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

Published

2 years 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

White House responds to report Trump is considering commuting Diddy’s prison sentence

Published

2 hours ago

October 22, 2025

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White House responds to report Trump is considering commuting Diddy's prison sentence

A White House official has said there is “zero truth” to a report that Donald Trump is considering commuting Sean “Diddy” Combs’s prison sentence as early as this week.

On Monday, US entertainment site TMZ reported the US president was “vacillating” on whether or not to reduce the music mogul’s sentence, citing a “high-ranking White House official”.

Combs was sentenced to 50 months in prison and given a $500,000 fine at a hearing on 3 October, after being found guilty of prostitution charges relating to his former girlfriends and male sex workers at the end of his high-profile trial in the summer.

Earlier this week, the 55-year-old’s legal team filed a legal document officially signalling their intention to appeal.

Now, a White House official has pushed back on TMZ’s report about a possible commutation.

There is “zero truth to the TMZ report, which we would’ve gladly explained had they reached out before running their fake news”, the official told NBC, Sky News’ US partner.

Mr Trump, “not anonymous sources, is the final decider on pardons and commutations”, the official added.

Casey Carver, a spokesperson for TMZ, said in a brief statement: “We stand by our story.”

In an update to the story on the outlet’s website, the news site said: “The White House Communications Office is saying our story is not true. We stand by our story. Our story is accurate.”

Lawyers for Combs did not immediately return a request for comment about the disparity between the White House statement and TMZ’s reporting. However, they previously told NBC News they had been pursuing a pardon.

Pardons and commuting – what is the difference?

In the US federal system, commutation of sentence and pardons are different forms of executive clemency, “which is a broad term that applies to the president’s constitutional power to give leniency to persons who have committed federal crimes”, according to the justice department.

Neither signifies innocence, but a pardon is an expression of a president’s forgiveness and can be granted in recognition of acceptance of responsibility and good conduct, reinstating rights such as the right to vote.

A commutation reduces a sentence either totally or partially but does not remove civil disabilities that apply as a result of criminal conviction.

What has Donald Trump said?

In August, before Combs’s sentencing, Mr Trump said in an interview that he had been approached about a possible pardon but implied he would not be granting one.

“You know, I was very friendly with him. I got along with him great and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t know him well,” the president said. “But when I ran for office, he was very hostile.”

When asked if he was suggesting he would not pardon Combs, he replied: “I would say so.”

“When you knew someone and you were fine, and then you run for office, and he made some terrible statements. So, I don’t know, it’s more difficult,” Mr Trump said. “Makes it more – I’m being honest, it makes it more difficult to do.”

The president has issued several pardons and commutations in his second term – including to around 1,500 criminal defendants in connection with the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

Last week, he commuted the sentence of disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos.

Combs was found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution in July, but was cleared of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, which carried potential life sentences.

Ahead of his sentencing, he told the court he admitted his past behaviour was “disgusting, shameful and sick”, and apologised personally to Cassie Ventura and “Jane”, another former girlfriend who testified anonymously during the trial.

He told the court he got “lost in my excess and lost in my ego”, but since his time in prison he has been “humbled and broken to my core”, adding: “I hate myself right now… I am truly sorry for it all.”

The rapper is serving his sentence at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where his team has said conditions are “inhumane”.

He has asked to be moved to a low-security federal prison in New Jersey, but the Bureau of Prisons has yet to approve the request.

Entertainment

Police should focus on ‘tackling real crime’, No 10 says, after Met Police halts non-crime hate probes

Published

22 hours ago

October 21, 2025

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All police forces urged to stop recording non-crime hate incidents

Officers should focus on “tackling real crime and policing the streets”, Downing Street has said – after the Metropolitan Police announced it is no longer investigating non-crime hate incidents.

The announcement by Britain’s biggest force on Monday came after it emerged Father Ted creator Graham Linehan will face no further action after he was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence over three posts he made on X about transgender issues.

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Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said police forces will “get the clarity they need to keep our streets safe” when a review of non-crime hate incidents by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing is published in December.

“The police should focus on tackling real crime and policing the streets,” he said.

“The home secretary has asked that this review be completed at pace, working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing.

“We look forward to receiving its findings as soon as possible, so that the other forces get the clarity they need to keep our streets safe.”

He said the government will “always work with police chiefs to make sure criminal law and guidance reflects the common-sense approach we all want to see in policing”.

After Linehan’s September arrest, Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said officers were in “an impossible position” when dealing with statements made online.

On Monday, a Met spokesperson said the commissioner had been “clear he doesn’t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates, with current laws and rules on inciting violence online leaving them in an impossible position”.

The force said the decision to no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents would now “provide clearer direction for officers, reduce ambiguity and enable them to focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations”.

Justice minister Sarah Sackman said it is “welcome news” the Met will now be focusing on crimes such as phone snatching, mugging, antisocial behaviour and violent crime.

Asked if other forces should follow the Met’s decision, she said: “I think that other forces need to make the decisions that are right for their communities.

“But I’m sure that communities up and down the country would want that renewed focus on violent crime, on antisocial behaviour, and on actual hate crime.”

The Met said it will still record non-crime hate incidents to use as “valuable pieces of intelligence to establish potential patterns of behaviour or criminality”.

Entertainment

Bob Vylan on ‘death, death to the IDF’ chant: ‘I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays’

Published

1 day ago

October 21, 2025

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Bob Vylan on 'death, death to the IDF' chant: 'I'd do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays'

Bob Vylan’s frontman has said he does not regret chanting “death, death to the IDF” at Glastonbury – and would do it again.

The outspoken punk duo sparked controversy with their performance at the festival in June, with the broadcast also leading to fierce criticism of the BBC.

But speaking on The Louis Theroux podcast, Bobby Vylan said he stood by the chant, adding: “I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays.”

The US condemned the act’s “hateful tirade” and revoked their visas, with several festivals cancelling their upcoming appearances.

Vylan claimed this backlash is “minimal” compared with what the people of Palestine are going through – with many losing members of their family or forced to flee their homes.

He said: “If I have their support, they’re the people that I’m doing it for, they’re the people that I’m being vocal for, then what is there to regret. Oh, because I’ve upset some right-wing politician or some right-wing media?”

The musician revealed he was taken aback by the uproar caused by the chant, which was described by the prime minister as “appalling hate speech”.

Vylan added: “It wasn’t like we came off stage, and everybody was like (gasps). It’s just normal. We come off stage. It’s normal. Nobody thought anything. Nobody. Even staff at the BBC were like: ‘That was fantastic! We loved that!'”

A spokesperson at Mindhouse Productions – which was founded by Theroux and produces The Louis Theroux podcast – told Sky News: “Louis is a journalist with a long history of speaking to controversial figures who may divide opinion. We would suggest people watch or listen to the interview in its entirety to get the full context of the conversation.”

‘The response was disproportionate’

The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit has since found that the broadcast of Bob Vylan’s set breached editorial standards related to harm and offence.

Theroux asked Vylan what he meant by chanting “death to the IDF” – with the musician replying: “It’s so unimportant, and the response to it was so disproportionate.

“What is important is the conditions that exist to allow that chant to even take place on that stage. And I mean, the conditions that exist in Palestine. Where the Palestinian people are being killed at an alarming rate.”

He said he wanted an end to the oppression that the Palestinian people are facing – but argued chanting “end, end the IDF” wouldn’t have caught on because it doesn’t rhyme.

“We are there to entertain, we are there to play music,” Vylan added. “I am a lyricist. ‘Death, death to IDF’ rhymes. Perfect chant.”

He went on to reject claims that their set had contributed to a spike in antisemitic incidents that were reported a couple of days later.

“I don’t think I have created an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community. If there were large numbers of people going out and going like ‘Bob Vylan made me do this’. I might go, ‘oof, I’ve had a negative impact here’.”

Vylan’s conversation with Theroux was recorded on 1 October – before the Manchester synagogue attack, and prior to the ceasefire in Gaza coming into effect.