many of them.

“My consideration [for] all the scenes that led up to [the crash] was not to have any prior knowledge of it, because the audience does. So I didn’t want to load it with 20-20 hindsight.

“People know what happened. People are familiar with the footage so we didn’t really want to recreate much of that.”

Portraying Diana faithfully was also a major consideration for hair and makeup artists Cate Hall and Emilie Yong. It took around 30 hours to transform Elizabeth Debicki into the late princess.

“It starts with this very archaic wrapping of their head in clingfilm and sellotape and marking the headline with a sharpie. The wig maker we work with is very, very detailed in terms of hairlines, crowns,” Hall said.

“The hair is all knotted hair by hair, we will go through thousands of different colours to find the four or five colours we’re going to use in a wig. Then once the wig is made, we start cutting.

“Then the wig comes off the head and is set and dried, put back on again, cut, highlighted, roots shaded in. And then the makeup fittings start.”

Like the production designers, the pair said they “live and die by” getting the details right.

“Otherwise what you get is something that feels sort of generally in the region of [the decade] but not necessarily robust.

“The whole point when you’re recreating period television is trying to create this world that the viewer can watch and really immerse themselves in. The last thing you want to do is bring them out of that.

“So for me, if I’m watching a TV show and the textures are really modern and chemically sophisticated and illuminated, things like that immediately take me out of the show. So it’s those kinds of details.

“One way of saying we’re in the 1960s [is] about the textures and what was available to the people at the time. Glitter was not. We have every foundation colour under the sun now. But in 1960 you were probably dealing with four different shades if you’re lucky. It’s about sophistication that helps you tell the story,” Hall said.

So the actors have undergone their transformations into their characters and the stage is set but something’s missing.

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Alongside a historical research team, the actors spend a significant amount of time preparing with movement coach Polly Bennett to prepare for filming.

“When you meet new actors playing the characters, it becomes about actually trying to throw all of that information [from past seasons] away and starting again.

“The best thing about working with the team this time around was that we’d already done season five, so they kind of lived in their bodies,” she said.

“I think the biggest thing physically that I had to consider was that they had been around being famous. Being famous was a new idea.

“The sort of thing that Diana was experiencing is a very particular physical change in her body. So that was the major preoccupation I had.”

A huge body of research, like the production designers and hair and make-up artists, informs Bennetts’s work.

She describes working with 21-year-old Meg Bellamy who is playing a young Kate Middleton as she attends university with Prince William.

“A lot of our first sessions were just providing the space to go – who is this person? What has she been around? What has she grown up around? What clothes is she regularly wearing? What food does she eat? What are her relationships? Who has she seen growing up?

“We look at footage that we have, we look at photographs, and put it together in the kind of private investigator type way,” Bennett said.

“And suddenly when you start looking at different pictures, you notice little things that Kate does in her life, like she wears a handbag always on the same side of her body and she clutches it. Now, that’s something that then became an inpoint for Meg.

“The idea that they’ve got something very practical, but they’re keeping it close to them and then you can take that feeling into their whole life. Whether or not that’s actually what Kate Middleton is doing, that becomes gold dust as a practical idea for an actor to play.”

Entertainment

Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia talked about modern masculinity before Gen Z was born

Published

6 hours ago

April 5, 2025

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Pete Townshend's Quadrophenia talked about modern masculinity before Gen Z was born

Despite The Who’s Quadrophenia being set over 60 years ago, Pete Townshend’s themes of identity, mental health, and modern masculinity are just as relevant today.

The album is having a renaissance as Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia A Mod ballet is being brought to life via dance at Sadler’s Wells East, and Sky News has an exclusive first look.

As Townshend puts it, the album he wrote is “perfect” for the stage.

“My wife Rachel did the orchestration for me, and as soon as I heard it I said to her it would make a fabulous ballet and we never really let that go,” he tells Sky News.

“Heavy percussion, concussive sequences. They’re explosive moments. They’re also romantic movement moments.”

If you identify with the demographics of Millennial, Gen Y or Gen Z, you might not be familiar with The Who and Mod culture.

But in post-war Britain the Mods were a cultural phenomenon characterised by fashion, music, and of course, scooters. The young rebels were seen as a counter-culture to the establishment and The Who, with Roger Daltry’s lead vocals and Pete Townshend’s writing, were the soundtrack.

Quadrophenia the album is widely regarded as an essay on the British adolescent experience at the time, focusing on the life of fictional protagonist Jimmy – a young Mod struggling with his sanity, self-doubt, and alienation. 

Townshend sets the rock opera in 1965 but thinks its themes of identity, mental health, and modern masculinity are just as relevant today.

He says: “The phobias and the restrictions and the unwritten laws about how young men should behave. The ground that they broke, that we broke because I was a part of it.

“Men were letting go of [the] wartime-related, uniform-related stance that if I wear this kind of outfit it makes me look like a man.”

This struggle of modern masculinity and identity appears to be echoing today as manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate, incel culture, and Netflix’s Adolescence make headlines.

For dancer Paris Fitzpatrick, who takes on the lead role of Jimmy, the story resonates.

“I think there’s a connection massively and I think there may even be a little more revival in some way,” he tells Sky News.

“I love that myself. I love non-conforming to gender norms and typical masculinity; I think it’s great to challenge things.”

Despite the album being written before he was born, the dancer says he was familiar with the genre already.

“I actually did an art GCSE project about Mods and rockers and Quadrophenia,” he says.

“I think we’ll be able to bring it to new audiences and hopefully, maybe people will be inspired to to learn more about their music and the whole cultural movement of the early 60s.”

In 1979, the album was adapted into a film directed by Franc Roddam starring Ray Winstone and Sting but Townshend admits because the film missed key points he is “not a big fan”.

“What it turned out to be in the movie was a story about culture, about social scenario and less about really the specifics of mental illness and how that affects young people,” he adds, also complimenting Roddam’s writing for the film.

Perhaps a testament to Pete Townshend’s creativity, Quadrophenia started as an album, was successfully adapted to film and now it will hit the stage as a contemporary ballet.

It appears that over six decades later Mod culture is still cool and their issues still relatable.

Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet will tour to Plymouth Theatre Royal from 28 May to 1 June 2025, Edinburgh Festival Theatre from 10 to 14 June 2025 and the Mayflower, Southampton from 18 to 21 June 2025 before having its official opening at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London on 24 June running to 13 July 2025 and then visiting The Lowry, Salford from 15 to 19 July 2025.

Entertainment

Russell Brand charged with rape and sexual assault

Published

12 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Russell Brand has been charged with rape and two counts of sexual assault between 1999 and 2005.

The Metropolitan Police say the 50-year-old comedian, actor and author has also been charged with one count of oral rape and one count of indecent assault.

The charges relate to four women.

He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday 2 May.

Police have said Brand is accused of raping a woman in the Bournemouth area in 1999 and indecently assaulting a woman in the Westminster area of London in 2001.

He is also accused of orally raping and sexually assaulting a woman in Westminster in 2004.

The fourth charge alleges that a woman was sexually assaulted in Westminster between 2004 and 2005.

Police began investigating Brand, from Oxfordshire, in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations.

The comedian has denied the accusations and said he has “never engaged in non-consensual activity”.

He added in a video on X: “Of course, I am now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “The women who have made reports continue to receive support from specially trained officers.

“The Met’s investigation remains open and detectives ask anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information, to come forward and speak with police.”

Entertainment

Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to ‘dear friend’ Val Kilmer

Published

1 day ago

April 3, 2025

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to 'dear friend' Val Kilmer

Tom Cruise has paid tribute to Val Kilmer, wishing his Top Gun co-star “well on the next journey”.

Cruise, speaking at the CinemaCon film event in Las Vegas on Thursday, asked for a moment’s silence to reflect on the “wonderful” times shared with the star, whom he called a “dear friend”.

Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday aged 65, rocketed to fame starring alongside Cruise in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, playing Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, a rival fighter pilot to Cruise’s character Maverick.

His last part was a cameo role in the 2022 blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

Cruise, on stage at Caesars Palace on Thursday, said: “I’d like to honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun and came back later for Top Gun: Maverick.

“I think it would be really nice if we could have a moment together because he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us. Just kind of think about all the wonderful times that we had with him.

“I wish you well on the next journey.”

The moment of silence followed a string of tributes from Hollywood figures including Cher, Francis Ford Coppola, Antonio Banderas and Michelle Monaghan.

Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes told the New York Times on Wednesday that the actor had died from pneumonia.

Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, Kilmer discussed his illness and recovery in his 2020 memoir Your Huckleberry and Amazon Prime documentary Val.

He underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the disease and also had a tracheostomy which damaged his vocal cords and permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.

Kilmer played Batman in the 1995 film Batman Forever and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 movie The Doors.

He also starred in True Romance and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as playing criminal Chris Shiherlis in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat and Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone.

In 1988 he married British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while working on fantasy adventure Willow.

The couple had two children before divorcing in 1996.