The Crown: The Official Podcast

Clip

Queen visits Margaret in bed at the start

E: How are you?

M: I’m Fine

…..he’s moved on to the next one.

Series intro

Episode intro

Edith v/o

Coming up later, we'll hear from director Jessica Hobbs and executive producer Suzanne Mackie. We'll also meet production designer on the crown the visionary Martin Childs. But first, let's touch base with Peter Morgan, writer, creator and showrunner. I caught up with him again at his house in London and asked him about crafting the final episode of season three.

Peter Morgan Part 1

P: I remember telling you that ep one's, first episodes, are hard to write, and the next most devilish are ep tens because you have obligations beyond the obligation of the episode and any writer would sit and share a support group with me about the horrors of first and last episodes. And this particular one was was interesting because it really went wrong. So we have a wonderful director Jessica Hobbs, and it was through no fault of hers. But she was shooting it, and after about halfway through the shoot, she rang me up and she said, I really want you to come to the cutting room and have a look at what we've got because it doesn't feel right. And I looked at it, and it clearly didn't work. She was right to be alarmed and concerned. It was it was an episode about the disintegration of Princess Margaret's marriage, which didn't feel like where we needed to be at the end of the season. It does always need to reflect back to the Queen not just actually funnily enough in the first or the last episode, but in every episode, you know, I always keep trying to break away and make episodes about other things. And the reason for that is because she's not a she's not naturally a person you'd want to put at the centre of any drama because she's this remarkably undramatic woman.

E: Yeah.

3:46  

P: She doesn't throw temper tantrums. She's not cruel. She's not Tony Soprano. Keep you know, I've said in other interviews, what you want as a protagonist is a person like Tony Soprano, who, who you can get to do anything. In any direction. You can get him to be ultra violent or ultra loving. And and he will play as both. 

E: Hmm. 

4:09  

P: So really you have a complete carte blanche he's a he's a he's he's a writers dream. 

Anyway, here I am in ep 10 staring in the cutting room at this footage. And it didn't feel like a concluding episode. It felt like the drama was had been put in the wrong person's hands. And so we had to re-orientate it and re-calibrate it and, and then it made no sense that in an episode about a disintegrating marriage, we also had to factor in the Jubilee in some shape or form at the end. I was like How'd you do that? And so funny enough in the rewriting of it and the rebuilding of the episode, it loses some of its symmetry. But it's the absence of the symmetry and its imperfections that actually, I think, make it special, because I haven't engineered it. So funnily enough, even though it is a creation, it feels less engineered and created, it feels less schematic than some of the episodes which plopped perfectly into my head as a sort of dramatic construct. There's less drama writing in it, and that's why I'm particularly fond of it. And when it came to selecting an episode to submit to various bodies to be considered as emblematic of the season, we chose Episode 10. And I love that we did because I remember the struggles making it

Edith v/o

Suzanne Mackie 

S: The endings they often include, actually, they can often be bound up with an event, like the Jubilee. In many ways. That's easy, obviously, from a production point of view, anything but easy, but actually, it's the intimate that's harder to find, you know, to really eke out of the story. So yes, in many ways, Episode 10 is a perfect encapsulation of both the spectacle and the intimate that I think characterises the crown. And it's an episode where the weight of the world is yet again on Elizabeth's shoulders, both in terms of the country in terms of the political landscape striking miners and Heath and Wilson and blackout three day week, economic challenges. Country's facing you know, hardship and yet at the same time, and of course, this is where it's interesting. If that weren't interesting enough What is interesting is also there is that her sister princess Margaret's marriage is falling apart. And suddenly you have the if you like the soul the heart of an episode rather than the events it's always about the emotions and the personal. You know, I think what Peter writes a brilliantly in this in the crown is the sisters, and that Margaret represents dazzle and danger if you'd like. An emotion and Elizabeth represents... she has to be steadfast and reliable and she has to anchor the country and she has to anchor the family and she has to anchor her emotions. Margaret is flailing around and losing it and losing her husband and losing her control. Elizabeth is having to hold on to everything. And this all all this on the eve of the Jubilee where she has To stand in front of the country and be meaningful and, and count still. And so there you have for Peter, for the director, for the actors, this incredible canvas.

E: One of the fantastic things that I've loved of this season has been her audience with Wilson. 

S: Yeah. 

E: And watching that relationship. 

S: Yeah. And brilliant. I agree. heartbreaking. Her favourite Prime Minister of the Churchill, the only Prime Minister she invited or she invited herself to have dinner with which I always love that 'can I come for dinner please'. And I remember watching that from The Audience feels like a lifetime ago, but that again, very touching relationship between Wilson and the queen. And he says to her, you'd make a great socialist and that's touching in itself because I think we all know what what he means by that. And that this left wing chap actually connect to her more than any of her, his Tory predecessors. And the what I really love and Jason Watkins plays it so, so sensitively so beautifully, is that, you know, he's an Oxford DON. He's a he's a brilliant academic who apparently had a photographic memory so he could look at look at the vast waves of text and remember them to memory and just recall them. And that that great gift, if you like at the beginning of his journey is sadly robbed at the end of his journey by Alzheimer's. And so this once brilliant man who could remember everything is at the end of the season denied that. That's kind of heartbreaking and very real, unfortunately, and he touches the queen in his friendship with her in that final scene, which, to my surprise, might not have been in the in the episode at one point because you can't have so much in this Episode could it could could the episode also withstand that final audience where he resigned where he's forced to resign? And without it, you know, we will be denying such an important part of Wilson's journey. So we had to find a way to bring it in. And actually it's yet another thing that sits heavily on the queen. 

E: It's another loss for her.

S: Another loss, exactly. So without it that I think final image of her being on her own. Must I do it alone in the carriage has has even greater potency and resonance.

Episode Clip:

Wilsons last audience

E: I shouldn't worry too much. Several of your predecessors had far more serious afflictions. And they continued to govern without the public being any the wiser.

…….. Wilson: No. You thought I was going to rough you up. And look what a sentimental old royalist I turned out to be.

J: I remember when it first started, I sat down to watch it and I'm not a you know, probably not a royalist. It started and that like with 10 seconds of basically so Claire Foy's face. And then John Lithgow appeared. I thought that's Churchill. This is genius, you know, yeah, went into it. But I didn't realise I guess before I started even though Peter, I had lunch with Peter and talked to him. And he said, Really, by the time we get to the Edit, it's just you and me. And we'll be locking it off, that that would be true. And it absolutely was. I mean, it's Peter and I and the other people involved on the crowd. But Netflix gives us an extraordinary amount of freedom. They'll come back with questions that they have, but essentially, once we send ep seven to them, I don't think I've ever had this with a broadcaster before. We got one note back, and I said what's the note and it just said phenomenal, and I thought, thank you, get that framed. But in terms of all of the directors, we all talked to us, Ben Caron was incredibly generous because he'd done two seasons. So we really talked to him a lot about the style and the feel of the show. Was there a real kind of rigorous structure to the way we we could look at it, I felt very strongly and particularly by the I got to Episode 10 that I wanted it to feel a little more contemporary, because I felt we were moving forward in time. And I was trying to find ways I talked to Peter about this a bit too, that I felt that we could kind of let them out a little bit more. And with the Margaret having the affair with Roddy and being able to go to Mystique and I started playing around with music. I thought all this could be fun, you know. And Peter responded so brilliantly to that the first time I showed him I thought he's either gonna hate it, or he's gonna love it.

E: Yeah. 

J: And he loved it.

E: You talk about that breakdown of Margaret. And then it's, it's the ripple effects that that has and the relationship that she has with her sister, and how you look back to Episode Two and where it is now and the difference in that relationship and how this breakdown of Margaret is affecting Elizabeth and what it's making her question and face and think about...

J: I'll let you into a couple of secrets. So the arrival of the Queen at the beginning and the end was all for one scene just at the end, but because I had time on that day and I love that location the exterior of Kensington Palace as I could shoot from here and here, and then again, one of the joys of the crown is you have equipment and time and space and you can kind of all those shots you've always wanted to do you can suddenly do. So I covered lots of suddenly I realised I had two frameworks, and I could book end it. And Christian who directed five and six, brilliant, had done a sequence with the queen and Margaret, which couldn't find space in his episode. I said to him, Do you mind if we have a look at that? And so that is that actual opening scene came from... I think it was episode six. But that didn't that episode didn't have the time and space for it. Yeah. So the scene was sitting there and I was like, that could be the beginning. This could be the end, we started playing around with it. And that came from discussions with Peter where we started batting around ideas and Christian was wonderful. I rang him up and said before I do any of this, do you mind if I use some of your material? And he was like 'Great. I've also got this!'  No, I can't use it! So I think that's true collaboration, you know? You would hope that directors on shows would always be like that. With Sam, Christian and Ben you really couldn't have asked for a better combination of people,

E: someone that you work with really intensely apart from Olivia is Helena on on Margaret's journey, and we see with that kind of dinner party, the bombastic ness of heart and this kind of group of people, she's just crying out for support and help and no one listens to her.

J: I love the fact that she's brave enough to ask, most of us wouldn't put ourselves out there the way Margaret does, yeah, but she says what she needs and people find that really confronting and there's a kind of a central truth and what she's saying, You're my family. What are you doing? You're finding this funny, you're supporting him? Why is this okay?

Episode Clip – Birthday Party

E: relationships is what this shows all about, you know, it's a family drama. It's about all these intricate relationships between all these members. But when it comes down to Elizabeth and Margaret, you know, that goes way back to 

J: I know 

E: to the start and that scene where she comes to the palace to see Margaret in bed, and Oh, can we talk a little bit about that?

J: Olivia and I had a lot of... she'd been so careful not to be emotional. And I was like, You know what, this is your sister. This is private, what you were talking about and Aberfan is...is  your sense of duty and your what you cannot show. And I know that you know, in that beautiful scene at the end was Jason Watkins, where she talks about her concern about it, but I guess I'd always read it as, how could she reconcile what was expected of her in her job and her position with what she sometimes felt or didn't feel, and how she'd been... She'd been taught to keep things so down a bit like Philip, but her suppression is a bit more natural, I guess. There's grey areas in everybody's life, we all think we know how we're going to respond to something, but we never do. And so she was like 'great thank you!', she was really I mean, I find out very emotional  even sitting there when you're directing it on the day. But you know, when that's working, when you're not thinking about anything else, you're just watching it and you're in it. Yeah, because one of your jobs as the director is to be the audience once. Once actions call the things are happening Everybody else can watch the technical stuff. You've got to watch it and feel it. And that's where that's where you build that kind of instinctual muscle, I think,

18:08  

E: And I think is what that scene's so important in terms of where she then goes into her state of mind going into the Jubilee. Yeah, yeah. And in that carriage on her own...

18:19  

J: Both Martin Childs and, and Hannah, one of our extraordinary art directors, she was like, we got to build it, we got to build it. And one of the wonderful producers came back to one stage and said, How many sides to need and I said, all of the sides, all of the sides all of the time, it's, I can't, I can't kind of three months out, say I'll only see one side or you know, and I'm so glad we did because I think and it's her. Yes, I know. It's literally her in the gilded cage. But I love the sense of isolation, the sense of uncertainty and sense of duty within her but I really I became very compassionate towards someone I don't know over the course of working on the series and incredibly respectful for the job that she does.

18:32

Clip – Margaret and Elizabeth Jubilee

E:What's your view the Jubilee?

….M:  It's only fallen apart if we say it has. That's the thing about the Monarchy. We paper over the cracks.

Martin Childs

  M: I've been working on the crown now for for over five years, I think. Yeah, I started in September, whatever, five years ago is...

E: 2014! 

M: I've lost count of the years!

E: what's your official title?

M: Production designer, so kind of everything you see on the screen until and then actors step in and hide some of the work.

E: How dare they! But you're the top of the tree because underneath you, you know, all we see, there's so much that we see on screen. 

M: Thats right. When I say everything, it's not really everything because, you know, whenever there's some VFX you know, I try and keep maybe 70% of the screen belongs to the physical world. Yeah. And then it gets expanded and but when you see very very wide of Buckingham Palace or something like that it starts with a central section that's ours. And then that gets expanded into VFX world. And that's the great thing about the VFX on this is that it's not it doesn't intrude, doesn't show off. It just enhances Yeah, what's already done.

21:16  

E: Well, that's the amazing thing in terms of when you think about the scale of what you work on. It's these huge tapestries of of kind of rooms and buildings down to photographs of a family.

M: Absolutely. If you see a fountain pen is going to appear on screen as big as the Welsh countryside. In the case of Episode Three, the Aberfan episode.

21:39  

E: Yeah. What was the research that you did initially in terms of finding your I guess your kind of mood board for this, this incredible thing?

21:49  

M: Things present themselves, like Buckingham Palace. Yeah, you can do a tour of Buckingham Palace. You know what the outside looks like. You want the audience to believe they're in the real Buckingham Palace. And so you recreate that as faithfully as you possibly can. And then in terms of the more sort of private apartments, you go into Peters beautifully research script and think, how can I interpret this architecturally? The only thing I knew about the private apartments is that it's what's called architecturally as an en villard, which is a series of rooms rather than a corridor. Yeah, acting several rooms, so the rooms interconnect, so that felt like a good sort of starting point for the private apartments with Elizabeth bedroom one and Phillips bedroom at the other end, dressing rooms in between. And you're constantly aware of, you know, if he's absent, you know it and if she's absent, yeah, you know it.

22:41  

E: Every episode is filmic. Its cinematic. Yeah, thinking back to the previous two seasons, where Margaret meets Tony for the first time in that whole the red wall.

22:51  

M: Yeah, that's our introduction of red for the very first time in the entire show and you kind of you save up things like that, you know, because this is going to be spanning years. Decades you save up your first red wall, you save up your first mini and you save up your first glimpse of something extraordinarily green. You know you save up colours for when Princess Margaret gets older. And now on the fourth season, I still haven't run out of colours. I still haven't run out of ways of doing things I can still surprise myself but there are there are new things to do.

E: That's amazing to think of colours in that way of you know, you're saving them up is kind of special moments for certain...

23:27  

M: yeah. Is this my opportunity to go lime green? Yes, it is.

23:33  

E: What have been the highlights for you in from Season Three then in terms of be that kind of, I don't know where it's, it's been able to use something like that, or it's been a tricky situation that you find an incredible way to go around things or just creating something.

23:46  

M: Episode Two and the tour of the United States when Tony and Margaret go to to the States was a was a challenge. You read the script to begin with and you think 'Oh god, this is a series of obstacles, put it my way'. And then you read it a second time, it becomes a series of I don't know, opportunities, maybe.

E: Yeah, 

M: It was suggested that we will go to Spain. And so I looked at a load of stills of Spain. And I thought I think we possibly could tour the world here. And so in Spain, we found California, Arizona and Nassau, and not just in Spain, but in a little triangle of Spain. So you know, leaving other triangles of Spain for future future seasons.

24:28  

E: And what was the biggest challenge for you in season three.

24:32  

M: Aberfan. And the just because of the sensitivities of the, of the of the people who suffered that tragedy, it's difficult talking about the the sort of logistical process you go through. But I guess the big logistical decision for us was to when the school was intact, we shoot on location in Wales, when it wasn't when it was buried. We built it because you can't go there. Yeah. A place where it happened and and let them see it again. Yeah.

25:04  

E: There's this extraordinary thing that you do where you use real stately homes and grand houses be it, Lancaster houses is one that you use, but how you also have to navigate through that in a way that you know, there's things that you can move and can't touch and you can add to and all that. 

M: Yeah, yeah. 

25:25  

E: The net curtains is something that I discovered, right?

M: Right Yeah. We're not allowed to move because they are bombproof net gardens. So 

E: who knew?

M: Yeah, who knew? We did when we tried to remove them. But the other thing is that, you know, all of these country houses that we go to, I actually have a map now that I wasn't able to draw until we got to season three of how all of the country houses and the sets that we've built and the backlot that we've built a Buckingham Palace, how they all connect. Yeah, and so I have a sort of map of our it's not fictional but our Buckingham Palace, which has sections of these and how they all interlock.

26:09  

E: Things are almost changing outside of Buckingham Palace in their world, they're almost slightly playing catch up in way.

26:16  

M: Yes, yeah, they are they are moving very slowly it's again, you know, leave using the established sets to represent the establishment has helped. And you have that progress very, very slowly. And also there are people within the royal family who are going to move faster than others. Margaret being a case in point and Anne being a case in point. So she has a moment of being a teenager early on in season three, so you're able to do teenagers stuff or she's listening to rescue me, I think by Fontella Bass, 

E: yeah. 

26:44  

M: And with Margaret, you know that she's more progressive because of how she entered via that red room we talked about earlier, into a younger world, a world of the 1960s and we kind of keep with that and she finishes up indeed with with a younger companion in season three.

E: And is that something you talk about when you're when you talk to Peter, once you've read the script in terms of you know that collaboration seems to be such an important part of this, this machine that has been so successful between those different departments, you know, making sure that that conversation is open and constant really,

27:19  

M: That conversation happens in one big way at the beginning, and then that and then we sort of stay true to that conversation, we have a little tone meeting, in which I sort of present what what I think the season should look like. And from then on, it's keeping in check your urge to move forward too fast. you know don't go to Austin Powers in the 1960s stuff. And also to keep in mind that nobody lives in and fully 1970s house there was bits of 50s and 60s there so you kind of anchor even people who are moving through you anchor them in the past a bit. You keep check on yourself, not to overindulge and not to enjoy yourself too much because I'll run out of things run out of ways of travelling through time. 

E: Was there a difference for you coming on to season three with it being a whole new cast,

M: The biggest thing to do in terms of character was to take on princess Margaret's apartment at Kensington Palace. So because she's one of the more progressive ones, you know, Elizabeth and Philip live in this world hasn’t moved on very much.

E: That scene at the dinner table where they're all there for her birthday. Yeah, she's kind of she's she's kind of quite gregarious, Lee dressed and yeah, in comparison to everybody else around that table. And

M: that was a case in point as well, because I used an extraordinary shade of green. I worked hundreds of years ago and Jane campion's portrait of a lady and we used that shade of green in a room and I thought at the time while it's a bit radical, Janet, the fabulous Janet Patterson was designing it and she chose the shade of green. And then I discovered that actually it was used a fair bit in country houses not often but occasionally. And I thought now is the time to use that shade of green. And in a way it didn't start off with me thinking, let's use this green. It was Amy Roberts coming in with two samples of fabric of what Margaret's gonna wear and what Elizabeth is going to wear and I thought, aha, it's time for that shade of green.

E: I've got a confession to make. So we were Elstree.

M: Good! Should we stay on microphone?

E: We came down to Elstree and you were very busy off somewhere. But we we came into your office. 

M: Yeah, 

28:17  

E: Very briefly. And I could have spent like an hour in there just looking at all your pictures

M: Oh lovely, wish I'd been there!

E: Because you have all these amazing pictures. Yeah, of kind of inspiration or reference points and things as well.

28:31  

M: I fill my room not just with pictures of rooms and stuff. Yeah, fill a room with, I don't know, pictures of Julie Christie or something to represent the 60s and the Beatles. It's really important to think of those things as sort of symbols of progress. Yeah. And then you can work out how to represent that in an architectural or interior designing way.

E: Yeah. How do you this is a random question, but how do you decide what pictures are going to be? You know what, how do you decide that? What they are going to be?

29:01  

M: I have a fantastic graphics department and they organise still shoots with with the actors and sometimes they will find real photographs from the time or will recreate photographs from the time and do head replacement for example so and they will adjust the lighting so that it all looks as if all these people were in the photograph at the time. Because very often, you know, you can't get all of these people into a room

E: in Episode 10 which you know, is it's a bittersweet moment because it's the end of the season. Yeah, for us as fans of the show this incredible carriage that we see Olivia and that she you know the that I believe you built? 

M: We did build it, we did build it Yeah.

E: And how was that

29:48  

M: always the best thing to do is to start with the skeleton of a carriage so we've we started with with some existing wheels and some existing axles. Everything else is new, and was built by this fantastic company called anarchy and they made the most beautiful job of it. And you know we went through all sorts of crazy discussions about how we could possibly keep the cost down of this of this carriage by you know, maybe only build the left hand side of it or something like that. And actually maybe in the final cut you do it see the left hand side of it, but it's not going to help it's not really going to help in the long run. So yeah, we built the entire carriage and and therefore in the hope that one day we'll use it again because it's parked on stage five taking up valuable space where there could be a set 

30:33  

E: Well, that's the extraordinary thing is when from from having this wonderful opportunity to come down to Elstree and see the set and there was various things being built. We went on the aeroplane, you know, that's kind of been being used for lots of different flights. Yeah. And but that kind of recyclability of everything. You know, the sets one day or this then they're that and it's kind of incredible and how would the that is kind of the the shedule for that is organised, I can't get my head round how all that happened.

31:02  

M: Well...You grab what you can and away and there's been a case and this is giving away nothing about season four other than than our recycling capabilities. And that is that there's a royal enclosure at the Braemar games when they're up at Balmoral and we've just recycled that and turned it into a one of those green tea shacks that sit in the in squares in London.

31:51

Peter Morgan Part 2

I Remember, we filmed the death of the Queen's father and when the majority when when when she comes back from her tour and Claire Foy and she sees in the second episode of the show, and she sees her father's body lying there. And when she cried and turned away from the camera, I sort of remember issuing an edict saying that is the first and last time we will ever see this woman cry, we will never see her cry ever again. And this feels to me like the only time to make an exception for that. The interesting thing for us is that we have in Olivia, the most naturally emotional person I think any of us have ever met. I mean, the strength of her emotions are very close to the surface. So we've had all sorts of challenges to try and keep them in. When we filmed the Aberfan episodes, I'm sure you've heard, you know, she had an earpiece, and we were reading the shipping forecast to her. And it's the same when it came to this moment. You know, the tears came naturally she they were not written, but when they came, and she was fighting them. That felt like a really good thing to show. It felt true it felt heartfelt, accurate and there's so much has been written about the closeness between the two sisters and you hear that so anecdotally from people that I've spoken to who knew them and knew the relationship and had witnessed it firsthand over many decades. And so I think this is entirely appropriate.

E: For the record, I think there are plenty of things that you’re good at.

…M: Then we must both carry on.

E: what would you say has been the journey from of the Queen from episode one to Episode 10 and this season?

34:09  

P: Well, I'm quite I'm quite arc resistant in terms of a show that  we're in mid stride, we're not at an arc point. I think that you know, whereas the first couple of seasons were about her, struggling to adapt to something, and to learn the rules and to realise how many people she was actually up against, and to try and keep a marriage afloat in the middle of that quite quite a young marriage and new marriage. By the end of this season that has become a family drama a really properly family drama at the beginning of the season. It was still the queen and and Philip and and more settled situation and she's a more settled sovereign. By the end we're in a full blown family story with Charles having come of age, Anne having come of age, them having their own complex emotional lives. And that's definitely where we're headed from now on.

35:00  

E: You talked about Episode 10 being tricky, chaotic, but did you know how it was going to end? Did you know that chaos had to lead towards that specific way that it was going to end?

35:53  

P: It's a bit like one of those consequences drawings, where you've got the top bit looking like a Nun, The middle bit looking like a nun and the bottom bit being like a surfer. And you sort of Oh, this it doesn't quite make sense. We've got the wrong ending to the episode that we've just been 45 minutes telling which is Margaret's journey, but somehow into that conversation about Margaret's low point we made it also a conversation about well actually, that of the two of us one of us has got to keep going, you know, and must I do it alone and that it was a baton pass as it were, from the Margaret story to Elizabeth story, you know, you cannot go because what would I do without you, and then Margaret saying yeah but there is only one Queen, and so that you go from Margaret's you know, low point and loneliness to the queens.

Edith VO

Thanks + Out

I'm Edith Bowman and my special thanks to the guests on this episode, Peter Morgan, Jessica Hobbs, Martin childs and Suzanne Mackie. 

H: And Margaret, who was incredibly quick witted,

E: yeah, 

H: She'd look around very, very slowly. Right? ‘Yes, ma'am. Do you want to have tea’…There's always a pause before dramatic pause and then… ‘what?!’

E: I love it!

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