(dramatic music) - Carry on. - I'm very excited about Season Four because I think it's our finest. The protagonist's getting older. The decades are changing. The challenges that
face them are changing. Other characters come into the show that have an equal primacy and importance. - [Philip] Two women running the shop. That's the last thing this country needs. - Perhaps that's precisely
what this country needs. - We've got two box-office characters, Margaret Thatcher and Lady Diana Spencer. - The storylines are, you
know, many and fascinating. - Love, approval, it's all
any of us want from you. - The royal family are like icons, which we very rarely
see behind closed doors, and Peter's really good at kinda smashing right through those doors. - Diana, in time, will
give up her fight and bend. - And if she doesn't bend, what then? - She will break. - The world is changing rapidly, but these people aren't changing at all, and the kind of pressure cooker of that is really, for me, what
Season Four is about. (camera shutter clicking) - If this country really
is to turn the corner, then I say it needs to
change fundamentally, top to bottom. - The more it comes to modern day, the more we're dealing
with people's emotions, the people that are around, and I find that a bit difficult. - It's an incredibly formidable time in our political history. Britain is troubled, a divided country. It was a time of tremendous pressure. - My responsibility is to put
sentimentality to one side and look after this country's interest with the perspective of a cold banshee. - The gift of this whole
job is Peter's writing, and there's just like so many facets and so many colors to the royal family. It's basically never boring. - Darwin had nothing on you lot. Shame on all of you. - Margaret-- - No! - This show is so special because it goes, no, they have a beating heart,
like look, look at them. - The Queen is our protagonist. You stray too far from her at your peril, and so you constantly have
to bring it back to The Crown because that will then inform
the stories we're telling. - Now that The Queen is
settled in her reign, I can definitely feel the show is becoming more of an ensemble piece, and the heir, Prince
Charles, the Prince of Wales, he becomes a really important
character because he's next. - [Louis] My Dear Charles,
a person earns his title with his ability to lead
and inspire, elusive virtues to which you must reach and rise, and it grieves me to say that you are not working hard
enough to reach and to rise. (soil scattering) - Josh, who plays Prince
Charles, he really really blossoms in this season, and there are some
fantastic scenes for him with Diana, with Camilla,
and with his mother. - If you have a complaint
about not being loved or appreciated in this marriage, I suggest you take it up with
the people who arranged it. - For me, it's like, remains
a dream come true, really. Looking down at the call sheet every day and you see Olivia Colman,
Helena Bonham-Carter, Tobias Menzies, Charles Dance. Particularly for young actors like myself and Emma and Erin and Emerald, we're all sort of just kind
of soaking in like sponges all this information. When I took the job, took this role, it was clear to me that, in Series Three, that he was a kind of lost child. He was desperate for the
affection of his parents and desperate to be seen and heard and I guess the exciting
thing was taking that sort of lost boy and, you know, growing hin into a man and all the kind of
difficulties that that brings. - Your royal highness... - I'm sorry, we haven't met. - We have, though I was
in costume at the time. - Oh, the mad tree. - Diana. (laughing) - (laughing) Yes, yes. - Season Four is about one
of the greatest love stories of the 21st century. (soft music) - It's the story of Charles
meeting Princess Diana and the innocent start
to the relationship, but also how tragically it ended, and indeed, how unhappy
they were throughout it. - After a selection process
that involved half of Britain, you somehow stumbled on the perfect one in age, looks and breeding, or have you managed to find
fault even in perfection? - No, I mean she is undeniably gorgeous. I just wish I'd had more time. - When he marries Diana, it
triggers all these questions that Charles has to ask
about love and marriage. It might be the right
thing to do for the country or for unity and for the royal family, but is that the right thing for him or is that the right thing for her? - Why, I see you're going to bring a deep and lasting joy to the nation, and if I may say, you both
look very much in love. - Oh, yes, absolutely. - Whatever in love means. - Margaret sort of champions them. The script does develop. It's very different from
the early scripts you get, like, at that read-through and by the time you actually shoot. I said, I'm not gonna be a party of this. Look what they did to me. It's funny how you so
champion your character, and they said, "What?" I said, "Well Townsend, you berk. Don't you remember Season One?" They meddled with that marriage. How, you know, are they ever gonna learn and then, true, it materialized
into a whole scene. - How many times can this
family make the same mistake, forbidding marriages
which should be allowed, forcing others that shouldn't, paying the consequences each time? - You have these two
things running at parallel, which is the mounting tragedy, basically, and the failure of her marriage, and also her growth in popularity and celebrity in the world, and also her own growth
and awareness of herself. - She becomes the love of her nation, you know, she's the spotlight and Charles kind of realizing that he's lost his way. She is now the leading
role in this marriage. You hurt Camilla. - Why would I care about her? - Because I care about her! - Camilla is this cloud
that hangs over them, even if she's not physically there. They're both aware of her. It's such an interesting dynamic, and that kind of
encapsulates the whole thing, which is that even, there's
a constant three going on. - If you put me in a
popularity contest against her, I will lose. Somebody who looks like me
has no place in a fairytale. That's all people want is a fairytale. (crowd chattering) - That was challenging,
to try and be truthful to the period of time where
there was hope, right. There wasn't hope for long, but there was a period of hope, and there are also some
really gorgeous moments, where they really were connected and you suddenly realized what an amazing A-team they could have been. - Where do I fit in? - You it in because you're my wife and because I love you. - Okay, we're rolling. (clapboard snapping)
- [Director] Action. - It's a style that was probably one of the most important
casting decisions I've been part of. - The whole process for me being cast was about six to eight months long. It was quite long and, like, probably one of the most
stressful moments in my life. - What's extraordinary
is that Emma has had a very similar trajectory
as an actor and as a person to what Dina's going through. So, she has gone from complete obscurity, not a huge amount of experience, to suddenly playing one of the most famous women in the world. - I think the thing that dawned on me was how young Diana was
when it all happened. I mean, she got married at 19, not only getting married, but getting married into the royal family, and then I think she had
William, like, a year later. It baffles me that anyone was surprised that she struggled. - Since I've joined this
family, it's not been easy. I've been given no help, no support, just thrown in the deep end and I think that people out there can sense that I have suffered. You've seen how the crowd
responded to me in Australia, here too, and instead of
resenting me for it... - I assure you, no one resents you. - Charles resents me. Anne resents me, and is it possible that you resent me too? - She just really became her. It was spooky to sit in front of her. It was like looking at the real thing. It was such a beautiful performance, you know, there's nuanced
and there's darkness and those things are really fun to play, and she does it beautifully. - That's quite a costume. (soft music) - Fashion is such an integral
part of Diana's journey. She goes from being a very normal girl with, you know, very average,
I think, taste in clothes. - This is the slightly
more innocent Diana... - Your royal highness... - Who would wear bright woolen, almost home-knitted jumpers, and then you've got her journey, she's pulled into the royal world and an increasingly toxic marriage. - And then, you know, by
the end, you leave her and she's really found her
voice and her clothing. - We were trying to do this beauty makeup, so she would have a kind of armor. She would have a strong lip. She'd have a blue eyeliner
and loads of mascara, but a kind of pallor as well 'cause it was tryin' to contrast this kind of tailspin she was in with also her being a kind of media icon. So, we would sometimes put sort of, we'd actually use red on the inside and a sort of bruised tone in combination. So, we were always trying to
do fragility and strength. - This is the Diana that's
becoming the Versace Diana, the fashion icon, the fashion goddess. - And it comes across in such a big way because I think she changed
kinda the face of fashion. - What's interesting about her, I think, is your first image of
her and your final image. When I read that the
first time we see her, what she was going to have to look like, that was so exciting. We slightly dramatized it, what she wears for that final shot
with the big photograph. It probably isn't necessarily
what she'd have worn, but we thought, we'll just do it. This is like glamor and a kind of up you look, really, you know. So I loved that. I loved doing that. - I remember when we
actually filmed the scene where I used the wedding dress. No one had ever seen
me in the dress before, and I remember these doors then opened, and I just remember this hush
descending over everyone. - It was like a chill
going through the room, and everyone just went silent. I mean, I guess that image
itself is so powerful that to see that yourself in that moment just gave everyone pause. - You know, I'm standing
there in her dress, and it was like, it was momentous, and I think everyone felt like there was a presence in the room, and I think it was the kind
of weight of responsibility, the acknowledgement of what we were doing. (voices chattering) - [Man] Erin, do you want
a banana or something? - Uh no. (voices giggling) (hands clapping) Your heart rate must have
gone through the roof. - Love some marmite toast though, yeah, if it's fresh, yeah. - The wedding dress, that took 14 weeks. - The fittings took a long time. I remember the first
one, I kind of thought, should my mom be here? I was like, this is such a, this is like a wedding dress fitting. This is mad. - Aw, amazing. I remember watching the
wedding and thinking, oof, that's a very big dress. - You think oh my, golly,
what do I remember? What do you think about? The sleeves, the bigness of that, and that huge, long, great train. That's what I have to achieve, and of course, it was the
workmen that did all the work. it was Sue and her team. It was weirdly exciting. - How do we do a wedding
without showing the wedding, because everyone's seen the wedding. They've all seen it on television. They all know what that is, and then we found the
archbishop's voice in the archive talking about a fairytale,
talking about a marriage, and we sort of used that
underneath all this, and it's incredibly moving. It's really powerful. (bright orchestra music) - [Director] Action! (clapboard snapping) - There was something extraordinary about bringing an actress of the scale and weight and presence
as Gillian Anderson, and bringing her into contact
with Olivia Colman's Queen. - I was very nervous and
particularly given, you know, the certain pressure that one feels when one is playing a real character, and certainly someone that divides people as much as Margaret Thatcher,
but because it involved different voice, different
walk, different gestures, it felt like a big deal. - A dangerous game, I
think, to make enemies left, right and center. - Not if one is comfortable
with having enemies. - Are you? - Oh yes. - I think this is probably one of the hardest roles she's done, and I know she has spent
months and months and months trying to scrape underneath the surface of Margaret Thatcher. - You could just see her
becoming that person, the voice and the movements and the walk and the way she held her
handbag, where she sat, the way she did those incredibly low sort of ironic curtsies. She just did it so
beautifully and brilliantly, I can't picture anyone else doing it. - Your Majesty. - Prime Minister. - I think we have enough respect for one another personally
to ask ourselves some of the bigger
questions woman to woman. We are the same age, after all. - Really? - Just six months between us. - Oh? And who is the senior? - I am, Ma'am. Her physicality is a big part of her and what we remember of her, whether it's her voice or her hair or mannerisms or her stridency, and so, it feels essential to me to try and get as much right as you can. She was always incredibly
well put together and a huge attention to detail, and that detail was absolutely carried out to the T by the team, whether you like her politics... No, no, no, no. Put all that to one side,
she was quite phenomenal, extraordinary outfits, hugely feminine. There is a definite trajectory
that happens in her clothes. - This was classic Thatcher. Previously, we've seen her with The Queen, quite exposed, though now
it's a different story. She wants to declare war. - And I say, we will not
survive not going to war. - So, all weakness is gone, shoulders are still quite narrow. That wide look will come
in in later episodes. Both she and The Queen have Launer bags. Hers is slightly bigger,
more like a briefcase. We've gone for this very patriotic, red, white and blue. This was a militaristic moment. - We first did the camera test. There were things that we
realized just weren't right. (canister spraying) - The difficult thing is
that Thatcher's hair color changed from day to day. She was rinsing it. She was coloring it and it would fade. So, it was really difficult
to decide on a color, and we sort of realized that people have different memories
of the color of her hair. We effectively needed to destroy
the wig to make it right. So, we set upon a process of
kind of over-processing it and thinning it out so that it had that kind of frothy halo. So, it was a big long process with lots and lots of backwards
and forwards and tweaking 'cause it's a very
specific texture and look. - We were playing around with teeth. Everything that we tried just
felt like it was too much. I mean, we actually, they went ahead and had this guy build the sort
of teeth that I would wear. I needed to figure out how
to hold my mouth differently, inclusive of a different kind of teeth in my mouth. (laughing) Not that I noticed. - For me, I always come
back to the silhouette and the shade 'cause if they have the recognizable silhouette and you manage to get the outline, then kind of whatever
happens in the outline is, you know, the actor does that bit. - Gillian really worked
to find the essence of Margaret Thatcher and I think she's done an amazing job. You know, a mix of never being frightened to be privately vulnerable
as Margaret Thatcher, and publicly formidable. - My goal is to change this country from being dependent to self reliant, and I think in that, I am succeeding. - What I love about all those scenes in the audience room is, of course, no one ever knows what
happened in the audience room. So, we can make up what we want and we can draw conclusions. - I was under the impression that there was an unbreakable code of silence between Sovereign and First Minister. - The friction that's written
is so enjoyable to play. It was just really fun to have those sort of horrible moments
with brilliant Gillian. - I am obliged to support
my prime ministers on any position they take, even yours. - For me, that first
audience was a scene where two women who have huge amounts
of respect for each other get to meet each other. - There's a choice
Olivia makes in the scene just before she meets
Thatcher for the first time that's so moving. It's just this tiny indication and you understand from
that one thing she does how excited she is about
this woman coming in. - Congratulations, Prime Minister. - Thank you, Ma'am. - One of the things the
director was interested in and it was mirroring. When two people are quite alike, they mirror each other in their sort of, the way they carry themselves. So, when you look at that scene, they're both sitting very similarly. They've both got their
bags by the same place. Every frame, it sort of feels like it's a mirror of one another, and so, that's feeding into that idea that these two women are the same. - Olivia is the biggest joy to work with. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep my focus because she's
such a goofball, (laughing) and I can be too, but she's
really good at snapping to, and just, in a split
second, getting serious and getting into the scene. The pleasure of that
and respecting somebody and somebody's work and their body of work and walking into a room and
getting to experience that and to play with that and, is such a gift. - In Season Four, we
find The Queen I think at a particular stage in history where her children are grown up, but she's still concerned about them. - She, I think, is more
understanding about, you know, sort of human frailty, you
know, within her own family, but sort of The Crown is still
the most important thing. - Much more Olivia has come
into The Queen this season, and has brought a bit
more of the warmth out. She is the matriarch on camera and she is the matriarch on set. People instantly feel at ease around her. - It's kind of intimidating. She doesn't seem to have
to do any work. (laughing) The scene sort of pours out of her. I've learned a lot from her. Our working together was characterized by not a huge amount of
talking around it or about it. We kind of let it happen sort of a bit more instinctively than that, and sort of in front of the camera. - Right, everyone, gloves on. - It felt good, actually,
and I feel like it means that it keeps it quite fresh. - Our children are lost. What does that say about us as parents? - And he can be chatty and fun and silly and supportive and great, and then she can flick on The Queen and she's cold and distant and troubled, and it's a real talent. - What does one have to do to get some kindness in this family? - People love this show for its accuracy to its storytelling and its humanity, and the emotional side of it, but also, the memories and the nostalgia. The first day I started, I was introduced to the research department people who you could ask anything to. - The research team are
the nucleus of "The Crown." I think Peter would
agree that when he sits and stares at a blank piece of paper on that Day One of Season
Four, what do I write, he also looks down to the
left and down to the right, and there are pages and pages and pages of in-depth research by this amazing team. - I'm now writing Season Five. On a daily basis, I had two Zoom calls with the research team this morning. I'm extremely hand-in-glove with them. - There's a lot to learn,
a lot to get right. - What they were brilliant about was getting into the kind
of emotional nitty gritty of things that have been said,
putting stories together, building a biography of someone that just made them much more complete, and that would give the
actors coming into those roles something to really hold onto. - You sort of have to
look wherever you think you might be able to find something, and it can be in a very odd place. - With our seventh anniversary coming up, well, I've had some ideas. We recreate a very personal gift that Diana gave Charles in which she sings a song from "The Phantom of the Opera." ♪ No more talk of darkness ♪ Well, she performs the song
from "Phantom of the Opera," I should say because we
don't know if she sang. We don't know if she mimed. We don't know if she danced. So, from that information
or that lack of information, we then have to try to speak to people who might be able to answer the question, was Diana a competent singer? Did she enjoy singing in front of people? If not, then it's more
likely she mimed it. So, we're trying to hunt
down for these answers in very obtuse ways, given
it's a private moment that not many people saw. - There are certain things which irrefutably, factually happened down to every department,
hair, costume, makeup. They're absolutely immaculate, and then because those
all have gotten right, it gives you license to say, and this is what possibly happened, but this is the imaginative bit, the conversation or
the emotional reaction. - Time, it scares me.
It fills me with dread. I want, I want something to fill it with. (voices chattering) - There's a great sense of devotion amongst everybody that works on the show. Everybody is at the top of their game and almost everybody
that started this journey is still on the journey. I think the cast that
come in feel so reassured by how stable the ship is. - If you would allow me... - We get to the studio and
we get into the sound stage, and there's the Cabinet Room. I mean, the Cabinet Room
(laughing) is just like the Cabinet Room, massive, you know. That table that's constructed
in that particular way, it kind of took my breath away. There is just so much detail
and so much care and joy. - Martin Childs and Alison Harvey are our A-team designers. I just, I know, first thing in the morning when I arrive on set and I walk in to one of their rooms that
they have set decorated and set designed, I have to sort of, it's just, it's just wow. Every time, it's complete wow. - My favorite story about
Martin, it's a little one. When we went and found Princess
Margaret's home in Mustique, and it was brilliant, it was great, and I said to him, look, architecturally, in her home, there was a kind of sunburst across her doorway. It's quite famous. She was often photographed in front of it. He said, oh no, that's a great detail. Let me think about that. Went away, came back half an hour later and he said, I'm building
you a pool house. - So suddenly, I had this
whole pool house being built, which meant that I could
shift a huge amount of my scenes into there. I had the background of
the blue that I wanted. Little things like that
make an enormous difference. - It's a really nice job. I'm an actor, so I get paid
to learn lines and dress up. It's great, and so you get to
dress up in the best costumes. Get to work with the
best people, best crews. Everyone works so hard,
and it was really happy. - The gift of this whole
job was the mere fact that we shot it over two years. I've never had that luxury of living with the same character for so long. I felt tremendous sadness
to say goodbye to her 'cause she's been great company. (glasses tinkling) - It was an amazing journey, so I feel pretty lucky to
have been involved in it. I definitely miss him. I found him fascinating to work on and try and understand. He's a contradictory,
completely complex person, but all good things
have to come to an end, and I'm excited to see what happens next. - I really do like
writing about this family because there is a way of
using them almost as avatars, through which you can
look at a dynastic story. And all the best stories are sort of family dynastic stories,
and that continues to be interesting to write. (voices chattering) - [Photographer] Various Christmas smiles. - [Philip] Yes. - [Photographer] Three, two, one... (camera shutter clicking)
